Re: [xmca] Concerning the origins of Pointing

[Mike Cole <lchcmike@gmail.com>]

I do not believe there is much data on early ontogeny of pointing across a
wide swath of cultural groups, Andy, so I am unsure
of what one wants to claim as heavily constrained by phylogeny and how the
social role enters in culturally specific ways. Martin
tells me that pointing in Japan among older people is impolite (it can be in
the US too of course!) and that it is done with the palm. Perhaps one of our
Japanese colleagues can help.  From the little i know, among older children
and adults there is a variety of ways
as situations in which "pointing" is carried out. There is also ample
evidence that sociocultural interpretation plays a significant role
in determining whether a behavior is counted as "pointing." There is also a
literature on something like pointing among non-human
animals that requires consideration, some of it done recently by Tomasello.

Any one there able to summarize current wisdom on these issues for us?
mike

On Fri, Aug 14, 2009 at 5:39 PM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:

> Thanks for that Mike. Ask a question on this list and the answer is not
> long in coming. A case of joint attention I guess.
>
> As I understand this excerpt, the idea of pointing growing out of attempted
> grasping in ontogenetic development is ruled out, but the "precision
> grasping" movement with thumb and forefinger and the pointing gesture with
> thumb *not* opposing the forefinger are co-evolved reflexes (?) and the
> discovery is pushed back from Vygotsky and Dewey to Darwin (sort of). And
> co-attention (gaze-following) precedes pointing at distant objects.
>
> All of which points to the communicative functions developing
> ontogenetically in advance of I->object functions. Is that right? And we
> should take the grasping-then-pointing idea really just as part of our
> history.
>
> thanks Mike.
> you work too hard!
>
> Andy
>
> Mike Cole wrote:
>
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