Re: USAGE: Count and mass nouns

PHILIPPE CAQUANT scripsit:

> The question is: do I instinctly conceive  some noun, let's call it X,
> as mass or as count noun ? (opposition continuous / discrete).
The difficulty with the appeal to instinct is that it's really an appeal
to the rules of your first language and whatever others you know.  I
have read native sinophones on sci.lang saying that if they heard
"one apple" literally translated to Chinese it would be simply bewildering:
does it mean "one single apple", "one box of apples", or what?  Remember
that Chinese does not normally distinguish between singular and plural,
which agrees with the theory that all nouns are mass nouns (mass nouns
typically have no plural).

Furthermore, mass vs. count is not even necessarily stable over time.
Originally, English used mass nouns for all its basic grains:  "wheat",
"corn", "rice", "pease".  But the [z] in "pease" was reinterpreted as
a plural, and so "peas" became a count noun, with an absolutely unhistorical
singular form "pea".

> It seems difficult to conceive such thing as "one water", because
> water is rather continuous. Of course it could mean "a drop of water",
> but we come to this interpretation only after thinking, meaning that
> it's not natural. The other interpretation would be "one sort of water
> (among several), for ex. mineral water brands.
A plausible and common interpretation in English is "a glass of water", as
in "We need four waters over here", said to a waiter.

ObConlang:  In Lojban, every noun can be either a count noun or a mass
noun, depending on the article:  _lo gerku_ 'a dog, dogs (severally),
one or more dogs'; _loi gerku_ 'dogs (jointly), a mass of dog'.

--
"Well, I'm back."  --Sam        John Cowan <jcowan@...>

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