Mass Nouns Research Articles

The Pluralization of Mass Nouns in European and Asian ELF

English has become a global lingua franca unlike any language before. This has led to the increased pragmatic use of English by an increasing number of non-native speakers and, consequently, English as a lingua franca (ELF) has emerged. It has become a contact language between speakers of different mother tongues which has led to the blurring of strict regulatory frameworks formerly established by native English varieties. ELF speakers use English in creative ways and influenced by their native languages and cultures and the imitation of the native speaker has been pushed to the background in favor of successful communication. In order to facilitate the examination of this new type of English, several ELF corpora have been established, two of which are used for this study. The Vienna-Oxford International Corpus of English (VOICE) and the Asian Corpus of English (ACE) are both collections of spoken interactions between ELF speakers that have the same size and rely on the same coding system and search parameters, which make them readily comparable. While these corpora have already aided in the discovery of several common features of ELF in general, this study focuses on the lexico-grammatical feature of the pluralization of mass nouns by either adding the ‘s’ or some type of quantifier in European and Asian ELF. Results show that Asian ELF speakers are less likely to pluralize mass nouns than European ELF speakers. Yet, pluralization can be found in both types of ELF and this, along with other specific, non-standard features, raises questions for English language teaching and the status of native English.

THE STUDY OF NOUN FOUND IN SHAWN MENDES’ SONG ENTITLED LOST IN JAPAN

Descriptive qualitative method is used in this study. This study aimed to investigate nouns and the variety of nouns found in a song entitled Lost in Japan by Shawn Mendes. In collecting the data, the researchers applied three steps, namely selecting one song to be examined, read and elaborate the song lyrics to discover nouns, and classify nouns based on the types. Based on the data analysis, the researchers discovered 16 nouns with seven types of nouns. All nouns can be indicated to more than one type. The results are summarized as follows; 15 common nouns, 1 proper noun, 11 abstract nouns, 5 concrete nouns, 12 countable nouns, 4 uncountable nouns, and 4 compound nouns. Keywords : Noun, Song lyrics, Types of noun

The Students Ability in Using Countable and Uncountable Nouns: at Second Year Students of SMPN 1 Aikmel in East Lombok

The Students Ability in Using Countable and Uncountable Nouns: at Second Year Students of SMPN 1 Aikmel in East Lombok

The linguistic dimensions of concrete and abstract concepts: lexical category, morphological structure, countability, and etymology

AbstractThe distinction between abstract and concrete concepts is fundamental to cognitive linguistics and cognitive science. This distinction is commonly operationalized through concreteness ratings based on the aggregated judgments of many people. What is often overlooked in experimental studies using this operationalization is that ratings are attributed towords, not to concepts directly. In this paper we explore the relationship between the linguistic properties of English words and conceptual abstractness/concreteness. Based on hypotheses stated in the existing linguistic literature we select a set of variables (part of speech, morphological structure, countability, etymology) and verify whether they are statistically associated with concreteness ratings. We show that English nouns are rated as more concrete compared to other parts of speech, but mass nouns are rated as less concrete than count nouns. Furthermore, a more complex morphological structure is associated with abstractness, and as for etymology, French- and Latin-derived words are more abstract than words of other origin. This shows that linguistic properties of words are indeed associated with the degree of concreteness that we attribute to the underlying concepts, and we discuss the implications that these findings have for linguistic theory and for empirical investigations in the cognitive sciences.

A corpus-based study of grammatical post-metaphorical expressions

Abstract In Systemic Functional Linguistics, meanings in semantic stratum could be realized by congruent/premetaphorical, metaphorical, or demetaphorical/post-metaphorical expressions in lexico-grammatical stratum. This paper, evidenced from the Corpus of Historical American English (COHA), explores the specific pathway from metaphorical expressions to post-metaphorical ones guided by principles of Context-first and AS IF and the principle of double functionality. The findings show that grammatical postmetaphorization is mainly realized by post-metaphor of ideation and that of modality. The former finds its expressions from common nouns to proper nouns (e.g. from security to Security), or from uncountable nouns to countable nouns (e.g. from security to securities), and the latter is evidenced by expressions shifting from explicit objective orientation to its explicit subjective counterpart (e.g. from it is possible that to it might be possible that), or by modal probability of I think type shifting from clausal initial position to clausal medial or final position (e.g. I think in the medial or final position of the clause).

