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Friday, August 20, 2004, 09:38

Researchers claim to have solved the mystery of the people who don't count

The Guardian

The Piraha of the Amazon have almost legendary status in language research. They have no words at all for number. They use only only three words to count: one, two, many. To make things confusing, the words for one and two, in Piraha, are the same syllable, pronounced with a falling or rising inflection.

And to make things really difficult, the word for one can sometimes mean "roughly one", and the word for two can sometimes mean "not many". The Piraha have puzzled anthropologists for decades.

Peter Gordon, a behavioural scientist at Columbia University in New York, reports in Science today that the Piraha may may not be very good at counting because because they do not have the words for it. >> continue


READ ALSO
Gordon's study will not resolve the debate about whether language can shape thought in other examples (Nature)

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