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What constitutes our concept of numbers and makes it possible for us to work with them the way we do? Which mental faculties contribute to our grasp? What qualities do we share with other species, and which ones are specific to us? This book addresses these questions to reveal that language plays a crucial role in the development of systematic number concepts. It analyzes the relationship between numerical thinking and the human language faculty, providing psychological, linguistic, and philosophical perspectives on numbers, their evolution, and development in children.
List of contents
Introduction; 1. Numbers and objects; 2. What does it mean to be a number?; 3. Can words be numbers?; 4. The language legacy; 5. Children's route to number: from iconic representations to numerical thinking; 6. The organisation of our cognitive number domain; 7. Non-verbal number systems; 8. Numbers in language: the grammatical integration of numerical tools; Appendix.
About the author
Heike Weiss is Assistant Professor of Linguistics at the Institute for German Linguistics and Language, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. She has published in the fields of linguistics, cognitive science, philosophy, and didactics of mathematics.
Summary
This 2003 book 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.
