Ostensive marking as a distinctive feature of human communication

Human communication possesses far more expressive power than any other communicative system in nature. In pragmatic theory, this flexibility is attributed to ostensive communication. Nonetheless, there is no consensus on the defining features of this system. Here, I offer an account of ostensive communication that avoids the cognitive demands associated with alternative approaches. These approaches (e.g., Griceanism) are committed to specific proximate, mechanistic formulations (e.g., metarepresentations), which render comparative and developmental research cumbersome. Instead, I propose that we define ostension using ultimate, functional terms that clearly specify the adaptive problem. In this definition, ostension involves the function of marking NN , i.e., flexibly marking entities (e.g., objects and actions) as communicative. This ability permits humans to produce novel communicative means open-endedly and to establish communication channels. Moreover, the marking NN function could be implemented through both purely inferential processes and simple code-based signals. Therefore, its presence in infancy is less controversial.