2.1 Introduction
Traditional terminology suggests that count nouns can be count whereas mass nouns cannot and need to be measured. Or, to put it differently, a characteristic view of the mass-count distinction is that a count noun is able to individuate an object and a mass noun needs an individuating modification: (1a) clearly speaks of three items of fruit and (1b) is ungrammatical unless glasses of or another modifier of that kind is added.
This seems to propose that count nouns divide reference but mass nouns do not.
(1) a. The child ate three apples.
b. The child had three *(glasses of) water(s).
c. The child ate apples.
d. The child had some water.
What about (1c) then? Apples does not imply that the child had a particular number of apples, not even that it had a whole apple. The only thing that is actually said is that the child had some bits and pieces of apple, leaving open the exact
quantity and form of those bits and pieces (cf. also Borer 2005:120f). The same applies to water in (1d): it is completely unclear how much water the child had, a sip, a whole glass, or just a drop. With respect to divided entities, the semantic output of apples and water in (1) seems to be quite similar; the morphological form, however, shows a clear difference: apples is marked with the plural –s and water is not. In view of this, one could suggest that the difference between apples in (1c) and water in (1d) is one of ‘type of stuff’ and does not demonstrate a contrast between non-countable stuff and non-countable things as such.
Questions that instantly arise are i) What is the nature of mass nouns? Are mass nouns inherently plural or singular? Is the difference between mass nouns and count nouns a semantic one or rather ontological in nature? ii) Can we do without categorizing nouns into mass and count nouns? iii) What is the function of the plural marker? Due to the different syntactic behaviour and variation in interpretation of mass and count nouns, this is an important issue that needs to be addressed in the syntax of the DP.
If it is supposed that the dichotomy count noun vs. mass noun is veritable with count nouns denoting/dividing individual objects, then mass nouns per definitionem cannot denote or divide individual objects but only masses thereof. This is why mass nouns are seen as incompatible with plural markers and quantifying modifiers.
(2) a. cars
b. *sands
c. three cars
d. *three sands
This view is problematic in some ways. First, as seen above, bare countable plurals do not ‘count’ objects. Second, the class of mass nouns comprises different types of nouns. Nouns such as furniture and baggage differ from nouns such as wine in that they consist of countable items. The amount of wine cannot be count but
needs to be measured, and then a number can be assigned to the amount14. Does this suggest that bare count plurals such as apples behave like mass nouns of the type furniture?
Laycock (1979) suggests that "what underlies the kinship of plural count nouns and non-count nouns is the fact that they are both semantically non-singular”
(cited in Laycock 2004:6). In other words, the inability to individuate shared by bare countable plurals and mass nouns corresponds to the attribute of being non-singular, i.e. they are neither singular nor plural. In effect, he suggests that the difference between bare countable plurals and mass nouns is not an ontological difference but a semantic one15.
2.2 The classification of nouns
Bare plurals and mass nouns show complex properties resulting in various readings.
Examples (3) to (5) illustrate the diverging patterns across Germanic and Romance, which may shed some light on the structure of determiners and DPs.
The examples below show (bare) plurals with an existential reading (3), that is, there are some rabbits and they are in the garden, and a generic reading (4), i.e., any rabbit characteristically loves hay. In Romance, the existential reading of 'bare plurals' (3a) is expressed differently. Spanish (3b) adds a plural indefinite article, whereas French (3c; and Italian) resorts to partitive constructions (cf. also chapter 5).
For generic interpretations (4), similar patterns are employed. Whereas Germanic
14 Perridon (p.c.) argues that the distinction between these two kinds of mass nouns is not relevant for the analysis of the semantic structure of a language. The only relevant distinction is to differentiate between dividua and individua, where dividua are used for a totality as well as for its parts. From a semantics-theoretic perspective, this observation is of course true. In my view, however, the distinction between so-called substance mass nouns like water and object mass nouns like furniture is important because from very early on children quantify object mass nouns with count nouns by number, and substance mass nouns by volume (Barner & Snedeker 2005). Object mass nouns are language specific, however, this is not really of importance if nouns are not classified in the first place. In other words, there is no complete one-to-one correspondence between logical considerations of semantic theory regarding part-whole relations and conceptual correlates of the mass-count distinction. (see section 5 of this chapter).
15 To emphasize this, Laycock (2004) argues that the contrast between, for instance, clothes and
makes use of bare plurals, Romance languages introduce a definite article. The latter is also possible, although slightly marked, in Germanic.
(3) a. Det finnes harer i hagen. Norwegian There are rabbit.PL in garden-DEF
b. Hay (unos) conejos en el jardín. Spanish There are INDEF.PL rabbit.PL in the garden.
c. Il y a des lapins dans le jardin. French There are PART rabbit.PL in the garden.
‘There are rabbits in the garden.’
(4) a. Harer liker høy. Norwegian
rabbit.PL like hay
b. Los conejos aman el heno. Spanish
DEF.PL rabbit.PL love DEF hay
c. Les lapins aiment le foin. French
DEF.PL rabbit.PL love DEF hay
‘Rabbits love hay’.
The mass nouns in (5) have an existential reading; those in (6), a generic one.
The patterns found correspond to those in (3) and (4). So what we get is the same behaviour for mass nouns and bare plural count nouns in Germanic. In Romance, on the other hand, inner-linguistic variation occurs with existential interpretation for bare nominals (count and mass) in Spanish and Italian as opposed to French, which uses partitive constructions.
(5) a. Det er smør i kjøleskapet. Norwegian There is butter in fridge-DEF
b. La mantequilla esta en el refrigerador. Spanish
DEF butter is in DEF fridge
c. Le beurre est dans le frigidaire. French
DEF butter is in DEF fridge ‘Butter is in the fridge.’
(6) a. Hun hater smør. Norwegian
she hates butter
b. (Ella) odia la mantequilla. Spanish she hates DEF butter
c. Elle déteste le beurre. French
she hates DEF butter
‘She hates butter.’
Two tentative conclusions are in order here. First, determiner systems across languages seem to differ. That is, the distribution of determiners and the semantic content of determiners is not identical across languages. Second, there seems to be no clear-cut distinction with respect to the classification of nouns as mass or count, neither within a language nor cross-linguistically. Bare count plurals behave like mass nouns in Germanic, and in Romance inner-linguistic variation is found concerning the realization of existential readings of nouns.
As mentioned above, Laycock (1979) suggests that bare countable nouns and mass nouns are neither singular nor plural. This is an important issue concerning the structure of the DP. The following paragraphs will hopefully shed some light on this discussion.