Brazil's Piraha grasp numbers without words: study challenges theories linking language, thought.(STORY ONE) From: Science News | Date: July 19, 2008| Author: Bower, Bruce | COPYRIGHT 2008 Science Service, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan.  All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group.Copyright information

One is the loneliest number that you'll ever do, especially if you don't even have a word for it. That's the situation of the Piraha people, denizens of Brazil's Amazon rainforest who have no term for the number one or for any other exact quantity, a new study finds.

Until now, researchers have not demonstrated the absence of a way to express the number one in any language, according to a team led by Massachusetts Institute of Technology cognitive scientist Edward Gibson...