(imperative, declarative and metonymic oh my!)

TL; DR: just see the point(s) ☟

Humans learn to point around 15 months of age (related to language development), first using their whole hand, then, three months later, by extending their index finger. Infants first do imperative pointing (i.e. to ask for a toy too far away or a sweet they want), and declarative pointing, (i.e. to indicate something new or interesting, like a dog entering the room.)

Animals don’t point. This includes mammals with fingers, like simians. However, even though they don’t point in the wild, when in captivity gorillas and chimpanzees learn how to do it from humans. Dogs understand pointing (from thousands of years of interacting with people — cats, also domesticated, just can’t be bothered), as do dolphins (perhaps because their echolocation “beam” is a sonic type of pointing).

There are numerous ways of pointing: semiotic primitive; pseudo-pointing; syntactic; cross-species litmus test… (see “Fifteen Ways of Looking at a Pointing Gesture” by Kensy Cooperrider for more of them.) Metonymic pointing is where you use the gesture to draw attention to an abstract concept — for example, a stressed staffer points to their watch to signal to the malapropping President answering questions it’s time to go; a heartless developer points to your home to indicate a proposed subway and condominium development… ):

Pointing can be difficult to interpret — for example, if you are wordlessly communicating with a person who doesn’t speak your language and you point to an apple, are you drawing attention to its color, its shape, your hunger? If you point to it three times, are you indicating a different attribute each time?

SEE THE REST OF THE “POINTING” SET, W/TEXT, HERE: https://nu4ya.substack.com