beforeword · English transcription of the sent letter Intended recipient: Michael Tomasello Author: Kirill Shebetov · beforeword Sent to: michael.tomasello@duke.edu Sending date in the supplied materials: The header shows only “Friday”; the calendar date is not shown. The sending timezone is not supplied. Status: shown in the Sent folder; no reply published. The published materials do not establish receipt or reading by the recipient. Record: https://beforeword.xyz/letters/researchers/tomasello/en/#record Record data: https://beforeword.xyz/letters/researchers/tomasello/record.json Russian translation: https://beforeword.xyz/letters/researchers/tomasello/#letter Transcribed from author-supplied screenshots. Screen line wraps are joined and overlaps included once; wording and punctuation are retained. beforeword’s context and links to discussed publications are separate on the letter page. --- BEGIN ENGLISH TRANSCRIPTION --- Subject: Common ground: the grounds for attributing mutual knowledge Dear Professor Tomasello, Your 2020 paper with Wouter Wolf on video watching and common ground (JECP, 199, 104930) describes common ground in terms of participants who “know that they both know” they are experiencing something together. The study varies the timing of eye contact, reports differences in children’s subsequent approach times, and discusses methodological limitations. Please indicate the strongest ground, in the reported experimental comparison, for attributing to the children an understanding that both participants knew they were watching together. beforeword proposes keeping three elements separately inspectable: the written report, the attribution of mutual knowledge, and the grounds offered for accepting that attribution. The terms “knowledge” and “common ground” remain part of the writing under examination. Written descriptions of methods, measurement records, criteria and their justifications, human self-descriptions, and this letter receive the same treatment. The reading procedure and worked examples: https://beforeword.xyz/model/en/ Kirill Shebetov beforeword + --- END ENGLISH TRANSCRIPTION ---