THE ABILITY OF THE ELEVENTH GRADE STUDENTS OF SMA DELI MURNI BANDAR BARU ON USING COUNTABLE ANDUNCOUNTABLE NOUNS IN THE ACADEMIC YEAR OF 2020/2021

The purpose of this research is to describe the ability of the eleventh-grade students of SMA Deli Murni Bandar Baru on using Countable and Uncountable Nouns. The population of this research was the eleventh-grade students, with 58 students taken as sample. The instrument of collecting data is a test concerning Countable and Uncountable Nouns. The tryout test was done to know the validity, reliability, item difficulty of test items. The result showed that 5 students (15 %) belong to the high category, 24 students (73 %) to the moderate category, and 4 students (12 %) to the low category. The mean score was 61,39 it was only 24 % of the total students who can do the test well with 12 students who get a score above 75, it means that the eleventh-grade students of SMA Deli Murni Bandar Baru are not yet able to use Countable and Uncountable Nouns. Based on the total incorrect answers made by the students in using countable and uncountable was 502. The percentage of students’ mistakes made by students in uncountable multiple choice including indefinite and quantifier uncountable was 33 %, in countable multiple choice including singular, regular, irregular countable 34%, in the countable essay including regular and irregular countable was 33%. Based on the findings and conclusions, some suggestions are offered to English teachers, English students, and other researchers. Especially to English teachers, who teach in school, are advised to improve students' ability to use countable and uncountable nouns.

Not-negation revisited: variation betweenaandanyin verb complements in contemporary spoken American English

Innot-negated English sentences with indefinite expressions following the verb, there is variation between the indefinite article andanyas determiners of nouns. The standard view is that singular count nouns take the indefinite article and singular non-count and plural nouns takeany.However, it is possible to encounter examples likeit isn'tany threat,there isn'tany lockorI don't haveany problem.The article studies variation between the indefinite article andanyas post-verbal determiners of singular nouns in 21,084not-negated sentences in the spoken component ofThe Corpus of Contemporary American English, COCA SPOK. The indefinite article is dominant with 90 per cent of the tokens. Variation is extremely rare in sentences with copularbeand much more frequent in sentences with existentialbeandhave. Among the reasons for variation between verb types is the use ofdo-support withhave(but not withbe). Expressions such ashave a job/car/homeorthere's not a/anwith uncontractednotmay also prevent the use ofany.Variation occurs mostly with abstract nouns such asproblem,choice,way,place,reason. This finding is surprising as abstract nouns have rarely been discussed in the literature on varying countability of nouns.

What's the smallest part of spinach? A new experimental approach to the count/mass distinction

This paper reports on a study that uses a novel methodology, the minimal part identification task, in order to probe the relationship between morphosyntax and interpretation. English, Korean and Mandarin Chinese differ from one another with regard to the count/mass distinction. Building on prior research but using a new methodology, this study examines whether speakers of these three languages also differ in how they interpret count vs. mass nouns. The findings, while uncovering some language-specific effects of morphosyntax, point to the importance of universality, and suggest that interpretation drives morphosyntax rather than the other way around.

CORPUS LINGUISTICS PROJECT: SEEKING THE USE OF DEMONSTRATIVE IN SONGS WRITTEN BY EMINEM

The object of this study is to identify the kinds of demonstrative that are used in the songs written by Eminem. In English, there is the word this, that, these, and those. Demonstratives are used to designate the place for an object, person, or thing and to indicate pronouns that have already been mentioned. The song contains lyrics and music. Songs can be used as an easy learning medium in learning a foreign language. In improving understanding of English about demonstrative, this research belongs to qualitative research to find out the dominant types of demonstrative that used in the songs by Eminem. The observation method is a method used by researchers to collect data, while the data collection technique is listening and analyzing the songs. The data obtained came from the songs contained in the album written by Eminem from 2009 to 2014. In this study, researchers looked for the most widely used demonstrative words in Eminem's song lyrics. There were 59 songs in the analysis and consisted of 5 albums. The use of demonstratives in the song is very much, especially the demonstrative "That". That is used to replace singular and uncountable nouns that are far away.

Sentence-internal <i>different</i> and lexical reciprocity

This paper draws a link between one type of sentence-internal readings of adjectives like different – here called the plural-dependent reading – and lexical reciprocity. The plural-dependent reading is most often discussed as a reading of different and same (e.g. Carlson 1987; Beck 2000; Brasoveanu 2011). I show that it is generally available with, and crucially limited to, lexically-reciprocal adjectives. I next show that plural-dependent readings behave like collective uses of lexically-reciprocal adjectives, in contrast to periphrastic and transitive uses of the same adjectives. Unlike periphrastic constructions, both plural-dependent readings and collective uses allow a lexical mass noun as an argument. Unlike transitive uses, both plural-dependent readings and collective uses force an interpretation which cannot be reduced to binary relations. These data indicate that plural-dependent readings don’t contain covert reciprocal pronouns (contra Beck 2000; Charnavel 2015), and are not conjunctions of binary relations (contra Brasoveanu 2011). I propose to analyze plural-dependent readings in terms of semantically basic, collective predication (Winter 2018).

