Some Principles Involved in the Acquisition of Number Words.

Number acquisition is a field of research with a wealth of studies mainly by psychologists. In this article, I try to add some linguistic insights. To acquire all number words with their meanings as a basis for further mathematical thinking-at least other numerals than those for small numerosities like [two] or [three] (and maybe [four])-a child has to learn a number sequence as a list of speech forms meaningless at first. It is claimed that general principles of rhythm and coordination explain the child's ability to learn by rote a sequence of such speech forms and their word class. I show that these principles also apply in the acquisition of sequences of the names of the days of the week and the names of the months. As far as the development of the counting abilities for numbers up to [a hundred] is concerned, I argue that the particular rhythmical structure of the sequence provides the child with the raw material to develop a concept "decade word." The child will have to learn by rote a second sequence, that is, the sequence of the decade numbers [10, 20, 30, etc.]. This is an important step in the detection of the algorithm that ultimately makes the generation of all natural numbers possible. I argue that the theory of reduction from Lerdahl and Jackendoff's (1996) generative theory of music may explain this step. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]