Numerical cognition and the development of ‘zero’ in Mesoamerica

Abstract

Part I. Numeration and numerical cognition Cognition is a system consisting of representations of knowledge together with the processes that operate on those representations. What is fundamental to numerical cognition is the representation of knowledge about number and numeration, and the operations that are performed on them. This section explores features of numeral systems that relate to several different perspectives on these matters within cognitive and linguistic anthropology. It begins with a selection from Greenberg's (1987) findings on cross-linguistic regularities in the structure of numeral systems in spoken languages. Number words and phrases One way to explore how number is conceived is through its representation in language. For many linguistic anthropologists, it seems almost inevitable that the grammatical structure of words relating to regularly relevant semantic categories and domains will help to shape and/or be shaped by the ways they process information involving those categories and domains. Whether or not this is so in the case of number, the relevance of its linguistic representation follows from two empirical observations. (1) The vast majority of languages have numerals – ­conventional terms used widely in a speech community to represent specific numbers. (2) Worldwide, numeral systems – the linguistic organizations of terms representing numbers – show great similarity in their basic structure. The major work relevant to this chapter is by Greenberg (1987; see also Stampe 1977, Hurford 1987), who provides 54 generalizations capturing the structures of a wide variety of documented numeral systems.