What role does language play in developing the concept of number? This question is at the center of an important current debate. To try to answer it, one must first consider what is needed to learn number words and their meaning. First, the learner has to be able to identify number words as such, that is, to distinguish them from other sorts of words. Second, the learner has to have number meanings available. Third, the learner has to be able to map the words on to their meanings. The question addressed in the paper by Syrett, Musolini, and Gelman is the first one: How does a child identify number words? In particular, can the child generalize from other words, especially nonnumerical quantifiers? Butterworth contends that the issue is whether a child can get from quantifiers to counting words without the help of pre-existing concepts of cardinality.