Number Systems, Eolution of 8. Formalism and the Decline of Number Heath S T L (ed.) 1956 The Thirteen Books of Euclid’s Elements. Dover, New York The formalistic approach, which in the nineteenth Høyrup J 1994 In Measure, Number, and Weight: Studies in century led to the flourishing number systems and Mathematics and Culture. State University of New York ascribed to them a key role in the foundation of Press, Albany, NY Levy-Bruhl L 1923 Primitie Mentality. Macmillan, New York mathematics, reduced their importance in the course 3 of the structuralist rebuilding of mathematics in the Li Y, Du' S 1987 Chinese Mathematics: A Concise History. Clarendon, Oxford twentieth century. In fact, the recombination of structures and operations of mathematical objects in Locke L L 1923 The Ancient Quipu or Peru ian Knot Record. The American Museum of Natural History, New York order to create new ones with new properties made it Marshack A 1972 The Roots of Ciilization: The Cognitie more and more difficult to distinguish number systems Beginnings of Man’s First Art, Symbol and Notation. Weiden- from other systems of mathematical objects. The feld and Nicolson, London designation of an object as a number was increasingly Neugebauer O 1934 Vorgriechische Mathematik. Springer, seen as merely an historical convention. Number Berlin systems were downgraded to instances of structures Nissen H J, Damerow P, Englund R K 1993 Archaic Book- abstracted from them, in particular, of algebraic keeping: Early Writing and Techniques of Economic Admini- structures resembling addition and multiplication and stration in the Ancient Near East. Chicago University Press, topological structures determining distance and con- Chicago, IL tinuity. Not numbers, but ‘sets’ equipped with such Saxe G B 1982 Culture and the development of numerical structures, which were designated artificially as cognition: Studies among the Oksapmin of Papua New Guinea. In: Brainerd C J (ed.) The Deelopment of Logical and ‘groups,’ ‘fields,’ ‘rings,’ ‘lattices,’ ‘compact spaces,’ Mathematical Cognition. Springer, New York etc., became the building blocks of modern math- Schmandt-Besserat D 1992 Before Writing. University of Texas ematics. Press, Austin, TX Thompson J E S 1960 Maya Hieroglyphic Writing. University of See also: Brain, Evolution of; Civilization, Concept Oklahoma Press, Norman, OK and History of; Cultural Evolution: Overview; Culture Wertheimer M 1925 Uq ber das Denken der NaturoW lker: Zahlen in Development; Evolution of Cognition: An Adapta- und Zahlgebilde. In: Wertheimer, M (ed.) Drei Abhandlungen tionist Perspective; Human Cognition, Evolution of; zur Gestalttheorie. Palm and Enke, Erlangen, Germany Indigenous Knowledge: Science and Technology P. Damerow Studies; Knowledge, Anthropology of; Mathematical and Logical Abilities, Neural Basis of; Mathematical Education Bibliography Numeral Systems Ascher M, Ascher R 1971–1972 Numbers and relations from ancient Andean Quipus. Archie for History of Exact Sciences A numeral system is a part of a natural language, 8: 288–320 primarily devoted to the expression of positive whole Blake B J 1981 Australian Aboriginal Languages. Angus and numbers. A number is a mathematical abstraction; a Robertson, London numeral is a word or phrase expressing a number. The Chace A B 1927 The Rhind Mathematical Papyrus. Mathemat- international scientific (‘Arabic’) notation provides a ical Association of America, Oberlin, OH universally known, unambiguous means of represent- Closs M P (ed.) 1986 Nati e American Mathematics. University ing numbers, which gives the study of numeral systems of Texas Press, Austin, TX Damerow P 1995 Abstraction and Representation: Essays on the a clear advantage over other areas of language, in Cultural Eolution of Thinking. Kluwer Academic Publishers, which the representation of meaning is problematic. Dordrecht, The Netherlands The basic semantic operations relevant to the in- Damerow P 1998 Prehistory and cognitive development. In: terpretation of complex numerals (such as fie thou- Langer J, Killen M (eds.) Piaget, Eolution, and Deelopment. sand six hundred and seenty eight) are addition and Erlbaum, Mahwah, NJ multiplication. Widespread understanding of these Damerow P, Englund R K 1987 Die Zahlzeichensysteme der operations also gives the study of numeral systems an Archaischen Texte aus Uruk. In: Green M W, Nissen H J especially clear compositional semantics. (eds.) Zeichenliste der Archaischen Texte aus Uruk. Gebr. The spoken and written-out forms of numerals Mann, Berlin differ in various ways from the Arabic notation. There Dixon R M W 1980 The Languages of Australia. Cambridge may be a difference in base number; thus French University Press, Cambridge, UK Hankel H 1867 Theorie der complexen Zahlensysteme insbeson- expresses 80 as quatre- ingts, literally 4 20s. There may dere der gemeinen imaginaW ren Zahlen und der Hamilton’schen also be a difference in the order of constituent Quaternionen nebst ihrer geometrischen Darstellung. Voss, elements; thus German expresses 64 as ierundsechzig, Leipzig literally 4j60. The scientific notation is compact, 