Mani, gomito, quattro. Corpo, numeri e il contare transitivo

Abstract

Number words that, in principle, allow all kinds of objects to be counted ad infinitum are one basic requirement for complex numerical cognition. Do abstract numerical concepts depend on language or culture, or do they form a part of humans’innate, core knowledge? We present some instances from Melanesia and Polynesia, whose short or object-specific sequences originated from the same extensive and abstract sequence. To clarify the relation between language and arithmetic, we studied numerical cognition in speakers of Mundurucuru, an Amazonian language with a very small lexicon of number words. Especially studies of cultures with extremely limited number vocabularies  could be informative, because they provide us with the rare opportunity to study how a diminished number vocabulary affects cognition in neurologically healthy subjects. In line with this proposal, the Mundurucuru, speakers of a natural, recursive language with no exact numerical symbols, possess a good understanding of exact equality between numbers, but their knowledge of the successor function is at best limited. These results expand our knowledge both regarding numerical cognition and regarding the evolution of numeration systems.