Mass Nouns

‘We persist in breaking reality down somehow into a multiplicity of identifiable and discriminable objects, to be referred to by singular andgeneral terms’. W. V. O. Quine, ‘Speaking of Objects’‘

"Seldom if ever does Nature operate in closed and separatecompartments". Rachel Carson, Silent Spring.

(Coauthored with Manfred Krifka) This review article is concerned with the applications that mereology has found in natural-language semantics. After a section on essential formal properties of the parthood relations and their axiomatization, we deal with linguistic applications in the nominal domain, in the expression of measurement functions, and in the verbal domain.

The book seeks to resolve the so-called ‘problem of mass nouns’ — a problem which cannot be resolved on the basis of a conventional system of logic. It is not, for instance, possible to explicate assertions of the existence of air, oil, or water through the use of quantifiers and variables which take objectual values. The difficulty is attributable to the semantically distinctive status of non-count nouns — nouns which, although not plural, are nonetheless akin to plural nouns in being semantically non-singular. Such are the semantics of a non-singular noun, that there can be no such single thing or object as the thing of which the noun is true. However, standard approaches to understanding non-singular nouns tend to be reductive, construing them as singular expressions — expressions which, in the case of non-count nouns, are true of ‘parcels’ or ‘quantities’ of stuff, and in the case of plural nouns, are true of ‘plural entities’ or ‘sets’. It is argued that both approaches are equally misguided, that there are no distinctive objects in the extensions of non-singular nouns. With plural nouns, their extensions are identical with those of the corresponding singular expressions. With non-count nouns, because they are not plural, there can be no corresponding singular expressions. In consequence, there are no objects in the extensions of non-count nouns at all. In short, there are no such things as instances of stuff: the world of space and time contains not merely large numbers of discrete concrete things or individuals of diverse kinds, but also large amounts of sheer undifferentiated concrete stuff. Metaphysically, non-singular reference in general is an arbitrary modality of reference, ungrounded in the realities to which it is non-ideally or intransparently correlated.

Abstract singular nouns (e.g., ‘whiteness’, ‘humanhood’), on the standard account, refer to attributes.  But many of them (e.g., ‘whiteness’) are mass nouns.  Like concrete mass nouns (e.g., ‘water’), they can combine with determiners relating to amounts of stuff (e.g., ‘a little’, ‘much’, ‘less’).  Levinson (1978; 1980) argues that this means that a large group of attributes are stuffs of some kind: abstract stuffs.  This view, the stuff view, is widely considered indefensible.  But it would be hard to resist the view without rejecting the usual account of determiners that combine with mass nouns, the quantity account, according to which such determiners relate to amounts of stuff.  This paper argues against both the stuff view and quantity account, and presents an account of abstract mass nouns based on an adequate account of determiners that combine with them.

The general question to be considered in this paper points to the nature of the world described by chemistry: what is macro-chemical ontology like? In particular, we want to identify the ontological categories that underlie chemical discourse and chemical practice. This is not an easy task, because modern Western metaphysics was strongly modeled by theoretical physics. For this reason, we attempt to answer our question by contrasting macrochemical ontology with the mainstream ontology of physics and of traditional metaphysics. In particular, we introduce the distinction between stuff-ontology, proper of chemistry, and individual-ontology, proper of physics. These two ontologies differ from each other in the basic categories of their own structures. On this basis, we characterize individual-ontology in such a way that the features of stuff-ontology will arise by contrast with it.

"Linguists often distinguish count and non-count nouns (count+ and count-- nouns; CNs and NCNs, for short). The distinction, though hardly simple, is both exhaustive and entirely natural. In philosophical writings, by contrast, it is more usual to posit a dichotomy of count nouns and mass nouns (CNs and MNs) — a dichotomy which is very commonly (and however vaguely) supposed to be of metaphysical or ontological significance. But this dichotomy, unlike that of CNs and NCNs, is deeply problematic; here in consequence I speak only of a supposed dichotomy of CNs and MNs, and by the same token, of a putative category of MNs."
http://fr.slideshare.net/sonu_pal/concise-encyclopedia-of-philosophy-of-language

The recent development of plural logic has been a good news for a student of the semantics of a language like Japanese which has no systematic distinction between singular and plural. But plural logic is applicable only to countable predicates; it is not applicable to non-countable predicates. Thus, the first question that must be settled before we may apply plural logic to Japanese is to make sure that it has countable predicates. I argue that Japanese has indeed countable predicates and that they can be recognized by a kind of numeral suffixes which can modify them. Japanese numeral suffixes are divided into three classes, namely, (1) sortal suffixes, or classifiers, (2) unit-forming suffixes, and (3) measure suffixes; they can be distinguished from each other by a certain simple test. I argue that a sortal suffix’s contribution to the meaning of a sentence in which it occurs is not to its truth-conditional content but to its conventional implicature only, and hence that a noun wh...

