Mass noun

In English grammar, a mass noun (also uncountable noun or non-count noun) is a type of common noun that cannot be modified by a number without specifying a unit of measurement; thus mass nouns have singular but no plural forms. Count nouns have plural forms, and can be modified by numerals and quantifiers like "one", "two", "every", "most", etc.

Related Topics:
English grammar - Noun - Singular - Plural - ''Count'' noun - Numeral - Quantifiers

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It is often erroneously thought that mass nouns represent substances not easily quantified by a number, such as water. Mass nouns like "furniture" or "cutlery", which represent easily quantified substances, show that the mass/count distinction should be thought of as a grammatical property of the expressions themselves, rather than as a property of the substances they represent: consider the fact that the same set of chairs can be referred to both as "seven chairs" and as "furniture". Thus it is the expressions, not the entities or substances they refer to, which can be characterized as mass or count. Thus the definition in the first paragraph makes reference to what other expressions a mass noun can co-occur with, not what the mass nouns refer to.

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Sometimes, however, a physical or abstract entity has a part-whole structure which makes it difficult to refer to it with a count noun. Most things that can be referred to with a count noun can also be referred to with a mass noun, given the right context. Example:

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: "There is apple on the floor."

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After the work of logicians like Godehard Link and Manfred Krifka, we know that the mass/count distinction can be given a precise, mathematical definition in terms of quantization and cumulativity.

Related Topics:
Godehard Link - Manfred Krifka - Quantization - Cumulativity

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Some illustrative examples of English mass nouns:

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• water
• sand
• furniture
• spaghetti
• meat
• knowledge
• software

Some nouns can have both mass noun and count noun meanings. For example, "laundry" as a mass noun is the stuff you put in the washing machine, i.e. dirty clothes. A "laundry" as a count noun is an establishment which washes clothes, also known as a laundromat or laundrette. The difference in meaning can be interpreted from whether the item is counted:

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: "There is laundry on my street." (must be a mass noun)

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: "There is a laundry on my street." (must be a count noun)

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This difference is subtle when phrased in the negative:

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: "There is no laundry on campus." (could be either)

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: "There are no laundries on campus." (must be a count noun)

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: "There isn't a laundry on campus." (must be a count noun)

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In everyday speech, these can be easily differentiated by context. In very few concievable contexts would someone say "there is no laundry on campus" unless referring to a laundry.

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Another marker of difference between mass and count nouns is "less" and "fewer":

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: We have less furniture.

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: We have fewer chairs.

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Many English speakers use "less" for both types; in recent years many supermarkets have been criticised for their signs above checkouts reading "10 items or less". The proper form is "10 items or fewer": "items" is a count noun, and a mass noun cannot be given a number anyway. In American English, "less" is used more commonly than "fewer" to describe count nouns, although this usage is considered incorrect by prescriptivist grammarians. (This is actually a bit more complicated: In casual speech, a construction like "10 objects or less" isn't typically heard; "less than 10 objects" is far more common. Constructions such as "10 or less of the objects" are still pervasive, however. Regardless, even in American English, this usage is frowned upon, and is considered matter of idiosyncratic, rather than dialectical, variation.)

Related Topics:
Supermarket - American English - Idiosyncratic - Dialectical

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A mass noun can be preceded by a measure word, as in "ten pieces of furniture" or "a gallon of water".

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Note that the lack of a distinct plural form is not a sufficient criterion by itself to say that a noun is a mass noun. For example, the singular and plural forms of the word "deer" are identical, but it is grammatically acceptable to say "three deer", "a deer", or "several deer". Therefore, "deer" is a count noun. Compare with "rice": not only is there no plural "rices", but "three rice", "a rice", and "several rice" all appear wrong to native English speakers. The noun "fish" further confuses the issue, as the plural of the animal "fish" can be "fishes" or "fish", while "fish" as a meat is a mass noun (see "salmon"/"shark" distinction below).

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Some speakers of English use a plural form of non-count nouns when there are mixed types. For example if one sees a school of fish, it is non-count because all of the fish in a school are identical. However when one sees a variety of fishes in a net, they are of different species. Another example would be where 2 salmon are 2 fish, whereas one salmon and one shark together are 2 fishes.

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The word "data" is often used as a mass noun, especially by people who work with computers. In formal writing it retains its original grammatical role as the plural of "datum".

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There is a certain tendency in colloquial American English to treat some mass nouns as countable, e.g. "behaviors" for "behavior" or "accommodations" for "accommodation". Some of these countable forms have slightly different meanings than their mass forms.

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:Aquafina and Ozarka are two different brands of water.

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:Aquafina and Ozarka are two different waters.

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Some kinds of nouns have subtle rules. For example, count forms are used for fish not intended for food while mass nouns are used for fish one would eat.

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:The net is full of salmon.

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:The net is full of sharks. (If the speaker is not a shark eater.)

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:The net is full of shark. (If the speaker is a shark eater.)

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Mass noun: See also ►