Peter Gärdenfors

Biographic Data

ID219504
NAMEPeter Gärdenfors
GIVEN NAMESPeter
FAMILY NAMEGärdenfors
SIGNATUREGÄRDENFORS P
AFFILIATIONSLund University
ORCID0000-0001-7423-828X
VERIFIEDYes
TOTAL WORKS48
TOTAL CITATIONS121
AUTHOR COUNT47
EDITOR COUNT1
FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR1976
LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR2026
H-INDEX6

  • Sound iconicity in the transition from protosign to protospeech

    Open AccessPeter Gärdenfors, Axel EkströmARTICLEFrontiers in Language Sciences2026

    So-called “gesture-first” accounts of language origins suggest that human language began with gestural communication, including movements of the hand and face. However, a prevailing problem for such theories has been to explain how language moved “from hand to mouth”—that is, how vocal communication may have gradually replaced gestural communication, to become the predominant mode of language. Here, we present a mechanism by which this transition…

  • Agency at a distance

    Open AccessPeter Gärdenfors, M LombardARTICLEPhenomenology and the Cognitive…2025

    In a series of papers, we have argued that causal cognition has coevolved with the use of various tools. Animals use tools, but only as extensions of their own bodies, while humans use tools that act at a distance in space and time. This means that we must learn new types of causal mappings between causes and effects. The aim of this article is to account for what is required for such learning of causal relations. Following a proposal by Grush an…

  • Ambiguity aversion and value uncertainty generate an endowment effect

    Open AccessErik Mohlin, Peter GärdenforsARTICLETheory and Decision2025

    We show how the endowment effect can be interpreted in terms of ambiguity aversion. Agents take status quo as their reference point, relative to which they evaluate potential trades. The value of exchanged goods is ambiguous, represented by a set of probability distributions over possible values. Agents are ambiguity averse, modeled as maxmin expected utility maximisers. This characteristic leads a seller to focus on the case of selling a high va…

  • Generics as Expectations

    Open AccessPeter Gärdenfors, Matías Osta‐VélezARTICLERatio2025

    Generic statements play a crucial role in concept learning, communication and education. Despite many efforts, the semantics of generics remain a controversial issue, as they do not seem to fit our standard theories of meaning. In this article, we attempt to shed light on this problem by focusing on how these sentences function in reasoning. Drawing on a distinction between property and diagnostic generics, we defend three theses: First, property…

  • Analogical reasoning

    Open AccessIgor Douven, Steven Verheyen et al.ARTICLESynthese2025References: 59

  • Correlates of Vocal Tract Evolution in Late Pliocene and Pleistocene Hominins

    Open AccessAxel G Ekström, Peter Gärdenfors et al.ARTICLEHuman Nature2025Cited by: 1References: 339

    Despite decades of research on the emergence of human speech capacities, an integrative account consistent with hominin evolution remains lacking. We review paleoanthropological and archaeological findings in search of a timeline for the emergence of modern human articulatory morphological features. Our synthesis shows that several behavioral innovations coincide with morphological changes to the would-be speech articulators. We find that signifi…

  • Expressives, directives and assertions

    Open AccessHubert Hågemark, Peter GärdenforsARTICLELanguage & Communication2025References: 67

    Despite the considerable amount of research devoted to speech act theory, relatively little attention has been paid to the cognitive foundations underlying different speech act classes. This article addresses this gap by introducing a framework of cognitive dimensions associated with the performance of expressives, directives and assertions. Drawing on empirical data, we argue that each class requires distinct cognitive capacities related to acqu…

  • Praxis, demonstration and pantomime

    Open AccessPrzemysław Żywiczyński, Marek Placiński et al.ARTICLELanguage and Cognition2024

    A commonly held assumption is that demonstration and pantomime differ from ordinary action in that the movements are slowed down and exaggerated to be better understood by intended receivers. This claim has, however, been based on meagre empirical support. This article provides direct evidence that the different functional demands of demonstration and pantomime result in motion characteristics that differ from those for praxic action. In the expe…

  • Event structure, force dynamics and verb semantics

    Open AccessPeter GärdenforsARTICLELanguage Sciences2024

    This article presents a cognitive model of event structure that can be used to explain several features of the semantics of verbs. The model consists of four basic components: agent, patient, force vector and result vector. Each component is described in terms of the theory of conceptual spaces. The force vector is the cause of the result vector. Unlike other event models both the cause and the effect are included in the representation of a singl…

  • Minds on Fire

    Open AccessM Lombard, Peter GärdenforsARTICLECambridge Archaeological Journal2023Cited by: 4References: 32

    Thus far, most researchers have focused on the cognition of fire use, but few have explored the cognition of firemaking. With this contribution we analyse aspects of the two main hunter-gatherer firemaking techniques-the strike-a-light and the manual fire-drill-in terms of causal, social and prospective reasoning. Based on geographic distribution, archaeological and ethnographic information, as well as our cognitive interpretation of strike-a-lig…

  • Teaching as evolutionary precursor to language

    Open AccessPeter GärdenforsARTICLEFrontiers in Communication2022

    The central thesis of this article is that the evolution of teaching is one of the main factors that lead to increasingly complex communicative systems in the hominin species. Following earlier analyses of the evolution of teaching, the following steps are identified: (i) evaluative feedback, (ii) drawing attention, (iii) demonstration and pantomime, (iv) communicating concepts, (v) explaining relations between concepts, and (vi) narrating. For e…

