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.

Knowledge and Knowing that p; “Knowledge” and “Knowing that p”

The usage-fact differences between uses of “S knows p,” and “knowledge,” a mass noun, are described. “Knowledge” isn’t factive (a lot of a person’s knowledge can be wrong), and it is contextually sensitive in just the way that mass terms usually are. The knowledge someone (a child) has can be a lot whereas the same knowledge of someone else (an adult) is not a lot. A lot of the knowledge that someone has can be wrong and yet still be knowledge. “Knowledge” is thus open to grading in a way that “know” isn’t. Peter can know more than Sam. This is a use of a verb form derived from the noun “knowledge.” But this is not true when Sam knows p. Sam cannot know p better than Peter knows p. If “know” is contextually sensitive, it’s shown that the word isn’t so in a way like any other contextually sensitive verb.

The system of verbs of fallıng in Karata

In this paper we describe the verbs of falling in Karata, an Andic (<East Caucasian) language. Our research is based on the dialect of Karata which is spoken in the village of Karata (Akhvakhsky district, Dagestan, Russia). The semantic field of falling includes eight verbs. The verb t’araɬa ‘to fall down’ is the dominant one. It can be used in the majority of situations of falling. The remaining seven verbs are more specialized. They are used in the situations of falling which have special features. The verb karaɬa ‘to topple over’ describes the situation of falling from a vertical position. Some of the verbs can only be combined with special subjects of falling (e.g. only with humans). t’oraɬa ‘to drip’ and ͡tʃʷaχːaɬa ‘to fl ow’ describe the falling of water. The first verbal root, t’oraɬa ‘to drip’, describes the falling of small portions of water (e.g. of water drops). Furthermore, the root of this verb may be (partially) reduplicated: in Karata, (partial) reduplication has the semantics of so-called verbal plurality. The meaning of tʼor~t’-aɬa ‘drip~VPL-INF’ presupposes that there was a number of drips, not only one drip. The second verbal root for the falling of water, ͡tʃʷaχːaɬa ‘to fl ow’, describes the falling of water as a substance (i.e. as a mass noun). tort͡ʃʼːaɬa ‘to crash’ is special in that it implies that the falling occurred with a loud sound. It covers many falling situations, including falling from upside down and falling from vertical position. The verb χːeraɬa ‘to pour’ is used with friable substances (e.g. sand). baχːaɬa ‘to collapse’ describes falling with destruction of the subject of falling. Finally, giraɬa ‘to lay down’ specializes in falling of human subjects from a vertical position. Overall, there are two parameters are crucial for the system of verbs of falling in Karata: (i) a kind of the subject of falling (human vs. non-human, mass noun vs. countable noun) and (ii) a kind of the situation of falling (e.g. falling from a vertical position or falling with destruction of the subject of falling)

The grammatical distinction between count nouns and mass nouns in Mandarin Chinese

The purpose of this paper is to prove the Mass Noun Hypothesis wrong. The hypothesis claims that all common nouns in classifier languages like Mandarin Chinese are mass nouns. The objection against it consists in displaying its implausible deduction, where false conclusions have been drawn due to relying on the grammar of English, which is incongruent with the grammar of Chinese. Consequently, this paper defends the Count Noun Thesis, stating that in Chinese there are count as well as mass nouns. In support of this statement, first, the typology of numeral classifiers had to be established, which resulted in gathering and completing all the reasons to distinguish classifiers from measure words. After only this necessary differentiation was made, it was possible to show that the count/mass distinction exists in Mandarin Chinese. That is, count nouns by default have only one classifier, with certain disclaimers. Apart from that, count nouns, as in every language, may undergo some measurement with measure words. Mass nouns, however, in the context of quantification may appear only with measure words, but not with classifiers. These conditions naturally follow from the ontological status of the two types of nouns’ referents, i.e. bounded objects denoted by count nouns, and scattered substances denoted by mass nouns.

