Mass noun - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Sometimes one particular noun has both a mass sense and a count sense (for ... In terms of the mass/count distinction, committee behaves like a count noun. ...
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mass noun: Definition from Answers.com
mass noun n. A noun, such as sand, oil, or honesty, that denotes a substance or concept indivisible into countable units and is preceded in English
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Count noun - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Consequently, we tend to refer to air with the mass noun "air" ... For example "air" is normally a mass noun, but sailors can speak of "light airs" ...
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What is a mass noun?
A mass noun is a noun whose referents are not thought of as separate entities. ... Concept module: mass noun. In overview module: Glossary (Linguistics): M ...
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Mass noun - Facts, Information, and Encyclopedia Reference article
Start Surfing Encyclopedia, useful facts and reference information, also Cool ... For example, "laundry" as a mass noun is the stuff you put in the washing ...
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mass noun - Wiktionary
mass noun. Definition from Wiktionary, a free dictionary. Jump to: navigation, search ... Some mass nouns, such as whisky, can also be count nouns when they ...
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Mass noun
... a unit of measurement; thus mass nouns have singular but no plural forms. Count nouns, on the ... Gourt Home::Gourt :: Mass noun ...
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Nouns
Mass Nouns denote things which in their original state were ... For example, in the sentence He ate cake for dessert., the word cake is a mass noun. ...
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Nouns
... mass nouns ... of a kind of X or a salient quantity of X on the mass noun. ... Mass noun use. a lot of wine, wine from Burgundy, more wine than we can ...
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AskOxford: mass noun
mass noun. ? noun a noun denoting something which cannot be counted, in English usually a ... noun which has no plural form and is not used with a or an, e.g. ...
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{{ExamplesSidebar|10em|

• advice
• blood
• cattle
• equipment
• furniture
• grass
• information
• knowledge
• mathematics
• meat
• money
• music
• sand
• software
• traffic
• travel
• trash
• water

-->In linguistics, a mass noun (also uncountable noun or non-count noun) is a common noun that presents entities as an unbounded mass. Given that different languages have different grammatical resources, the actual test for which nouns are mass nouns may vary from language to language. In English, mass nouns are characterized by the fact that they cannot be directly modified by a numeral without specifying a unit of measurement, and that they cannot combine with an indefinite article (a(n)). Mass nouns combine with expressions like too much ("too much water"), while count nouns don't (*"too much chair(s)").

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 noun. 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 language 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 (linguistics) and cumulativity.

Cumulativity and mass nouns An expression P has cumulativity 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:

• If X can be described as P and Y can be described as P, as well, then the sum of X and Y can also be described as P.

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 quantization (linguistics) if and only if, for any X:

• If X can be described as P, then no proper part of X can be described as P.

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 nouns 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 nouns 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" refersto 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:

• Bad: *There's house on the road. (Bad even if the situation of war is considered)
• Bad: *There's a cutlery on the table. (Bad even if just one fork is on the table)

In some languages, such as Chinese (language) and Japanese language, 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 supermarkets have been criticised for signs above their checkouts reading "10 items or less" Express Lane: 10 Items or...Fewer?, Mother Tongue Annoyances Grumpy Old Man, as the standard grammatical form would be "10 items or fewer": "items" is a count noun, and a mass noun cannot be given a number in any case. In American English 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 idiosyncrasy, rather than dialectical, variation.

Confounding of collective noun and mass noun There is often confusion about the two different concepts of collective noun and mass noun. Generally, collective nouns are not mass nouns, but rather are a special subset of count nouns. However, the term "collective noun" is often used to mean "mass noun" (even in some dictionaries), because users confound two different kinds of verb number invariability: (a) that seen with mass nouns such as "water" or "furniture", with which only singular verb forms are used because the constituent matter is grammatically nondiscrete (although it may or may not be etically nondiscrete); and (b) that seen with collective nouns, which is the result of the English collective nouns#Metonymic merging of grammatical number 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

• Count noun
• Measure word

External links

• The Mavens Word of the Day: less/fewer
• Semantic Archives: Mass nouns, count nouns and non-count nouns
• F.J. Pelletier L.K. Schubert (2001) Mass Expressions in D. Gabbay & F. Guenthner (eds) Handbook of Philosophical Logic, Vol. 10

Mass noun - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
In linguistics, a mass noun (also uncountable noun or non-count noun) is a common noun that presents entities as an unbounded mass. Given that different languages have different ...

AskOxford: mass noun
mass noun • noun a noun denoting something which cannot be counted, in English usually a noun which has no plural form and is not used with a or an, e.g. luggage, happiness.

mass noun - Wiktionary
noun describing something that cannot be counted

mass-noun - Wiktionary
Definition from Wiktionary, a free dictionary

What is a mass noun?
A mass noun is a noun whose referents are not thought of as separate entities. ... Definition : A mass noun is a noun whose referents are not thought of as separate entities.

Mass Nouns - Glossary Definition - UsingEnglish.com
Mass Nouns - Definition of 'Mass Nouns' from our glossary of English linguistic and grammatical terms containing explanations and cross-references to other relevant English grammar ...

LILT:Countable, mass and collective noun
Some objects referred to by nouns are perceived as individual items (countable), others as substances (mass) and others as single groups (collective).

mass noun - Simple English Wiktionary
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mass noun definition - Dictionary - MSN Encarta
mass noun (plural mass nouns) noun : Definition: usually uncountable noun: a noun representing something that cannot be counted, e.g. "water," or something that can only be counted ...

mass noun - Definition at the #1 Online Dictionary
Definition of mass noun: ... noun. a noun denoting an abstraction or something that is uncountable, and not preceded by a or an: it is typically in a singular construction, but may ...