Object mass nouns and subkind countability

Abstract

We argue for a novel cross-linguistic definition of object mass nouns—e.g. furniture, equipment— which accommodates the observation that some can combine with numericals to count subkinds. The primary observation comes from Hungarian, where counting subkinds with object mass nouns was not found to be more marked than with count nouns or substance mass nouns—e.g. három készlet (‘three stock) can refer to three kinds of products to the same extent as három termék (‘three products’), and it was not found to be more marked than három sör (‘three beers’) referring to three kinds of beer. This differs from English and Dutch, where object mass nouns are uncountable altogether, i.e. they cannot count objects or subkinds (Cowper & Hall 2012; De Belder 2013; Grimm & Levin 2017; Rothstein 2017; Sutton & Filip 2018). We argue for a definition that distinguishes object mass nouns from count nouns in the ability to refer to objects in count morphosyntax, thus leaving open the possibility of counting subkinds. Lastly, we suggest that general number (Corbett 2000; Paul 2012) is a necessary (but insufficient) condition for a language to have object mass nouns that can count subkinds.