  • Motion iconicity in prosody

    Open AccessAxel G Ekström, Jens Nirme et al.ARTICLEFrontiers in Communication2022

    Evidence suggests that human non-verbal speech may be rich in iconicity. Here, we report results from two experiments aimed at testing whether perception of increasing and declining f 0 can be iconically mapped onto motion events. We presented a sample of mixed-nationality participants ( N = 118) with sets of two videos, where one pictured upward movement and the other downward movement. A disyllabic non-sense word prosodically resynthesized as i…

  • Conceptual spaces and the strength of similarity-based arguments

    Open AccessIgor Douven, Shira Elqayam et al.ARTICLECognition2022

  • Situated Counting

    Open AccessPeter Gärdenfors, Paula QuinonARTICLEReview of Philosophy and Psychology2021

    We present a model of how counting is learned based on the ability to perform a series of specific steps. The steps require conceptual knowledge of three components: numerosity as a property of collections; numerals; and one-to-one mappings between numerals and collections. We argue that establishing one-to-one mappings is the central feature of counting. In the literature, the so-called cardinality principle has been in focus when studying the d…

  • Demonstration and pantomime in the evolution of teaching and communication

    Open AccessPeter GärdenforsARTICLELanguage & Communication2021Cited by: 2References: 38

    The article begins with a presentation of the role of demonstration and pantomime in the evolution of teaching building on Gärdenfors and Högberg (2017). In comparison to different forms of animal communication, demonstration is voluntary, intentional, honest, and directed to one or a few individuals. Then the differences between demonstration and pantomime is analyzed. An important factor is that a pantomime can be detached, that is, can refer t…

  • Levels of communication and lexical semantics

    Open AccessPeter GärdenforsARTICLESynthese2018Cited by: 1References: 31

  • Semantic domains of demonstratives and articles

    Open AccessPeter Gärdenfors, Maja Brala-Vukanović et al.ARTICLELingua2018Cited by: 2References: 29

  • The Archaeology of Teaching and the Evolution ofHomo docens

    Peter Gärdenfors, Anders HögbergARTICLECurrent Anthropology2017Cited by: 46References: 109

    CITATION: Gärdenfors, P. & Högberg, A. 2017. The Archaeology of Teaching and the Evolution of Homo docens. Current Anthropology, 58(2):188-208. doi:10.1086/691178

  • Révolution dans nos origines

    Mathias Osvath, Peter GärdenforsCHAPTERRévolution dans nos origines2015

  • Children, Teaching and the Evolution of Humankind

    Open AccessAnders Högberg, Peter GärdenforsARTICLEChildhood in the Past2015

    Social learning is essential for human evolution. To achieve such learning, cultural processes which trigger the development of active teaching and intergenerational transmission and accumulation of knowledge are needed. The understanding of how such systems and processes were developed over a long time is essential for our understanding of human evolution. The identification of children's learning activities in the archaeological record is cruci…

  • Semantic Transformations

    Open AccessPeter GärdenforsARTICLELanguage and Semiotic Studies2015Cited by: 1References: 6

    is famous for his dictum that the linguistic sign is arbitrary. But he complements this as follows: "Some signs are absolutely arbitrary: in others we note, not its complete absence, but the presences of degrees of arbitrariness: the sign may be relatively motivated. [This] is true of poirier 'pear-tree', which recalls the simple word poire 'pear' and, through its suffix, cerisier 'cherry-tree', pommier 'apple-tree ' etc" (Saussure, 1966, p. 131)

  • Knowing, Learning and Teaching—How Homo Became Docens

    Open AccessAnders Högberg, Peter Gärdenfors et al.ARTICLECambridge Archaeological Journal2015Cited by: 10References: 14

    This article discusses the relation between knowing, learning and teaching in relation to early Palaeolithic technologies. We begin by distinguishing between three kinds of knowledge: knowing how, knowing what and knowing that. We discuss the relation between these types of knowledge and different forms of learning and long-term memory systems. On the basis of this analysis, we present three types of teaching: (1) helping and correcting; (2) show…

  • The Geometry of Meaning

    Peter GärdenforsBOOKGeometry of Meaning2014

    A novel cognitive theory of semantics that proposes that the meanings of words can be described in terms of geometric structures. In The Geometry of Meaning, Peter Gärdenfors proposes a theory of semantics that bridges cognitive science and linguistics and shows how theories of cognitive processes, in particular concept formation, can be exploited in a general semantic model. He argues that our minds organize the information involved in communica…

  • The Evolutionary Emergence of Language

    Peter Gärdenfors, Rudolf Botha et al.BOOKEvolutionary Emergence of Language2013

    The book presents new and stimulating approaches to the study of language evolution and considers their implications for future research. Leading scholars from linguistics, primatology, anthropology, and cognitive science consider how language evolution can be understood by means of inference from the study of linked or analogous phenomena in language, animal behaviour, genetics, neurology, culture, and biology. The introduction shows how these a…

  • What is a domain? Dimensional structures versus meronomic relations

    Open AccessPeter Gärdenfors, Simone LöhndorfARTICLECognitive Linguistics2013Cited by: 1References: 3

    Within cognitive linguistics, the notion of domain is central. In the literature, the notion of domain has been interpreted in an all-encompassing way, which has led to conceptual confusion. The article proposes to distinguish between a more psychologically oriented description of domains based on dimensional structures, on the one hand; and meronomic relations, on the other. It is shown how Langacker's notion of a configurational domain can be a…