Rethinking the Role of Broca’s Area—Or Did We?

Feb 22, 2015 by

A recent article “Brain’s iconic seat of speech goes silent when we actually talk”, published in Science Daily online on February 18, 2015, reviews the research of a team of scientists from New York University, the Helen Wills...

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“The Best Language for Math”—Is there such a thing?

Oct 10, 2014 by

“The Best Language for Math”—Is there such a thing?

[Thanks to Stephane Goyette and Ekaterina Lyutikova for their help in working on this post!] American school students are not great at math, at least that’s the common wisdom. According to 2012 PISA results, U.S. students rank #36,...

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Kusunda, a language like no other?

May 25, 2012 by

Kusunda, a language like no other?

Kusunda is a dying isolate language. Gyani Maiya Sen, a 75-year-old woman from western Nepal, is its last known speaker. There are some 100-160 people in the Kusunda tribe, and some of them know a few words of the language, but...

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The Pirahã Controversy: Numbers (part 3)

Apr 8, 2012 by

The Pirahã Controversy: Numbers (part 3)

In the previous post, I discussed a study conducted by Dr Peter Gordon that appears to show that the Pirahã not only lack number words (as has been argued previously by Dan Everett), but also lack the necessary cognitive mechanisms...

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The Pirahã Controversy: Numbers (part 2)

Apr 5, 2012 by

The Pirahã Controversy: Numbers (part 2)

In the previous post, I’ve described one experiment designed to shed some light on the number words in Pirahã and their use. But many more experimental studies add food for thought and fuel to the debate. One such study was...

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The Pirahã Controversy: Numbers

Apr 5, 2012 by

The Pirahã Controversy: Numbers

In addition to recursion, the Pirahã are claimed to lack numbers. Is this true? According to Dan Everett, the Pirahã lack not only numbers of any kind, but they do not have even a concept of counting and of any terms for...

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