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…

It is of deep interest to both linguists and psychologists alike to account for how young children acquire an understanding of number words. In their commentaries, Barner and Butterworth both point out that an important question highlighted by the work of Syrett, Musolino, and Gelman, and one that remains highly controversial, is where number…