Talk:Mass noun

Mass nouns in languages other than English

This page would benefit by having information on the presence or absence of mass nouns in other languages, how they operate, and how they can be ditinguished. — Hippietrail 12:29, 19 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Mass vs collective

It might be worth adding a note to redirect people who are looking for collective noun. On Wiktionary I'm finding people constantly using the term "collective noun" when they are really talking about the idea of "uncountable noun" / "mass noun" / "non-count noun" — Hippietrail 12:36, 30 Jul 2004 (UTC)

[Note: a discussion of mass-vs-collective has since been added at Collective noun.] Lumbercutter 18:57, 10 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

how bout addressing american vs. british english?

I'm no grammarian but some of this seems like just a UK issue. I don't know who makes the call when something passes from common use into the realm of acceptable grammer but in America if someone made a to-do over "10 items or fewer" they'd get laughed outt the supermarket. On this side of the ocean, "10 items or less" is correct as far as I know/can tell. Anyone know what I'm getting at? That at which I'm getting/attempting to get?

But seriously, On issues of grammar where UK and American English may differ (not to mention other varieties of English) what is what is wikipedia's position? I suppose there should be a way to address both, huh? If anyone could weigh in on this, hit up my talk page, that'd be awesome. thanks, Kzzl:talk 17:29, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Addressing Idioms

I believe the article should address the fact that in different areas, different nouns are considered mass. This might be obvious, but it is not addressed (to my knowledge) in the article. For instance, in Idaho, USA, "potato" is a mass noun, whereas nearly everywhere else, you would not say "I grow potato on my farm." You would say "I grow potatoes on my farm." I'll add it in myself if no one objects. GofG _|^|_| Contribs 14:49, 9 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

well, I did my thing

I put in my two cents. I hope interested parties find it acceptable. If not, let me know. Kzzl 17:38, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Data

The word "data" is often used as a mass noun, especially by people who work with computers, but this usage is still controversial.

I don't think this usage is (so) controversial anymore. [[User:Poccil|Peter O. (Talk)]] 06:07, Oct 4, 2004 (UTC)

substances vs. expressions

I reverted the change made by Boredzo, reinserting the passange "It is often errouneously thought that.." (in fact the word "erroneously" was not part of the original edit) Removing it substantially changed the meaning of the paragraph, and made it inconsistent. The point is that mass nouns *cannot* be defined in terms of what they refer to, but must rather be defined with reference to their grammatical properties, such as co-occurrence restrictions. I also made some other additions to the same paragraph to make this point clearer. --Neither 11:45, 7 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

pluralized mass nouns

Not sure I see that the paragraph added by Corvun isn't covered by the one immediately following his. I also don't think it's accurate to say that the form "waters" intensifies the meaning of "water" or that "sands" intensifies "sand". In any case, he should give sources for that, and clarify what he means by such intensification. I vote for a revert.

--Neither 10:38, 15 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

"Laundry"

I've never heard "laundry" used to mean "laundromat" before; is it at all possible we could replace this with some other, more common example? The current one is supported by dictionary.com, but a more universal example would be better. What about "fire" vs. "a fire"? -Silence 21:18, 15 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

In the UK we would use "laundrette" rather than "laundromat", which I think is US-only usage (if I'm right in my understanding that a laundromat is a self-service establishment). A "laundry" would not normally be the same thing as a laundrette/laundromat, but would provide a full (wet) cleaning and pressing service, e.g. as might be found in a good hotel. Incidentally what do you call a dry-cleaners over there? (Think I may be getting off-topic a little here...) kingoftheshow 14:18, 24 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

In the US a laundromat has self serve machines. A dry cleaner is also called a dry cleaners or the cleaners but never the cleaner. I have no idea why. Some laundromats have a laundry service where a person will wash clothes by the pound. Some collect dry cleaning for a dry cleaner to pick up and return. Some are attached to a dry cleaner.

"10 items or less"

In the UK, Marks and Spencer, which considers itself to be a higher class of supermarket, has prided itself on its use of "10 items or fewer" aisles, and I think the practice has been spreading to other chains.

