A Student's Introduction to English Grammar

§2.2 Count and non-count nouns 87

The meaning distinction between count and non-count

A count noun generally denotes a class of individual entities of the same kind. The

count noun table, for example, denotes the whole class of tables (one table provides

a way of referring to a single member of the class, two tables talks about two mem­

bers, and so on). An individual member of this class cannot be divided into smaller

entities of the same kind as itself. That is, a table can be chopped up into smaller

parts, but those parts are not themselves tables. Likewise, if you cut a loaf in half,

what you have is not two loaves, but two halves of a loaf.

Non-count nouns typically have the opposite property. A good number of them

denote physical substances that can be divided into smaller amounts of the same

kind. If you cut up some bread, the pieces can still be described by the non-count

noun bread. If you take some wood and cut it into shorter lengths, these can still be

referred to by means of the non-count noun wood -the same noun is applicable to

the same stuff in smaller quantities.

Marking of the count vs non-count distinction

In many but by no means all cases, grammatical features of the NP force or strongly

favour either a count or a non-count interpretation.

(a) Plurality favours the count interpretation

A plural head noun will generally indicate a count interpretation. In She described

the improvements they had made, for example, we interpret improvements in a count

sense like that of [13iva] (/ suggested a fe w im provements) rather than the non-count

sense of [l3ivb] (There 's been little improvement). That is, it implies a set of sepa­

rable, individual improvements that you could count. As noted above, there are

some non-count plural nouns, like remains, but they are restricted to a relatively

small number of particular lexemes.

(b) Singular common noun head with no determiner favours the

non-count interpretation

In general, common nouns can occur in the singular without a determiner only if

they have a non-count interpretation. That's why we get these contrasts:

[ 1 4] i a. * She was reading book.

ii a. *We made table.

b. She was drinking water.

h. We made progress.

Book and table normally have count interpretations, and so the [a] examples are
inadmissible, whereas non-count water and progress occur readily without a deter­
miner because they're interpreted in a non-count sense. Count nouns are found
without determiners only in a very limited range of special syntactic constructions.
Two of them are illustrated in [15]:

[ 1 5] a. Who wants to be treasurer?

ii a. They were living together as

husband and wife.

h. * Who wants to be millionaire?

h. *I've met husband, but J don 't think

I've ever seen him with wife.