10756 Numeral Systems having no explicit representation of addition and 1. Numerals and Grammatical Number multiplication, and relying on the place-value con- Grammarians use the term ‘(grammatical) number’ vention to indicate powers of the base 10. But natural \ language numeral systems are not as compact, having for the singular plural distinction marked on nouns in explicit representations of the addition operation (e.g., most languages, and supplemented in some languages and in two hundred and sixty), and explicitly naming by categories such as dual, and even trial. Gram- the powers of the base number (e.g., in English with matical number tends to be indicated in the mor- the suffix -ty and words such as hundred and million). phology of nouns (e.g., by an affix), whereas numerals As such vernacular forms precede the scientific no- are distinct words or phrases. Grammatical number tation (both in the history of a language and in the has a loose relationship with numeral expressions in a order of acquisition by individuals), it is the spoken language. One might expect that in any language the and written-out forms of numerals, and their mapping numeral expressing 1 would accompany a singular onto numbers, that concern us here. noun, the numeral expressing 2 would accompany a Some languages have no numerals: plural noun (or a dual noun if the language has duals), and any other numeral would be accompanied by a The one obvious gap in Australian vocabularies is the lack of plural noun. But such a neat pattern is not universal. any system of numbers. It is usually said that there are only In Hungarian, for example, a noun following any numbers ‘one,’ ‘two,’ ‘several’ and ‘many’; some languages numeral, for whatever number, is grammatically appear also to have ‘three,’ although this is frequently a singular; the plural form of a noun is used only in the compound form. Kenneth Hale has suggested that these absence of any preceding numeral expression. In forms are not numerals in the strict sense, but are rather (Egyptian) Arabic, the situation is more complex, with indefinite determiners, like English a and some (Dixon 1980, a singular noun accompanying the form for 1, a dual pp. 107–8). noun going with the form for 2, a plural noun with In languages with a numeral system, forms for forms for the numbers 3–10, and a singular noun with expressing positive whole numbers are in frequent use forms for 11 upwards. Examples are given below. in everyday life, whereas forms for expressing more ENGLISH HUNGARIAN ARABIC technical concepts, such as negative numbers and ‘minute’ perc daqiiqa fractions, either do not exist or are restricted to ‘minutes’ percek daqaayiq technical discourse. Subsidiary systems, such as ‘one minute’ egy perc daqiiqa waqda systems for naming dates, clock times, amounts of ‘two minutes’ keT t perc (itneen) daqiiqteen money, weights and measures, or telephone numbers, ‘three minutes’ haT rom perc talat daqaayiq are derivative of the basic numeral system of a ‘ten minutes’ tiz perc -ashar daqaayiq language, and are of less interest to the linguist, often ‘eleven minutes’ tizenegy perc qidaashar daqiiqa being of recent invention, in some sense artificial, and following idiosyncratic rules characteristic only of themselves. 2. Simple Lexical Numerals Numeral systems, though well integrated into their host languages, are nevertheless somewhat atypical of Cardinal numeral words are shaped and distributed language subsystems as a whole. Numerals are the like adjectives or nouns. Across languages, the lower- only expressions for which a conventional sequence valued numeral words (typically up to about the range exists. Thus there is an agreed answer to the question, 2–4) tend to behave clearly like adjectives, and the ‘What comes after sixteen?’ But there is no such higher-valued numeral words (especially those used as agreed sequence, in any language, for, say, the adjec- multiplicative bases, such as hundred and million) tives and adjectival phrases of the language. Obviously behave like nouns. Indeed, there is an example in the this sequencing is due to the especially clear semantic table above, in which the Arabic numeral for 1, domain of numerals, the sequence of natural numbers. waaqid, follows its noun, as adjectives do in Arabic, Numeral systems, beyond the most rudimentary, are while the other numeral words (for 2, 3, 10, 11, 20) also atypical in that they are usually explicitly taught. precede their noun, unlike adjectives. (See Corbett Children are drilled in reciting a conventional sequence (1978a, 1978b) for details.) of numerals, whereas almost every other part of the In several other respects, the lower-valued numerals, core grammar of a language is acquired without up to about 2–4, behave differently from other numeral explicit teaching or drilling. This might be grounds for words. In some languages, there are different gender arguing that numerals themselves are to some extent forms for just the first few numerals. Thus in Welsh artificial and not part of the core grammar of any there are masculine\feminine pairs dau\dwy (l 2), natural language.