ArticlePhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences2021
The history of number words in the world's languages-what have we learnt so far?
Article in Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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4 citing papers in PubMed.
- Numerical cognition in speakers of an Amazonian language with exactly twenty number words.Psychological research · 2026Article
- Information Theory Opens New Dimensions in Experimental Studies of Animal Behaviour and Communication.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2023Review
- Indo-European loanwords and exchange in Bronze Age Central and East Asia: Six new perspectives on prehistoric exchange in the Eastern Steppe Zone.Evolutionary human sciences · 2022Article
- Reconstructing prehistoric languages.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2021Article
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Abstract
For over 100 years, researchers from various disciplines have been enthralled and occupied by the study of number words. This article discusses implications for the study of deep history and human evolution that arise from this body of work. Phylogenetic modelling shows that low-limit number words are preserved across thousands of years, a pattern consistently observed in several language families. Cross-linguistic frequencies of use and experimental studies also point to widespread homogeneity in the use of number words. Yet linguistic typology and field documentation reports caution against positing a privileged linguistic category for number words, showing a wealth of variation in how number words are encoded across the world. In contrast with low-limit numbers, the higher numbers are characterized by a rapid and morphologically consistent pattern of expansion, and behave like grammatical phrasal units, following language-internal rules. Taken together, the evidence suggests that numbers are at the cross-roads of language history. For languages that do have productive and consistent number systems, numerals
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