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Nouns and countability

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 March 2026

Keith Allan
Keith Allan*
Affiliation:
Monash University, Clayton, Victoria, Australia
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Abstract

The customary disjunctive marking of lexical entries for English nouns as [± countable] does not match the fact that the majority can be used both countably and uncountably in different NP environments: this binary opposition is characteristic not of the nouns, but of the NP's which they head. Nevertheless, nouns do have countability preferences; some enter countable environments more readily than others. And not all nouns occur in all kinds of countability environments. A noun's countability preference can be computed by checking its potential for occurrence in a definitive set of countability environments. In the dialect examined here, well-formedness conditions on NP must consider eight levels of countability among English nouns—not, as custom has it, only two.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Language , Volume 56 , Issue 3 , September 1980 , pp. 541 - 567
Copyright
Copyright © 1980 by Linguistic Society of America

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