Intentionality, communication, and language

Abstract

Many researchers have emphasised the importance of the study of pre-linguistic communication in order to understand the genesis of language. This research, which began during the 1970s, grew largely out of the popularisation of the theoretical postulates of Piaget and Vygotsky. In fact, it responded largely to the exhaustion of most of the proposals made in the 1960s, stimulated by Noam Chomsky. Up to the 1980s, the discussions dealt with several questions such as the appearance of communicative intention, the existence or not of continuities throughout development, the role of adults and social interaction in the genesis of communication, etc. Some aspects of these discussions, especially those related to the genesis of communicative intention and the role of social interaction, have recently been taken up again on the basis of conceptions inspired directly by the proposals derived from the theories of mind model.