We are happy to announce a talk by Peter Gärdenfors (Lund) in the Semantics Colloquium.
The talk will take place on campus in IG 4.301.
Date: November 12, 2026
Time: 4 pm – 6 pm c.t.
Title: Pantomime as a stepping stone to protolanguage
Abstract: I will begin by arguing that pantomime has been an important factor in the evolution of teaching that can be used without linguistic communication. Then I will show that there are two types of pantomime: directive (showing) and informative (telling). Informative pantomime can be seen as a breakthrough in the evolution of communication. Finally, I will discuss some ideas about how informative pantomime evolved into protosign and protospeech.