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The concept of a "mass noun" is a grammatical concept and is not based on the innate nature of the object to which that noun refers. For example, "seven chairs" and "some furniture" could refer to exactly the same objects, with "seven chairs" referring to them as a collection of individual objects but with "some furniture" referring to them as a single undifferentiated unit.
In linguistics, a mass noun, uncountable noun, non-count noun, uncount noun, or just uncountable, is a noun with the syntactic property that any quantity of it is treated as an undifferentiated unit, rather than as something with discrete elements. Uncountable nouns are distinguished from count nouns.
Linguistic prescriptivists usually say that fewer and not less should be used with countable nouns, [2] and that less should be used only with uncountable nouns. This distinction was first tentatively suggested by the grammarian Robert Baker in 1770, [3] [1] and it was eventually presented as a rule by many grammarians since then.
When an ordinarily uncountable noun such as wine appears with plural form (several wines), it can be understood as referring to various abstract kinds (for example, varieties of wine). [4] The "universal packager" likewise describes how mass nouns are understood when they are used as countable nouns.
A noun phrase may have many modifiers, but only one determinative is possible. [1] In most cases, a singular, countable, common noun requires a determinative to form a noun phrase; plurals and uncountables do not. [1] The determinative is underlined in the following examples: the box; not very many boxes; even the very best workmanship
An endangered orca vanished from a dwindling whale pod off the Washington coast, a conservation group said. The missing Southern Resident killer whale, K-26, was not seen by researchers during an ...
A grammatical distinction is often made between count (countable) nouns such as clock and city, and non-count (uncountable) nouns such as milk and decor. [5] Some nouns can function both as countable and as uncountable such as "wine" in This is a good wine. Countable nouns generally have singular and plural forms. [4]
The Transportation Security Administration is expecting over 18 million people to take to the skies this week, making 2024 a contender for the busiest Thanksgiving travel period on record. That's ...