The number sense and the language instinct: Relating syntax and arithmetic in human cognition

The idea that mathematical ability and language are related in human cognition is an old one. It is commonly assumed in the philosophical tradition, in psychology and in cognitive science, generally implying that knowledge of numbers is indebted to knowledge of language. In this contribution I suggest a more specific model of the relationship between knowledge of numbers and knowledge of language in the light of developments in the neuroscience of numerical understanding and in linguistic theory. The proposed model places the evolutionary development of the syntactic component of the Faculty of Language at the basis of the transition from the innate sense of number that we share with other animals to the sophisticated mathematical ability of our species.