Layers of (un)boundedness: The aspectual–quantificational interplay of quantifiers and partitive case in Finnish object arguments

I present an account of the interplay between quantifiers and the partitive–accusative case alternation in Finnish object marking, with special reference to the aspectual and quantificational semantics of the clause. The case alternation expresses two oppositions (in affirmative clauses): (a) bounded (accusative) vs. unbounded (partitive) quantity, (b) culminating (accusative) vs. non-culminating (partitive) aspect. The quantifiers analyzed are of two main types: (i) mass quantifiers (e. g., paljon ‘a lot of’, vähän ‘(a) little’), which quantify a mass expressed by a mass noun or a plural form, (ii) number quantifiers (e. g., moni ‘many’, usea ‘a number of’), which quantify a multiplicity of discrete entities expressed by a count noun in the singular or plural. Finnish mass quantifiers only quantify nominals in the partitive, while number quantifiers agree with the quantified nominal in number and case and are used throughout the case paradigm. With a mass quantifier, the partitive form of the quantified nominal expresses unbounded quantity, which the quantifier then renders bounded (quantized). This is why object phrases with mass quantifiers behave like accusative objects: they express a bounded quantity together with culminating aspect. Number quantifiers quantify both accusative and partitive objects, in the singular and plural. Such objects are able to express aspect and quantity at two levels: (i) that of the individual component events which concern one entity each; (ii) that of the higher-order event which concerns the whole quantity expressed. I argue that the case marking of the object relates primarily to level (i), while the meaning of the number quantifier relates to level (ii). This is why a number quantifier typically renders the quantity bounded and the aspect culminating at level (ii), even when the partitive case expresses unboundedness or lack of culmination at level (i).

Prototyping Mass Nouns from Students’ Perspective: A Pedagogical Implication

This paper investigates ESL learners’ prototyping mass nouns as a grammatical category. The study is supported by the theory of prototype developed by Rosch in 1970s which plays a wide role in graded categorization of the existent entities in the world. With an expected inspiration from the theory, the prototyping of vocabulary received research attention especially in the pedagogical world. Promisingly, this study seeks to extend the theory to explore a lexico-grammatical category i.e. “mass nouns” from learners’ perspective. Actually, the study was directed to find out which prototypical feature ESL students exploit to prioritize some mass nouns as prototypical examples over some other mass nouns, and how far students’ experientially and pedagogically perceived “prototypes” of mass nouns help them to correctly grouping up nouns as in mass category. The study was focused on shedding some light on a few pedagogical tips and implications in some likely challenging contexts of teaching mass nouns. The study reveals that ESL students shortlist ‘liquids’ (such as water, milk, wine, juice etc.) ‘gases’(such as hydrogen, oxygen etc.), ‘abstract ideas’ (such as childhood, anger, safety, knowledge etc.), ‘powdered substances’ (such as sand, sugar etc.), and some ‘natural entities’ (such as heat, sunshine etc.) as “prototype of mass nouns” which all are un-individuated and sometimes intangible - meaning uncountable - while the learners recognize ‘non-countable’ status as the most important prototypical feature of mass nouns. And, the students isolated ‘rice’, ‘wheat’, ‘hair’, ‘grass’ , ‘cotton’ and ‘coal’ as less prototypical mass nouns based on their intrinsic sense that these mass nouns are plural and they even can be individuated. However, the study reflects that the students’ perceived prototypes are not sufficient as they selected and considered many of mass nouns as so distant members as countable. It was further found that contextual type shifts of mass-count nouns, arbitrary sematic distributions to lexis, cross-linguistic approach to mass nouns, intrinsic and realistic conception, superordinate-subordinate influence, and perception of enumerating status etc. account for students’ this surprise selection of a number of mass nouns as opposite category i.e. count nouns. If pedagogues are non-responsive to these factors and fail to redefine their approaches to mass noun teaching, it is most likely to lead to learners’ grammatical inaccuracy resulted from their determiner-number-mass noun mismatch.

