Perception at the root of language

Behaviour motivated by communicative intent is called ostensive. Accordingly, the notion of ostension is foundational for cognitive approaches to human interaction and language. Here I briefly describe how viewing ostension as a perceptible property of behaviour — in the sense of perception argued for in the target article — sheds especially clear light on the nature of meaning, comprehension and language.This is a commentary on: Bai et al., ‘“Core perception”: Re-imagining precocious reasoning as sophisticated perceiving’). Behavioral & Brain Sciences.