Examining transfer in the acquisition of the count/mass distinction in L2 English

We investigate whether second language (L2) learners of English rely on first language (L1) transfer and atomicity in the acquisition of the count/mass distinction by examining L1-French and L1-Chinese learners of English. Atomicity encodes whether a noun contains ‘atoms’ or minimal elements that retain the property of the noun. As a semantic universal, atomicity holds across languages. However, the count/mass status of nouns may differ cross-linguistically. Our results, which show difficulty on atomic mass nouns in both learner groups, support an argument that atomicity is used as a semantic universal in the L2. Our results also suggest that both count/mass status in the L1 and word frequency in the L2 impact performance, suggesting roles for both L1 lexical transfer and lexical frequency. In addition, learners had better performance on abstract as opposed to concrete atomic mass nouns, providing evidence consistent with a theory of the accessibility of atoms.

The interpretation of plural mass nouns in Greek

This paper focuses on the interpretation of what has been considered an expletive marker in the grammar of the Greek nominal domain: the plural number of mass nouns. We present the results of an experimental investigation on the interpretation of plural mass nouns by native speakers of this language, and we propose a speech act analysis according to which at the time of producing utterances that contain plural mass nouns the speaker performs two speech acts: an assertion and an expressive speech act by which (s)he publicly commits to an emotive stance of dislike towards the expressed proposition φ. This stance is analyzed as an emotive judgment with respect to φ, the expression of which directly transfers the speaker's emotion from the conversation into the speaker and addressee's common ground.

Intraclade Contact from an I-Language Perspective. The Noun Phrase in the Ligurian/Occitan amphizone

This article aims to compare some traits that characterise the syntax of the noun phrase in the Occitan/Ligurian amphizone (i.e., contact area) that lies at the border between southern France and northwestern Italy. The dialects spoken in this area differ in several syntactic traits that emerged in a situation of contact between dialects of different subgroups (Ligurian and Occitan), two roofing languages (Italian and French), and regional contact languages such as Genoese. In particular, I will elaborate on the syntax of mass and indefinite plural nouns, on the co-occurrence of determiners and possessives, and on the syntax of kinship terms. From an I-language perspective, the fine variation observed at the Occitan/Ligurian border raises two types of research questions: (a) which comparative concepts best capture the observed variation; (b) whether intraclade contact (i.e., contact between languages of the same branch) can contribute relevant evidence and arguments to the debate concerning the biological endowment of the language faculty.

Atomic Structures in the Denotation Of Abstract Nouns

Countability is a universal lexical category that provides a binary division of nouns into countable and uncountable nouns or is also called count and mass nouns. Usually, count nouns refer to things or objects which can be individuated and thus counted, while mass nouns refer to substances or stuff such as water,wine, blood, or mud for which it is less easy to identify what and how to count. This cognitive division leaves abstract nouns out. Abstract nouns neither refer to things or objects nor to substances or stuff. On the contrary, the reference of abstract nouns is rather heterogeneous comprising different kinds of nouns such as processes, states, events, measure and time terms, and alike. The aim of this paper is to present the challenges abstract nouns pose for theories of countability, and to reflect on possibilities to incorporate abstract nouns in contemporary theories of countability. The research discussed in this paper circles around English abstract nouns but we will also discuss the application of certain semantic phenomena onto Bosnian nouns.

Gender and Number Marking in Amazigh Language

This article studies the derivational system of gender and number in Ait Atta variety of Amazigh language. Thus, the following claims are made: first, gender is overtly marked on feminine nouns by the prefixation of the gender morpheme t-. The paper argues that [t…t] is not a circumfix or a discontinuous morpheme, but it is an asymmetric inflection. In the derivational system of gender, large majority of nouns allow for gender opposition. However, mass nouns allow only for one lexically determined gender and number. Moreover, masculine has no overt realization in Amazigh language. Vocalic initial nouns fall into the category of masculine nouns. I argue that the initial vowel is a nominal marker. I submit that the noun, in general, consists of maximally three main parts: a prefix, a lexical base, and a suffix. Second, the majority of Berber noun stems involve, at least, one vowel in addition to the prefixal vowel (e.g. ‘a-ḍar’ foot, ‘a-funas’ bull, 'a-ɣrum’ bread). Third, when the plural noun is specified as [+feminine], it takes the gender morpheme t-. Fourth, number takes the form of a feature assigned lexically to the noun. The study provides a templatic analysis to account for internal noun change. It implements Lahrouchi and Ridouane (2016) analysis of diminutives and plurals in Moroccan Arabic and argues that sound plurals in Amazigh language are associated with standard Num projection, while id/istt-plurals are associated with lower in the structure with n projection.

