Abstract
One of the main distinctive features of social interaction in our species is that we use language to coordinate our future activities, and in many cases far ahead. Non-human primates don't do this, as a consequence of which their interactions remain comparatively simple and short-range. This paper offers the first in-depth discussion of this key distinctive feature of human communication. It is argued that its evolution was conditional on two developments: an increase of responsiveness during the communicative exchange and the emergence of normative behaviours in the follow-up. Responsiveness was required to coordinate future interactions, but wasn't enough for coordinating interactions beyond the immediate future, which required normativity, to boot.
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