In formal, logico-semantic terms, the concept of an object, individual or thing is widely thought to be exhaustive. Whatever we may say or think – it is supposed – our thought or talk is always thought or talk of objects. Here, I briefly sketch out and defend a rival view: like that of a property, the concept of an object is best understood in terms of that which it excludes. Object-concepts correspond to count nouns; but count nouns are just one of two great categories of nouns, the other being that of non-count nouns. Both count nouns, and the concept of an object, are inseparable from reference and identity – but non-count nouns are not; and they are not a vehicle for thought or talk of objects in the first place.

RESUME: La situación llingüística del conceyu L.lena amuesa que'l fenómenu no-máu neutru de materia ye bramente más complexu de lo que paez d'antemano. Des-endolcando la propuesta de Jackendoff (1991), basada na combinación de rasgos se-mánticos [desllindabilidá] y [estructura interna], ye posible abordar dende una perspeutiva bastante amplia la variedá de nomes que acaben en-o na variedá llin-güística l.leniza y que nun se correspuende namás con entidaes non cuntables. La desllindabilidá semántica paez que ye un rasgu relevante, ansina que'l valor negati-vu asóciase xeneralmente a la terminación-o, mentanto que'l valor positivu ta rella-cionáu coles formes en-u y coles que presenten metafonía. Pallabres clave: Neutru de materia, nomes cuntables/non cuntables, metafonía, desllindabilidá semántica.
ABSTRACT: Distinctive linguistic features in the county of L.lena show that the phenomenon usually called mass neuter is much more complex than it seems to be at first glance. Following Jackendoff's (1991) proposal, based on a combination of two semantic features [boundness] and [internal structure], we can study from a quite broad perspective the variety of names ending in-o in L.lena's dialect which do not only correspond to uncountable entities. Semantic boundness seems to be a relevant feature, since its positive value is often related to the ending-o, meanwhile the positive one is linked to nouns with-u and metaphonesis.

"Matter does not fit within the traditional 'Universal / Particular' dichotomy of metaphysics; and words for matter - MASS NOUNS or NONCOUNT NOUNS are not, as is usually supposed, semantically singular. The views of Quine and Strawson are analysed and rejected. Matter is an ontologically distinct category from that of objects and the semantics of mass nouns are closely related to those of plural nouns.

THIS EARLY PAPER INTRODUCES TWO KEY IDEAS: FIRST, THE IDEA THAT MATTER IS BOTH CONCRETE AND NON-PARTICULAR OR NON-INDIVIDUAL; AND SECOND, THE IDEA THAT 'MASS NOUNS' ARE SEMANTICALLY NON-SINGULAR. IT IS, I BELIEVE, THE VERY FIRST FORMULATION OF THIS IDEA."

STANFORD ENCYCLOPEDIA ENTRY OF 2010. The Frege / Russell account of the object-concept is here called into question. The most general category or concept of an object is a formal one -- a logico-semantic category which is not (as is commonly supposed) exhaustive of what may be thought or said to be. Bona fide objects, whether abstract or concrete, must be countable - 'no entity without identity' (and hence without distinctness). But stuff or matter is not countable and cannot be understood in terms of objects. The issue is significant, if only because the predicate calculus rests upon the object-concept: non-count nouns have no place within the notation

Resolution of the problem of mass nouns depends on an expansion of our logico/semantic/ontological taxonomy Semantically, mass nouns are neither singular nor plural, they apply to neither just one object, nor to many objects, at a time But their deepest kinship links them to the plural. A plural phrase — 'the cats in Kingston' — does not denote a single plural thing, but merely many distinct things Just so, 'the water In the lake' does not denote a single aggregate — it is not ONE, but rather MUCH. The world is not the totality of singular objects, plural objects, and mass objects, for there are no plural or mass objects. It is the totality of single objects and (just) stuff.

