Title: Numbers, language, and the human mind /
Authors: Wiese, Heike
Publisher: Cambridge University Press,
Year: 2003
Subjects: Grammar, Comparative and general Numerals.; Language and languages; Psycholinguistics.; Language acquisition.
Abstract: What constitutes our number concept? What makes it possible for us to employ numbers the way we do; which mental faculties contribute to our grasp of numbers? What do we share with other species, and what is specific to humans? How does our language faculty come into the picture? This book addresses these questions and discusses the relationship between numerical thinking and the human language faculty, providing psychological, linguistic, and philosophical perspectives on number, its evolution, and its development in children. Heike Wiese argues that language as a human faculty plays a crucial role in the emergence of systematic numerical thinking. She characterises number sequences as powerful and highly flexible mental tools that are unique to humans and shows that it is language that enables us to go beyond the perception of numerosity and to develop such mental tools.
Contents: Numbers and objects -- What does it mean to be a number? -- Can words be numbers? -- The language legacy -- Children's route to number: from iconic representations to numerical thinking -- The organisation of our cognitive number domain -- Non-verbal number systems -- Numbers in language: the grammatical integration of numerical tools.