Re: USAGE: Count and mass nouns

Staving Christophe Grandsire:
>En réponse à Peter Bleackley :
>
>Wavoragon, which is spoken by a semi-nomadic herdsman society, found it
>>necessary to distinguish between known and unknown quantities, and so
>>developed a multiple number for known quantities.
>
>Have they by any chance copied Maggel? :)) The indefinite and definite
>plurals of Maggel are just about that: unknown vs. known quantities :) .
>
>Christophe Grandsire.
You may recall that we discussed this topic when I first joined the list,
under the title "Introduction and a question about consonants". Their use
does not depend exactly on whether the speaker knows the quantity in
question, but on whether he believes it to be known. If I'm talking about
your horses, I use the multiple because you know how many horses you have,
even if I don't. Unless, that is, I want to imply that you're either a very
bad herdsman who doesn't keep a proper count of his horses, or a very good
herdsman whose herds are so vast as to be uncountable. In those cases, I'd
use the plural.

Pete