In a series of publications, we have employed ontological theories and principles used to evaluate and improve the quality of conceptual modeling grammars and models. In this article, we continue this work by providing an ontological interpretation and sound modeling guidelines for a traditionally neglected notion in the conceptual modeling literature, namely, the representation of types whose instances are quantities (amounts of matter, masses). Here, we analyze different alternatives for the adequate representation of quantities as well as their parts in conceptual models. Moreover, we advance a number of metamodeling constraints that can be incorporated in a UML 2.0 metamodel extension, thus, allowing for the suitable representation of these notions.

This article defends three theses concerning the semantics of nouns in classical Chinese. First, they are all free to function as mass nouns. Second, though many of them can also function as count nouns, they do not do so as frequently as do corresponding English nouns. Third, unlike English nouns, nouns in classical Chinese do not need to be classi- fied as count nouns and mass nouns in order to explain their behavior in particular contexts. I argue that classical Chinese nouns function as count nouns only when specific elements of the syntactic context force them to do so, including numbers, some quantifiers, and some adjectives . Because classical Chinese nouns usually occur without such elements, they function more often as mass nouns. I develop this argument in opposition to an alternative analysis defended by Christoph Harbsmeier, according to which classical Chinese nouns divide into three classes: count nouns, mass nouns, and generic nouns. I show that the syntactic and semantic distinctions Harbsmeier draws in support of his analysis do not illuminate the behavior of classical Chinese nouns. The article also briefly addresses the ontological issues that have seemed to some linguists and philosophers to be related to the count/mass distinction.

Theories of Matter documents the all-pervasive doctrine which I call the Ontology of Objects - a doctrine which claims that there can be no other ontic category than that of objects (along with their properties and relations). Here this doctrine and its logico-semantic basis are attacked, the influential work of Helen Cartwright is criticized, and it is denied that matter must be re-identifiable.

L'articolo mette a confronto due costruzioni con 'fare'. La prima, intransitiva, parla di professioni (Leo fa il veterinario), la seconda, transitiva, di attività sportive, con aspetto imperfettivo/iterativo (Leo fa nuoto). Quest'ultima costruzione rivela qualcosa di interessante sull'opposizione tra sostantivi numerabili e non-numerabili e fa riflettere su quanto la lingua possa essere ingannevole.

"In that semantic tradition of which Frege and Russell are among the most distinguished members, the project of formalizing natural-language sentences is not simply a matter of developing smooth and effective techniques for the representation of reasoning. Over and above the representation of valid inference as valid, and invalid inference as invalid, there is a further objective. Logic in this tradition is what Frege himself famously calls a concept-script, the import of the notion being chiefly that in natural languages, as Frege emphasizes, ‘the connection of words corresponds only partially to the structure of concepts’, thereby compelling the logician to ‘conduct an ongoing struggle against language and grammar, insofar as they fail to give clear expression to the logical’. In the more recent past, a kindred overall approach is forcefully expounded in the work of Quine, who writes, albeit with a positivistic slant, that

the simplification and clarification of logical theory to which a canonical logical notation contributes is not only algorithmic, it is also conceptual ... each elimination of obscure constructions or notions that we manage to achieve, by paraphrase into more lucid elements, is a clarification of the conceptual scheme of science.

The approach is one with which I find myself in general sympathy; indeed the contrast between clear and less-than-clear ‘expressions of the logical’ is vital to the thesis of this work. Though it has not always received the understanding and respect which it deserves, the ideal of a logically transparent language represents, in my estimation, no merely interesting episode in the history of ideas. It embodies, rather, a permanently valid insight, an enduringly valuable ideal for any analytical conception of philosophy."

Othering is the construction and identification of the self or in-group and the other or out-group in mutual, unequal opposition by attributing relative inferiority and/or radical alienness to the other/out-group. Othering can be “crude” or “sophisticated”, the defining difference being that in the latter case othering depends on the interpretation of the other/out-group in terms that are applicable only to the self/in-group but that are unconsciously assumed to be universal. The Mass Noun Thesis, the idea that all nouns in certain languages are grammatically and folk-ontologically similar to mass nouns in English, is an example of such sophisticated othering. According to this Thesis, (a) count nouns refer to discrete objects and mass nouns to stuffs; (b) the other’s language has only mass nouns and thus no count nouns; and therefore, (c) the other’s folk-ontology is an ontology of mass stuffs only. There is much evidence, however, that folk-ontology is independent from language. This paper argues that the Mass Noun Thesis is a case of sophisticated othering rooted in a conflation of grammatical and ontological conceptions of mass and count nouns that is applicable to the language of the interpreter/self but not to the languages of the relevant others, and that othering in this case is driven by a need to create some radically alien other to support a scientific or philosophical theory.

