Re: USAGE: Count and mass nouns

Philippe Caquant wrote:
> If X is "sand", I would rather think it's mass, but it doesn't mean
> that I don't want to say "a grain of sand" sometimes. The same with
> corn, grass...
Yet, what about "peas"?  In English (the standard, at least), corn is
mass, so that you have to refer to "kernels of corn", but "peas" are
count, so that you can refer to "peas", you don't have to say *kernels
of peas or some other usage.  Yet, at one time, "pease" was mass.  And
in modern times, the word "data" has become, in many people's speach, a
mass noun, while historically it was a plural count noun.

Any solid *can* be count.  Liquids are more naturally mass.  But, even
liquids can be made count if you define the term as "drop of" or a
convenient amount, either vague or a specifically defined amount.  I
don't know if any language does that, tho.  The few that I know anything
about mass/count do still use liquids like "water" as mass.  They just
don't necessarily make a grammatical distinction, such that, e.g., in
Spanish, "mucho(s)" can be translated as "much" or "many"

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