Evolutionary Pragmatics: Communicative Interaction and the Origins of Language

This volume explores the new interdisciplinary field of evolutionary pragmatics, encompassing both the evolution of abilities needed for pragmatics and the role of pragmatics in the evolution of language. The chapters adopt a range of approaches, with insights from linguistics, philosophy, psychology, and primatology.

Bart Geurts, Professor of the Philosophy of Language and Logic, Radboud University Nijmegen,Richard Moore, Associate Professor, Department of Philosophy, University of Warwick

Bart Geurts is Professor of the Philosophy of Language and Logic at Radboud University, Nijmegen. His main research interests are in semantic and pragmatic theory, but he has also carried out experimental research and has published on topics related to language development, language change, reasoning, social cognition, and evolution. His many publications include Presupposition and Pronouns (Elsevier, 1999) and Quantity Implicatures (CUP, 2010).


Richard Moore is Associate Professor of Philosophy and UKRI Future Leaders Fellow at the University of Warwick, having previously held positions at Humboldt University Berlin and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig. His Communicative Mind research group conducts philosophical and empirical research on the relationship between communication and theory of mind in human and non-human great apes.