Property concepts in Basaá and the ontology of gradability across category

Theories of gradability and comparison (e.g., Kamp 1975, Cresswell 1977 and many following) have been developed with data from familiar languages like English with adjectives at their core. In many languages, however, the main predicate in truth-conditionally equivalent constructions -- the property concept (PC) (cf. Dixon 1982) -- is of a different category: that of a nominal, which is predicated through possession cross-linguistically. Francez and Koontz-Garboden (2017) argue for a semantics for such nouns as mereologically and size-ordered sets of abstract portions, a treatment that keeps with their exhibition of mass noun behavior, with possessive predications and comparatives involving these nouns built on such a semantics. A semantics of this kind is not standardly assumed for adjectives and constructions built on them in familiar languages, however, raising the question whether the truth-conditional equivalence of the constructions with nouns in languages that have them and the constructions with adjectives in languages that have them should be model-theoretically represented, a position assumed by Menon and Pancheva (2014), or whether this equivalence should be captured in some other way. Based on data from modification, degree questions, subcomparatives, and equatives in Basaá (Bantu; Cameroon), we show that adjectives and the have+PC noun construction must in fact have a type-theoretically identical semantics.

The L2 Acquisition of Mass Nouns by Arab Leaners of English

This study explores how Arab L2 learners of English acquire mass nouns. The mass/count distinction is a morphosyntactically encoded grammatical distinction. Arabic and English have different morphosyntactic realisations of mass nouns. English mass nouns take the form of bare singular whereas Arabic mass nouns can take the definite singular form or the indefinite singular, but never the bare singular form. Therefore, the study explores how Arab learners interpret English mass nouns in light of the morphosyntactic differences between the two languages. 45 upper- and lower-intermediate Arab English learners were given a context-based acceptability judgment task on English mass nouns. It was hypothesised that Arabic learners would be influenced by their first language (L1), causing them to over accept definite singulars and under accept bare singulars as grammatical in mass noun contexts. The findings are consistent with what was hypothesised, except that Arab learners were found to interpret bare singulars accurately. It is argued that learners’ performance is affected by not only L1transfer but also UG accessibility where learners can structure away from L1 and more towards L2. Consequently, the findings implicate that L2 teachers should not teach grammatical structures that come for free and instead they should focus on grammatical structures that cause L2 acquisition difficulty.

Adjectival Nominalization

Chapter 6 focuses on the semantics and metaphysical implications of the semantics of the adjectival nominalization “goodness.” Adjectival nominalizations of the form “F-ness” are almost always mass nouns. The mass noun “goodness” derives gradability of a kind from the gradable adjective that it incorporates. So “goodness” is a gradable adjectival nominalization. Mass nouns are distinguished from count nouns on the basis of two semantic properties, called “semantic cumulativity” and “semantic divisibility.” The denotations of mass nouns are then interpreted in terms of the mereological structure of a join semi-lattice. The denotation of gradable mass nouns incorporate scalar as well as mereological structure. In the case of “goodness,” the elements at the base of the lattice structure are instances of goodness. An instance of goodness is a so-called qua quantitative trope, precisely one degree of purpose serving qua exceeding a second degree of purpose serving, where the latter is a standard of comparison.

Value

The gradable property associated with “good” is value. Chapter 4 pursues the question “What is value?” and does so by linguistic means. The term “value” is a mass noun. This mass noun is polysemous between generic and specific senses; where the former comprises so-called negative, neutral, and positive value; and the latter denotes only positive value. The chapter argues that positive value is purpose serving, which is to say contribution to the realization of a purpose. Consequently, for an entity x to be good is for x to contribute to the realization of a purpose to a significant degree. “Purpose,” as here employed, is a univocal modal term, whose denotation comprises at least four basic kinds: biological and characteristic artificial purposes and ad hoc purposes derived from either intentions or desires. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the relation between value and quality.