Plural marking in the second language: Atomicity, definiteness, and transfer

AbstractThis paper examines whether second language (L2)-English learners whose native languages (L1; Korean and Mandarin) lack obligatory plural marking transfer the properties of plural marking from their L1s, and whether transfer is manifested both offline (in a grammaticality judgment task) and online (in a self-paced reading task). The online task tests the predictions of the morphological congruency hypothesis (Jiang 2007), according to which L2 learners have particular difficulty automatically activating the meaning of L2 morphemes that are incongruent with their L1. Experiment 1 tests L2 learners’ sensitivity to errors of–soversuppliance with mass nouns, while Experiment 2 tests their sensitivity to errors of–somission with count nouns. The findings show that (a) L2 learners detect errors with nonatomic mass nouns (sunlights) but not atomic ones (furnitures), both offline and online; and (b) L1-Korean L2-English learners are more successful than L1-Mandarin L2-English learners in detecting missing–swith definite plurals (these boat), while the two groups behave similarly with indefinite plurals (many boat). Given that definite plurals require plural marking in Korean but not in Mandarin, the second finding is consistent with L1-transfer. Overall, the findings show that learners are able to overcome morphological incongruency and acquire novel uses of L2 morphemes.

The plural of uncountable nouns

The plural of uncountable nouns

An Experimental Investigation of Mass Noun Types and Article Usage

Speakers of languages with article systems have to make different article choices in the case of mass versus countable nouns. This study addressed article use with different types of mass nouns (liquid, solid and abstract). It investigated: a) whether first language (L1) Arabic speakers used English articles accurately with mass nouns; and b) whether they were sensitive to different types of mass noun.
 
 To address these issues, the study recruited twenty-seven English as a Foreign Language (EFL) Saudi-Arabic speaking participants and five native speakers of English, who formed a control group. Members of the experimental group were proficient to the elementary level, according to the Oxford Quick Placement Test. A written forced-choice elicitation task was administered to test their article use. 
 
 The findings showed that: a) the Arabic speakers performed similarly to the native speakers of English in liquid contexts, but differently in solid and abstract contexts; b) the Arabic speakers did not perform similarly across all types of mass nouns, as they were sensitive towards mass noun types; c) their article use was more accurate in liquid contexts than in solid and abstract contexts; and d) they faced difficulties using articles with mass nouns that can be pluralised in Arabic. These findings indicate that the use of articles with mass nouns should be examined in the light of their subtypes, as well as whether second language (L2) learners’ L1 pluralise them or not.

Nominal property concepts and substance possession in Mandarin Chinese

This paper investigates two puzzles regarding property concept (PC) lexemes (Dixon in Where have all the adjectives gone? And other essays in semantics and syntax. Mouton, The Hague, 1982) in Mandarin: why degree modifiers such as hen ‘very’ are compatible with gradable adjectives such as gao ‘tall’ as well as PC nominals such as zhihui ‘wisdom’, but not with concrete mass nouns such as shui ‘water’ in simple declarative clauses, and why degree modifiers are obligatory to block comparative interpretation in sentences with gradable adjectives and possessive PC nominal phrases. I demonstrate the data of PC nominals in possessive constructions with positive and comparative interpretations. Following Francez and Koontz-Garboden (Semantics and morphosyntactic variation: qualities and the grammar of property concepts. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2017), I argue that PC nominals and other mass nouns in Mandarin are semantically distinct in such a way that the latter lack inherent measures. Furthermore, I argue that gradable adjectives and possessive PC nominal phrases are model-theoretically equivalent. Moreover, I propose that degree modifiers such as hen are compulsory to block comparative interpretations in PC sentences because possessive PC phrases are Adjective Phrases and require an overt degree modifier or a covert comparative operator to satisfy the T[+ V] constraint in Mandarin proposed by Grano (Nat Lang Linguist Theory 30:513–565, 2012).

Referentiality, individuation and incompletive readings

As an exception to Krifka’s (in: Bartsch, Benthem, Emde Boas,Semantics and contextual expression, CSLI Publications, Stanford, 1989) famous generalization that a quantized incremental theme always induces an event-homomorphic completive reading, Singh (Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society 17(1): 469–479, 1991, Journal of East Asian Linguistics 3(2): 107–146, 1998) observes that in Hindi only quantized mass noun phrases entail a completive reading, but unexpectedly quantized count noun phrases can give rise to an incompletive reading. She proposes that count nouns can introduce a partial-affectedness thematic relation, whereas mass nouns introduce a total-affectedness thematic relation. With new data in Mandarin, instead of the count/mass distinction, I argue that referentiality of the direct object is a crucial factor, because incompletive readings are only felicitous with direct objects interpreted referentially for consumption verbs in Mandarin.