I was thinking about the grammar of "10 items or less" and I feel there may be an interpretation where it could be considered to be correct. Compare "Less [items] than 10 items" (which is technically incorrect) with "Less [stuff] than 10 items" (which reads correctly); if we accept that "less" is in comparison to an unspoken amount of stuff equivalent to 10 items, then it feels correct. Now consider "10 items or less [than 10 items]". If we take this to mean "10 items or less [stuff than 10 items]" it reads OK, but if we take it to mean "10 items or less [items than 10 items]" it doesn't - we would then need to use "fewer" instead.

Does this make any sense to anyone? It strikes me that "less" in this context is referring to something implied, and we can make a choice over whether that something is a count noun ("items") or an equivalent mass noun ("stuff"). Anyone out there want to put me right? kingoftheshow 14:37, 24 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

This is similar to my thinking on this subject. (For the purposes of this argument, I will assume that the semantics of less and fewer are mutually exclusive, which is increasingly untrue).

If one assumes that the less in 10 items or less is a (comparitive) adjective, as you say, one could either say less or fewer because less isn't actually referring to anything (except possibly but not necessarily, by implication of the fact you are in a shop, shopping). Again, assuming it is an adjective, I would say less is more correct, because, in English, there is a presumption of uncountability (if one doesn't know whether what you are referring to is a count noun or not).

However, I don't actually think less is an adjective in 10 items or less. I believe it is a mass noun (which is supported by any sort of test you do on that sentence), as is used, for instance, in Ann had less than Bob, which makes this whole discussion moot. (Only less not fewer can be used as a noun and it is a noun in it's own right so it certainly cannot be an attribute of items.)

Joe Llywelyn Griffith Blakesley _talk _contrib 13:49, 1 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Shark/sharks

Does the use of the different forms depend on whether the speaker eats shark? Surely the criteria if it is intended to be eaten. Anybody have any ideas? Garethhamilton 19:48, 9 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

If you refer to a "couple of dead sharks" as "shark," you're referring to the matter they're made of. And only indirectly to the "couple of dead sharks." What if a whale explodes on a beach? Then the beach is covered in whale. Although I don't think anyone would have the intent to eat it.83.118.38.37 04:11, 2 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Proper/Common

Are mass nouns both mass and proper/common?(83.118.38.37 13:57, 25 June 2006 (UTC))[reply]

Food in general, beyond just fish

In general, partitive nouns for things that can be eaten are count nouns when they're not intended to be eaten, and mass nouns when they are. For example, if you cut up a few apples and put them in a bowl, they are "pieces of apples" if you're painting a still life, but "pieces of apple" if you intend to eat them. The fish example actually applies to lots of foods that aren't fish. suncrush Aug 16. 2006.

Suncrush is absolutely right about this, and the article needs to be revised to incorporate the fact that this principle applies to many other nouns. The "Fish" section will need to be changed so that it doesn't imply that this principle applies only to fish. The "specialness" about the word fish isn't that principle, but rather just that it has so darn many senses (noun-count-sg, noun-count-pl, noun-mass, noun-attributive/adj, verb-trans, verb-intrans) anchored on one little inflected form.

I haven't yet had time to fully rethink these issues and revise accordingly, but it will need to be done sometime. Lumbercutter 02:46, 12 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Fish and Fishes

Deleted the references to 'fishes' as a plural of a mass noun. The statement "the fishmonger had three fishes" sounds like a use of the achaic (or not so archaic depending on your point of view) plural of the count noun. The modern idiom would be something like "the fishmonger had three types of fish". 'Fishes' in the modern sense usually means 'species of fish' but that is probably beyond the scope of the article.

ae7flux

Isn't the word "fishes" an archaic form found in the bible? [unsigned]

I'm pretty sure the Bible wasn't written in English. -Silence 00:40, 27 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Well, the questioner is referring to the canonical English translations such as KJV etc. Yes, the form "fishes" probably does appear therein. The relevant question is how it functioned syntactically both (a) back when that translation was written and (b) today. Lumbercutter 02:36, 12 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Sand

I don't think the phrase "There is a sand in the hourglass" is correct - I would use the phrase "a grain of sand". However, I have heard the phrase "the desert sands" used. I think a different example should be given in that part of the article. Aaronak 21:01, 20 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. I think the whole business of exemplifying things is going a bit too far in this page anyway. i suggest that we tidy it up. Neither 05:05, 21 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think the phrase 'desert sands' is not referring to the individual grains of sand, and therefore isn't relevant. It would be saying something like 'there are many meats on the table.' It doesn't mean you can say 'I want a meat.' The two uses are different.

