Amazonian Tribe Has No Word To Express Numbers

In 2004 we discussed the Piraha, a tribe in the Amazon, when a study appeared characterizing their language as a "one, two, many" language. Now reader mu22le informs us of a new study of the Piraha pointing to the possibility that they use no number words at all. Instead they seem to use the word formerly thought to mean "two" to represent a quantity of 5 or 6, and the "one" word for anything from 1 to 4. The language has about 300 native speakers. "The study... offers evidence that number words are a concept invented by human cultures as they are needed, and not an inherent part of language, Gibson said."

Comments

Re:Words are made up as they are needed

[Anonymous Coward]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inuit_language#Words_for_snow

Re:It's the "objects", stupid

[taubz]

As I recall (I was at a talk by one of the principal investigators), the flaws were not so obvious as to use batteries. I think they might have even asked them to count their own family members. If anything it was probably not what was counted but the task of counting which might have been both unfamiliar and potentially culturally sensitive.

But there are other interesting things (claimed) about their language besides a lack of numbers that makes it less surprising that this might also be the case. There was very little recursive structure in the syntax, for instance.

Re:Words are made up as they are needed

[russotto]

I would like to defenestrate most politicians via defenestration.

Which is, in fact, the origin of the word (though obviously it was coined from Latin roots). Look up "Defenestration of Prague".

Re:Different skill sets needed

[Opie812]

Check out Maslow's hierarchy of needs. I think you've paraphrased his ideas.