The Count-Mass Distinction and English Articles

2020

Research on the count/noncount distinction of English nouns has a long history, but the distinction has never been sufficiently described. Count and noncount nouns are defined in two domains: morpho-syntax and semantics. The definition, however, varies from linguist to linguist. In this research, we take the view that the distinction is essentially syntactic, and count nouns are defined morpho-syntactically as those that satisfy two conditions: i) to inflect for number to mark a singularplural contrast and take both a singular and a plural verb that agree with the number of a subject NP (including those with identical singular and plural forms) ; ii) to occur in direct construction with the cardinal numerals. Noncount nouns are defined as those that do not satisfy these two conditions. Research on the count/noncount distinction has been mainly on concrete nouns. Various semantic criteria have been proposed (e.g. atomicity, homogeneity, arbitrary divisibility, boundedness) to identify referential properties that are to be shared by all count nouns or all noncount nouns. For proto-typical count and noncount nouns, a noun's semantic, syntactic and morphological properties are aligned, and the proposed criteria work very well. However, mismatches between countnoncount syntax and semantics are often observed: some nouns have the semantics of a count noun but the syntax of a noncount noun (e.g. furniture, toast) while others have the semantics of a noncount noun but the syntax of a count noun (e.g. cloud, mountain, ripple). None of the proposed criteria sufficiently accounts for the mismatches. Conceptualization (or alternative construals) and communicative function are proposed to account for the mismatches. However, there are some nouns whose count or noncount status cannot be explained by alternative construals or communicative function. When all these criteria fail, grammatical convention remains as the only solution. Little research has been done on abstract nouns, and the proposed criteria for the count/noncount distinction of concrete nouns do not apply to abstract nouns because abstract nouns provide no perceptual information about their referential properties. Also, researchers use their own intuitions to provide examples to support their arguments. It is not hard to find counterexamples since their arguments are based on a very limited number of data. It is necessary to use large corpora such as the Bank of English to explore the count/noncount distinction of abstract nouns by looking into collocational patterns.

The Journal of AsiaTEFL, 2019

Recent developments in the acquisition of third languages (L3A) have only placed an emphasis on the influence of L1 or L2 on L3A (forward transfer). However, this study investigated the role of L1 or L3 in L2A (backward transfer), by focusing on cross-linguistic variations in generic interpretation on plural NPs. We examined how multilingual (L2 and L3) learners interpret nominals in generic contexts. Two experiments (an acceptability judgement task and a truth value judgement task) are conducted to investigate the influence of L1 and L3 on L2A (English) by third language (L3) learners. We looked at whether these learners exhibit backward transfer in the acquisition of generic NPs in English. The results of the two experiments suggest that the influence of L3 is more significant in L2A of English than that of L1. Therefore, in terms of backward transfer, the results are more supportive of the Foreign Language Effect which implies that cognitive similarities play an important role in L2A for L3 learners. In conclusion, for those multilinguals, it is important to factor the L3 (high foreignness) influence when acquiring L2 (high foreignness) because L3 transfer is more important than L1 (non-foreign) transfer.

2015

By the use of gramrriaticality judgment tasks in twe conditions (untimed and rapid), the present study exarnined Japanese EFL learners' explicit and irnplicit knowledge about tl)e couiitability of common and material JapanSociety ofEnglish Language Education However, other researches use different approaches and teminologies to capture L2 learners knowledge representations; for example, Anderson's (1992) declarative and procedural knowledge, and Jiang's (2007) non-integrated and integrated knowledge. Nonetheless, there seems to be agreement that L2 leamers' inconsistent perfbrmance is due to the fact that they have two different types of knowledge; one is conscious and slow to access, and the other is unconscious and quickly accessible. Note that this study does not argue the interface ofthe two, This kind oftheoretical assumption has prevailed in L2 grarnmar acquisition studies (e,g.,

Frontiers in Psychology, 2014

Comprehension and/or production of noun phrases and sentences requires the selection of lexical-syntactic attributes of nouns. These lexical-syntactic attributes include grammatical gender (masculine/feminine/neuter), number (singular/plural) and countability (mass/count). While there has been considerable discussion regarding gender and number, relatively little attention has focused on countability. Therefore, this article reviews empirical evidence for lexical-syntactic specification of nouns for countability. This includes evidence from studies of language production and comprehension with normal speakers and case studies which assess impairments of mass/count nouns in people with acquired brain damage. Current theories of language processing are reviewed and found to be lacking specification regarding countability. Subsequently, the theoretical implications of the empirical studies are discussed in the context of frameworks derived from these accounts of language production and comprehension . The review concludes that there is empirical support for specification of nouns for countability at a lexical-syntactic level.

