From: Randall Harris <randall.j.harris@verzon.net>
To: Teacher2Teacher Service
Date: Dec 27, 2005 at 12:47:07
Subject: Math as language

I recently finished a series of the history of language and was introduced to
the work of Noam Chomsky, MIT, on the development of language.

He postulated that since children seem to learn their native languages at
roughly the same rate there must be some deep structure for language 'hard
wired' into the brain. He went on to say that what children acquire are the
transformational rules that allow them to communicate.  Since his first
publication on this subject many others have followed on and it is now a
basic component of linguistic studies.

I am wondering if there has been work at the same level on how we acquire
numerical understanding and what implications it would have on how we teach math?

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