Warlpiri number words are limited to one, two and many, the researchers said. Anindilyakwa has words for one, two, three which sometimes includes four and more than three.
I could have sworn I read that tribes who count "one, two, three, many" were just an urban legend!
By the way, the study doesn't show that "numbers aren't needed to count". It's not numbers they're talking about, but words naming numbers. That makes the finding a lot less sensational; it's not unusual for humans to work with concepts we don't have specific names for. Still, an interesting experiment.
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 11.6 ms ] threadI could have sworn I read that tribes who count "one, two, three, many" were just an urban legend!
By the way, the study doesn't show that "numbers aren't needed to count". It's not numbers they're talking about, but words naming numbers. That makes the finding a lot less sensational; it's not unusual for humans to work with concepts we don't have specific names for. Still, an interesting experiment.