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Having set the scene for pragmatist approaches and explained how these are ‘functionalist’, this section describes two functionalist grammars: the ‘cognitive grammar’ of Ronald Langacker (heavily influential on Tomasello) and Van Valin's Role and Reference Grammar. It argues that despite their many interesting features, these do not fulfil the basic desiderata for being theories of syntactic competence. It discusses Newmeyer's critical views on functionalist theories more generally. Functionalist/cognitivist work on syntax development from the 1970s to the present day is described, spending a good deal of time on the work of Michael Tomasello and Julian Pine. Finally, whether so-called grammaticalisation and taking an evolutionary approach to language favour functionalism is discussed, concluding that they do not.

This chapter describes research findings from the social-pragmatic approach. It discusses that Nameera Akhtar and Michael Tomasello's dramatic findings demonstrate how word learning occurs in some fairly complex, nonostensive situations amid the flow of social interaction. It states that current models of word learning, as suggested by Akhtar and Tomasello, undervalue the role of social interaction. It explains that because language has social goals as its ultimate purpose, social interactions are the outcome of word learning.

The study of musical improvisation and how musicians acquire this skill allows for a comparison with language acquisition from the perspectives of both perceptual and productive competence. This chapter describes musical knowledge and how it is acquired, comparing this knowledge and its acquisition with the knowledge base in language and how it is developed. Elements of the linguistic knowledge base are described (phonology, morphology, semantics, syntax, pragmatics), and musical analogues of these elements are sought. Following this, learning to improvise is discussed in the context of theories of language acquisition, drawing on the data regarding improvisation pedagogy and learning discussed in the previous chapters. A constructivist, cognitive-functional, usage-based approach to learning to improvise is proposed, drawing on the theoretical framework proposed by Michael Tomasello for language acquisition.

Frithjof Nungesser takes up a systematic comparison of Tomasello, a key figure working to reorient comparative and developmental research in cognitive science around social and cultural issues, and Mead, focusing especially on the evolutionary development of human-specific features of communication. Both authors agree that the key transition between animal and human communication is in gestural interaction and that humans have developed unique role-taking abilities that transform cognition into internal dialogue. Their differences of emphasis, however, are instructive. They choose different reference species with differing types of social skills to compare with humans, and they place different emphases on verbal and manual communication in evolutionary development. Although Tomasello provides a more up-to-date analysis of the evolutionary development of human communication, Nungesser argues that he ultimately fails to fully incorporate Mead’s pragmatist principles, which both recognize the evolutionary continuity of human and animal sociality and at the same time stress the change of existence as a whole—the emergence of a qualitatively new intersubjective space affecting all human motivations and behaviors—that results from biologically evolved human specific capacities.

This chapter reviews aspects of the work of the evolutionary anthropologist Michael Tomasello, and it is suggested that the novel social engagement that flows from our use of social media and digital language has some clear parallels to the engagement that must have arisen in the early human use of language and equally in the learning activity of contemporary children. A theory of digital institutions that follows the Searle and Tomasello model will be grounded in anthropology and evolutionary biology. The chapter reviews and contrasts the views of Searle and Tomasello in relation to intentionality, Tomasello’s three stage model of individual, joint and collective intentionality is useful and some comparisons are drawn between Searle’s notion of the ‘background’ to intentional action and language use and Tomasello’s related but distinct notion of ‘common ground’.

The word “cooperation” plays a key role in contemporary writings on human social life, human evolution, human uniqueness, and human communication. As this chapter shows, however, it is used in many different senses and these senses are never defined (in words that are simple and clear). Furthermore, since “cooperation” is an English word without exact equivalents in other languages, many theories that heavily rely on this word are locked in English, as well as being shaped by English. The chapter shows how the important issues linked in the literature with this vague, protean, and English-specific word can be clarified and sharpened by the use of the mini-English that is NSM English. The chapter concludes by invoking John Locke’s seminal ideas on the “abuse of language” and shows their relevance to the terminological Anglocentrism prevailing in many areas of contemporary social science.

The chapter argues that empirical studies of first-language acquisition lend support to the Wittgensteinian-Merleau-Pontian conception of language as against the prevailing conception that underwrites the method of cases in either its armchair or experimental version. It offers a non-representationalist model, inspired by the work of Michael Tomasello, for the acquisition of “knowledge,” with the aim of showing that we could fully account for the acquisition of this and other philosophically troublesome words without positing independently existing “items” to which these words refer. The chapter also aims at bringing out and underscoring the striking fact that, whereas many in contemporary analytic philosophy regard and present themselves as open and attentive to empirical science, they have often relied on a conception of language that has been supported by no empirical evidence.