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The "universal packager" likewise describes how mass nouns are understood when they are used as countable nouns. In this case, the plural noun may be understood as naming individual servings or "packages" (e.g. two coffees may mean "two cups of coffee"), or as naming abstract kinds ( two coffees can also refer to e.g. Colombian coffee and ...
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.
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.
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.
The San Francisco 49ers suspended linebacker De’Vondre Campbell for the rest of the regular season after he refused to enter a game after losing his starting job. General manager John Lynch ...
A young Barron Trump hops around his dad's office, telling his father and mother, Melania, "I like my suitcase." He picks up said Louis Vuitton suitcase and walks over to his mom. He clarifies: "I ...
9 Reasons You Should Keep Your Cat Out of the Christmas Tree. Keeping your cat out of the Christmas tree isn’t just a battle of wills; it’s a safety concern too.
Classifiers play a similar role to measure words, except that measure words denote a particular quantity of something (a drop, a cupful, a pint, etc.), rather than the inherent countable units associated with a count noun. Classifiers are used with count nouns; measure words can be used with mass nouns (e.g. "two pints of mud"), and can also be ...