Ars Linguistica: Linguistic Studies of Shizuoka, Volume 21, 67-88, 2015

This paper reports a study of the frequency of English articles that occur with certain types of noun. While L2 article use has extensively been investigated in relation to semantic contexts (i.e., definiteness, specificity) and L1 effects, yet unexplored is a potential influence from input; namely, how often learners may encounter certain combinations of an article and a noun. Such input additionally serves as a cue for L2 learners to realize that some nouns can equally be count and mass in English (i.e., dual nouns: a cake/cake). The present study aims to determine the extent to which frequency information might correlate with L2 learners’ use of articles as well as whether or not there are enough evidence in input for learners to establish a nominal category for dual nouns. Frequency data is extracted from the British National Corpus (BNC) and controlled to reflect potential input specific to the target learner group of this study, Japanese EFL learners. Results showed that frequency patterns mirror error patterns previously reported in the literature, providing another dimension to explain phenomena in L2 article use. Further implication about input frequency including textual cues for the English mass-count distinction will be discussed.

The concept of noun countability in English poses great difficulty to both EFL and ESL learners alike, especially learners whose first language sees entities differently from English. Traditionally, instruction on this concept comprises an exhaustive list of countable and uncountable nouns and rote-memorization of the list. Cognitive Grammar proposes an alternative view of the English count-mass distinction. Rather than having learners rote-memorize the list, it teaches learners to construe entities as either bounded or unbounded. This paper reports the positive results of an experimental study investigating the effectiveness of incorporating a Cognitive Grammar presentation of the target grammatical concept in an Indonesian EFL classroom. Sixteen Indonesian EFL learners (initially twenty three subjects) aged 16-17 participated in the experiment. They received forty five minutes of instruction on the concept. The study used a pretest-posttest design to measure the effectiveness of this pedagogical treatment. The tests contained forty numbers of forced choice tasks. A Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test was run to analyze the data. Results show that the participants had significant gains from pre to posttest.Learners could make use of the concept presented through a cognitive presentation to determine the countability of English nouns. The pedagogical implication is that English teachers could use this method as an effective alternative to teach English countable and uncountable nouns. The findings lend support to the applicability of Cognitive Grammar theory in second language instruction.

This paper reviews the literature on the mass/count distinction, focusing on the relationship between individuability and countability, and the role of language variation in understanding the mass/count contrast.

Linguistic inquiry, 2010

This article investigates the role of presuppositionality (defined as the presupposition of existence) in the second language (L2) acquisition of English articles. Building upon the proposal in Wexler 2003 that young English-acquiring children overuse the with presuppositional indefinites, this article proposes that presuppositionality also influences article (mis)use in adult L2 acquisition. This proposal is supported by experimental results from the L2 English of adult speakers of Korean, a language with no articles. The experimental findings indicate that presuppositional indefinite contexts trigger overuse of the with indefinites in adult L2 acquisition, as in child L1 acquisition (cf. Wexler 2003). The effects of presuppositionality are teased apart from the effects of other semantic factors previously examined in acquisition, such as scope (Schaeffer and Matthewson 2005) and specificity (Ionin, Ko, and Wexler 2004). The results provide evidence that overuse of the in L2 acquisition is a semantic rather than pragmatic phenomenon. Implications of these findings for overuse of the in L1 acquisition are discussed. This article also has implications for the study of access to Universal Grammar in L2 acquisition, as well as for the number and type of semantic universals underlying article choice crosslinguistically.

In Patricia Cabredo Hofherr (ed.) Languages with and without articles. in press.

Recent literature has mostly emphasized the non-reducibility of the linguistic mass-count distinction to the cognitive atomicity-homogeneity distinction (Chierchia 1998, Rothstein 2010, among others). The present paper argues on the basis of the distribution of bare nouns in two unrelated languages, Karitiana, a native Brazilian language, and (Modern) Hebrew, that the mass-count distinction reflects the cognitive distinction of the individuability of units. Nevertheless, we do not revert to the naïve view that takes this linguistic distinction to reflect a cognitive distinction between homogeneous matter which lacks units for counting and discrete entities which have atomic units and thus can be counted.We argue instead that the linguistic mass-count distintion corresponds to the cognitive distinction between stable or non-stable units with respect to a context. On the basis of Karitiana, we argue first for the general point that countability is independent of a formal linguistic mass-count distinction. Next, on the basis of Hebrew, we substantiate the claim that the linguistic mass-count distinction is based on the contrast between stable and non-stable units relative to a context.

Journal of Humanities and Sciences, 2020

This paper addresses the issue of second language (L2) learners' variability in English articles from the perspective of interaction of context and noun type. While the role of semantic contexts (i.e., definiteness, specificity) is commonly suggested to account for article choices (Ionin, Ko, & Wexler, 2004), some studies have documented different degrees of contextual effects according to the type of noun that follows articles (Snape, 2008; Trenkic, 2008; White, 2009). A forced-choice elicitation task on English articles (the, a, ø) involving count (singular, plural), mass, and flexible nouns (nouns that can equally be interpreted as count and mass) was administered with Japanese learners of English at three different proficiency levels. Results showed that L2 learners are less sensitive to semantics of the context where mass and plural nouns are involved, suggesting that the fluctuation between definiteness and specificity interacts with countability and number of nouns in context. In conclusion, this article argues that L2 learners experience a more prolonged learning difficulty with the count-mass distinction than with definiteness in the acquisition of articles.