One, two, many
There are a few human languages that are deficient in words for numbers. One would expect that people who lack words for numbers larger than two would have difficulty performing certain numeric tasks, but recent research suggests that this is not so:
British and Australian researchers assessed 45 indigenous Australian children aged between four and seven years.
They compared those who lived in remote areas and only spoke Warlpiri or Anindilyakawa - two Aboriginal languages with very few number words - with those who lived in Melbourne and spoke English.
There was no difference in numerical ability between the children who spoke languages without number words and the English-speaking children.
Study leader Professor Brian Butterworth, from the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London, said two studies in tribes in the Amazon had concluded that words were necessary for exact number tasks but this research showed otherwise.
I don’t know about this. We seem to have internalized the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis to the point that learning something new is inseparable from learning a new vocabulary. On the other hand, crows are said to be able to count up to three, and parrots up to six. Maybe we have some very simple innate numerical ability, but anything beyond that requires language.
Synchronicity department
After I posted this, I heard about John McCain having more houses than he could count. I swear that the timing was entirely coincidental.
