Reading for M 12/6: Gordon (2004) and Frank et al. (2008)

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For Monday 12/6, please read the following two article, which can be downloaded from the Readings section of this website:

Gordon, Peter. 2004. Numerical cognition without words: Evidence from Amazonia. Science 306: 496-499.

Frank, Michael C., Daniel L. Everett, Evelina Fedorenko & Edward Gibson. 2008. Number as a cognitive technology: Evidence from Pirahã language and cognition. Cognition 108: 819-824.

Both of these papers pick up on one of our observations from Friday’s class, concerning the Piraha language’s lack of exact numeral terms.  These authors go on to explore the consequences of this fact for the Piraha people’s ability to reason numerically.  So, we have another experimental exploration of the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis.