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RELATING GRAMMATICAL NUMBER TO PHYSICAL DISCRETENESS In English (and in many other languages), there is a tendency for nouns referring to liquids (''water'', ''juice''), powders (''sugar'', ''sand''), or substances (''metal'', ''wood'') to be mass nouns, and for nouns referring to objects or people to be Count Nouns . This is not a hard-and-fast rule, however; such mass nouns as ''furniture'' and ''cutlery'', which represent more easily quantified objects, show that the mass/count distinction should be thought of as a property of the terms themselves, rather than as a property of their referents. For example, the same set of chairs can be referred to as "seven chairs" and as "furniture"; though both ''chair'' and ''furniture'' are referring to the same thing, the former is a count noun and the latter a mass noun. For another illustration of the principle that the count/non-count distinction lies not in an object but rather in the expression that refers to it, consider the English words "fruit" and "vegetables". The objects that these words describe are, objectively speaking, similar (that is, they're all edible plant parts); yet the word "fruit" is (usually) non-count, whereas "vegetables" is a plural count form. One can see that the difference is in the language, not in the reality of the objects. Meanwhile, German has a general word for "vegetables" that, like English "fruit", is (usually) non-count: ''das Gemüse''. British English has a slang word for "vegetables" that acts the same way: "veg" with "edge" . The work of logicians like Godehard Link and Manfred Krifka established that the mass/count distinction can be given a precise, mathematical definition in terms of Quantization and Cumulativity . CUMULATIVITY AND MASS NOUNS An expression ''P'' has Cumulative Reference if and only ifKrifka, Manfred 1989. Nominal reference, temporal constitution and quantification in event semantics. In Renate Bartsch, Johan van Benthem and Peter van Emde Boas (eds.), Semantics and Contextual Expressions 75-115. Dordrecht: Foris. for any ''X'' and ''Y'':
Consider, for example ''cutlery'': If one collection of cutlery is combined with another, we still have "cutlery." Similarly, if water is added to water, we still have "water." But if a chair is added to another, we don't have "a chair," but rather two chairs. Thus the nouns "cutlery" and "water" have cumulative reference, while the expression "a chair" does not. (The expression "chairs", however, does.) The distinction between nouns that have cumulative reference and those that do not can be seen to correspond to the one between mass and count nouns. An expression ''P'' has Quantized Reference if and only if, for any X:
This can be seen to hold in the case of the noun ''house'': no proper part of my house, for example the bathroom, or the entrance door, is itself a house. Similarly, no proper part of ''a man'', say his index finger, or his knee, can be described as ''a man''. Hence, ''house'' and ''man'' have quantized reference. Collections of ''cutlery'' or ''cattle'', however, may well have proper parts that can be described as ''cutlery'' or ''cattle''. Hence ''cutlery'' and ''cattle'' do not have quantized reference. Some expressions are neither quantized nor cumulative. Examples of this include Collective Noun s like ''committee''. A committee may well contain a proper part which is itself a committee. Hence this expression isn't quantized. It isn't cumulative, either: the sum of two separate committees isn't necessarily a ''committee''. In terms of the mass/count distinction, ''committee'' behaves like a count noun. Such examples indicate that the best characterization of mass nouns is that they are ''cumulative nouns''. Count nouns should then be characterized as ''non-cumulative'' nouns: this characterization correctly groups ''committee'' together with the count nouns. If, instead, we had chosen to characterize count nouns as ''quantized nouns'', and mass nouns as ''non-quantized'' ones, then we would (incorrectly) be lead to expect ''committee'' to be a mass noun. MULTIPLE SENSES FOR ONE NOUN Many English Count Noun s can be used as mass nouns, and in these cases, they take on cumulative reference. For example, one may say that "there's apple in this sauce," and then ''apple'' has cumulative reference, and, hence, is used as a mass noun. Conversely, " Fire " is generally a mass noun, but "a fire" refers to a discrete entity, and does not satisfy the criterion for cumulative reference. One may say that mass nouns that are used as count nouns are "countified" and that count ones that are used as mass nouns are "massified." Some mass nouns can't easily be countified, and some count nouns are hard to massify. For example the count noun "house" is difficult to use as mass, and the mass noun "cutlery" is hard to countify:
In some languages, such as Chinese and Japanese , all nouns have been claimed to be effectively mass nouns and require a Measure Word to use.Chierchia, Genarro (1998). Reference to Kinds across Language. Natural language semantics vol:6 issue:4 pg:339 THE MUCH-OR-MANY AND LESS-OR-FEWER DISTINCTIONS Another difference between mass and count nouns is the distinction between the words ''much'' and ''many'', and between ''less'' and ''fewer'' in formal English. : "We have too much furniture." (mass) : "We have too many chairs." (count) : "We used to have less furniture." (mass) : "We used to have fewer chairs." (count) Many English speakers use ''less'' for both types; in recent years many in particular, "less" is used more commonly than "fewer" to describe count nouns, although this usage is considered by some to be incorrect. Additionally, in casual speech, a construction like "10 objects or less" isn't typically heard; "less than 10 objects" is far more common. Constructions such as "10 or less of the objects" are still pervasive, however. Regardless, even in American English, this usage is frowned upon in formal writing, and is typically considered an Idiosyncratic , rather than Dialect ical, variation. CONFOUNDING OF COLLECTIVE NOUN AND MASS NOUN There is often confusion about the two different concepts of ''ally'' nondiscrete); and (b) that seen with collective nouns, which is the result of the Metonymical Shift between the group and its (both grammatically and etically) discrete constituents. Some words, including "mathematics" and "physics", have developed true mass-noun senses despite having grown from count-noun roots. REFERENCES SEE ALSO EXTERNAL LINKS
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