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Yupno Number System and Counting

Universität Basel

Pierre R. Dasen

Université de Genève

The starting point of this study is the apparent contradiction between the existence in Yupno (Papua New Guinea) culture of an elaborate number system and the lack of importance attributed to counting in everyday life. The study is designed to answer two questions: To what extent is the model described by the socially most prestigious expert shared by other Yupno men? How can the system be used to solve new, unfamiliar problems? Indeed, the variability found in the description and use of the number system is very important, to the extent where almost each subject uses it in a slightly different, idiosyncratic way. Without the help of a psychological perspective, this astounding variability may have gone unnoticed. However, to the anthropologist, it is too early to speak of a "requiem for the omniscient informent" because the ideal model "fits" with the rest of the culture-for example, the symbolic separation between the left and right parts of the body. Arithmetic computations can be performed by the older Yupno men using the traditional Yupno system and by children using school algorithms but not by those young men who are in between two cultures.

Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, Vol. 25, No. 1, 78-94 (1994)
DOI: 10.1177/0022022194251005


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