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There are the very best of reasons for the recent surge of interest in mass nouns and the mass / count contrast. If what I am urging is not fundamentally in error, the issue cuts into the core of what our current concept-script is all about.
An expanded work which will replace this has been added, entitled 'THIS WATER'.

This work contrasts two semantic categories – those of concrete, so-called ‘mass’ and count nouns – with the pair of ontic categories, or highly general concepts, which these two groups of nouns express. These underlying concepts I shall call the object-concept and the matter-concept. Typically, the problems in this area are seen as chiefly problems about mass nouns, and perhaps the matter-concept; the object-concept, in contrast, is regarded as well-understood, and substantially encoded in our standard formal logic. But this conception of the situation is itself mistaken: the categories of mass and count nouns, although mutually exclusive, are internally related, and the difficulties over mass nouns stem in the main from difficulties over count nouns – and especially, from problems with the underlying ontic concept – that of objects, units, individuals or things, which this range of nouns express. The central problem is not one of mass nouns, and Frege’s question in particular – the question of ‘what we are here calling an object’ – is not, I think, well put.

Concepts are distinct from their semantical embodiments, and insufficient scrutiny is paid to the diversity of forms in which the object-concept is linguistically embodied or expressed. In fact, the range of sentence-types which standard logic recognises is limited in ways which effectively block access to the matter-concept and the object-concept equally. The fact that singularity is the sole semantic category of the predicate calculus imposes a constraint which is simply incompatible with formalising sentences involving non-singular reference or predication. And unlike the object-concept, the matter-concept represents a category which completely falls outside the scope of logic, in the form in which the latter is at present understood.

One central feature of the modern ‘concept-script’ consists in its well-founded rejection of the subject/predicate sentential form as universal. On the replacement model of language that comes to us from Frege, sentences are instead divided into two broad categories. On the one hand are fully-fledged, directly referential sentences which do exemplify the subject/predicate model – in semantic terms, the object/concept model – and on the other hand are quantified sentences which do not, but are constructed on the basis of the former group. This second group is indirectly referential; bound variables take directly referential terms as their substituends.

Now general concepts in themselves, of course, are never referential; reference enters in their use or application in constructing sentence-types and tokens. And an understanding of the concepts here at issue calls for recognition of a further, very different sentence-group. This group, involving bare occurrences of mass and count nouns equally, consists of existentially committed sentences which are unquantized – neither indirectly nor directly referential. Sentences of this non-referential, ‘feature-placing’ type are, I argue, the most basic form in which the matter-concept and the object-concept are linguistically expressed. For the object-concept, this form is ontically if not semantically supervenient on the possibility of references to things. But for the central classes of the matter-concept, the possibility of underlying references to stuff or matter seems deeply problematic. An understanding of these sentences calls, among other things, for understanding predications which are both essentially non-singular and involve the lexically progressive aspect.


*Consumer caution: contents may contain traces of invalidity and falsehood



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Resolution of the problem of mass nouns depends on an expansion of our semantic/ontological taxonomy. Semantically, mass nouns are neither singular nor plural; they apply to neither just one object, nor to many objects, at a time. But their deepest kinship links them to the plural. A plural phrase — 'the cats in Kingston' — does not denote a single plural thing, but merely many distinct things. Just so, 'the water in the lake' does not denote a single aggregate — it is not ONE, but rather MUCH. The world is not the totality of singular objects, plural objects, and mass objects; for there are no plural or mass objects. It is the totality of single objects and (just) stuff.

The present study aims to explore English as a Foreign Language (hereafter EFL) instructors’ recognition of count-mass distinction regarding the concept of individuation and judgment of quantity. Accordingly, fifteen EFL instructors recruited from different public universities in Turkey were asked to write the plural forms of a sum of fifty count and mass nouns given in a list. Participants, then, were asked to rate the elements of aggregates (either count or mass) in order to identify their semantic mappings. Following these, the participants were also given a self-rating form to check post-experiment familiarity of those fifty nouns in a random order, and they rated how familiar they were with the items given on a basis of very familiar’, ‘somewhat familiar’ and ‘not familiar’. Descriptive statistics were applied as a part of quantitative data analysis. Demographic information was given on gender and year(s) of teaching experience. As a result, it was reported that EFL instructors...