On the category of number in language and cognition

• Authors: Ewa Willim
• Languages of publication: PL

Abstracts

PL

Number is the foundation of quantitative evaluation and an important parameter underpinning mental representations of the external reality formed in both the human and the non-human animal brain. It is generally accepted in cognitive sciences that at least some cognitive functions are mediated through language. Like the language faculty, the number faculty is characterized by the properties of recursion and generativity, which raises questions about the nature of the relationship between numerical cognition and language. Simply put, the main question is whether language is the key to number and whether mathematical reasoning can develop without the lexical and syntactic resources of language. This article overviews the results of various studies investigating the nature of the relationship between language and number. Taken together, the studies on the numerical capacities of speakers of indigenous languages lacking names of discrete quantities, pre-linguistic children, speakers with brain damage to the left perisylvian language area, as well as certain non-human animals demonstrate that language and numerical cognition are functionally independent of each other. This finding suggests that the links between language and thought are not as tight and direct as is often argued in linguistics, cognitive and developmental psychology as well as in the philosophy of language.

Keywords

PL

• Publisher: Uniwersytet Jagielloński
• Journal: Studia Linguistica Universitatis Iagellonicae Cracoviensis
• Year: 2007
• Volume: 124

Dates

published

2007

online

2015-02-25

Contributors

author

Ewa Willim