ArticlePhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences2025
Making up numbers in Pano languages: idiosyncratic and unconventional base-free quantification inventories in Amazonia.
Article in Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers.
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7 citing papers in PubMed.
- Decimal systems around the world.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Article
- A glossary for the cross-disciplinary study of numerals.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Article
- A phylogenetic analysis of numeral anchor choice in New Guinea and lowland South America.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Article
- A solid base for scaling up: the structure of numeration systems.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Making up numbers in Pano languages: idiosyncratic and unconventional base-free quantification inventories in Amazonia.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Article
- On the grammar of restricted-range numeral systems.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Identifying potential palaeolithic artificial memory systems via Spatial statistics: Implications for the origin of quantification.Archaeological and anthropological sciences · 2025Article
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4 authors.
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Abstract
Amazonian languages typically exhibit very small numeral systems or lack numerals altogether. Increasing economic and cultural pressures, however, often motivate the emergence of more complex inventories for exact quantification. Headwaters Pano languages from Amazonia historically had two lexical items that can be rendered as the numerals 'one' and 'two'. We argue here, however, that they are not either etymologically or synchronically proper numerals (like the English ones are) and can be better glossed as 'single/one' (but also 'a few') and 'pair/two'. For larger quantities ('three' to 'ten'), speakers report idiosyncratic quantifying expressions based on different compositional strategies that recruit the lexical items for 'single/one', 'pair/two', but also 'hand' and, in some cases, other body-part expressions and motion verbs as well. We discuss these idiosyncratic quantifying expressions, showing that they do not present systematic and productive number bases; they exhibit unusual patterns of inter- and intra-speaker variability (i.e. they are poorly conventionalized); and they are rarely used in discourse. Based on these properties, we conclude that these quantifying expressions of Headwaters Pano languages are not numerals proper. We then explore the implications of these salient characteristics for the cross-cultural understanding of quantification and the emergence of numerical systems and the study of anumeric languages in Amazonia.This article is part of the theme issue 'A solid base for scaling up: the structure of numeration systems'.
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