Cattle

Cattle is certainly not a collective noun; collective nouns are words like pride (of lions), herd (of cattle), flock (of sheep), and so on. Cattle is a mass noun, and is in every respect like other English mass nouns, except for the peculiarity of plural agreement ("cattle are", not *"cattle is"), whereas most English mass nouns have singular agreement ("water is", not *"water are"; but compare e.g. "suds are", not *"suds is"). Singular agreement is hardly a defining quality of mass nouns, however, especially when examined cross-linguistically (les mathematiques in French, las sopas in Spanish, מים in Hebrew, and so on). —Ruakh_TALK 20:05, 7 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You're right about "cattle" not being a collective noun. I realized that later. Sorry, that mistake only muddied the water. What I was struggling with mentally is that it does not "feel" mentally like any other English mass noun. "Cattle" seems to have both a plural count sense (which, not ending in -s, is irregular in its inflection) and a mass sense (which is not inflected differently from the plural count sense, but functions syntactically as a mass noun, although differently from other English mass nouns, as you point out, in that it takes a plural verb). And which sense any one speaker is "feeling" in their head can't always be discerned. I believe that to adequately classify "cattle", we would need to lay bare the underlying mental mechanism that grows mass-noun senses from count-noun roots—a mechanism of "etic discreteness emically-recognized-but-ignored because valued as irrelevant". Anyway, I have decided to butt out of the explication of "cattle" for now because I think that without the aforementioned investigation (which would be either original research or existing research that I'm too ignorant of to broach), not enough can be said about it. Thanks for sparking further thought. Lumbercutter 03:24, 8 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

AFAIK the only syntactic difference between mass nouns and plural count nouns is that the former cause singular verb agreement and the latter cause plural verb agreement. "Cattle" would seem to be simply an obligatory plural. — Gwalla | Talk 05:27, 10 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm. I thought mass noun had to do with countability (cattle can't be counted, as e.g. *"three cattle", at least for me), which is also what the OED says ("Grammar, a noun denoting something, such as a substance or a quality, which cannot be counted; esp. (in the English language) a noun which lacks a plural in ordinary usage and is not used with the indefinite article (opposed to count noun)"); but a recent Language Log post (http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003879.html) suggests otherwise; in which case this article needs to be heavily rewritten. —Ruakh_TALK 18:16, 10 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

D'oh! You're totally right about that. — Gwalla | Talk 06:21, 12 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Expert needed

1. The discussion here is all over the place. I would submit that two or three people with some expertise in this field be designated to (re-)organise the topic.

2. Furthermore, those who suggest merging 'mass noun' with 'count noun' are essentially correct. (And by the way, inter-language comparisons are interesting but typically lack much depth).

3. (a) The topic needs to be structured at least in terms of syntactic and semantic contrasts; and (b) merits attention chiefly from qualified linguists and semantically oriented philosophers.

4. I could suggest some potential candidates in both fields, but this may be the first step before proceeding any further - to agree on a few expert contributors.

Henry Laycock

Henry laycock 15:54, 18 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Dear Henry Laycock, I completely agree with you that this page needs tidying up, and that it needs a clearer separation of syntactic and semantic issues. In fact, at various points, I've been trying to provide exactly this, but I think whatever fruits there may have been of my efforts are lost by now, and I think that's partly due to my failure to provide refereces etc. In my experience, providing accurate information with proper refereces etc. works well in wikipedia, but for some reason, this page seems to be harder to maintain. I suggest that if you have any additions to make, provide references for every point, because that has proven to me to work as a buffer against later removal in other cases. Neither 00:39, 28 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Addtitional example of English mass nouns

Since the list of examples could be an aid to non-native English speakers and writers, I would like to suggest adding more examples. The first would be "education". Europeans often make the mistake of writing or saying "educations" when they mean "training sessions" or "courses". Thanks, BrianSheedy 13:57, 3 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Less vs. fewer

Examples of "less" used with count nouns can be found pretty much as far back as written English goes; including in Shakespeare, Eliot, and Dickens. The article makes it seem as if this is a very recent development in American English that is used by only a few ignorant people.