Re: Counters

E fésto Nik Taylor <yonjuuni@...>:
> Paul Bennett wrote:
>> Possibly not. "One paper" is largely unambiguous, but what about "one
>> sand", or worse "one water"?
>
> Well, "one sand" woudl just mean "one grain of sand", presumably.  I
> would imagine that words like "water" it would be impossible to avoid
> using some kind of counter, *unless* there was a default unit of
> measurement, like, say, _kate_ meant "137 mL of water" (that is, some
> arbitrary, but probably culturally-relevant, amount, say, the amount
> held by a certain common container), and so you'd have to use some
> modifier meaning "indefinite amount" or "some" to express simply
> "water", like, say, "I need some _kate_"
Well, when you do away with counters, you probably end up with more count
nouns.
You could have a count noun for _sand_ that means "grain of sand", but you
could also have a word for "body of sand" (e.g. water : pool :: sand :
______) and so on.  Again, for amounts, you would have something similar.

Also, the _kate_ mayn't necessarily refer to an exact amount.  Frex if you
go into an English-speaking restaurant and ask for "a water" you simply
get a convenient amount of water (convenient for them, anyway) and there's
no reason a language of count nouns couldnt have a lexeme that acted
similarly.


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