Abstract:

Around the world, all peoples think and talk mathematically, and their languages are developed and adapted to the mathematical needs of their cultures. There is a great variety in this mathematical expression of different languages, depending on the needs of the individual culture and on the grammatical constraints and affordances of the language. In this presentation I share some examples of mathematical expression in several Indigenous Australian languages, particularly uses of spatial frames of reference, that is, describing where an object is located with respect to another. I describe work in progress to identify expression in diverse Australian languages for teaching and learning mathematics in the early years of school. Looking what is common in mathematical expression in different languages and what varies between them can help deepen our understanding of the relationship between mathematics and language more generally.