Mass effect
One of the things I love about English is the quirks of its structure which native speakers aren't consciously aware of, but which bedevil learners. An example is the way it handles mass and count nouns. Maybe you got taught this sort of thing at school, but I never did: so here it is now, some actually useful grammar.
A count noun is the usual kind of noun, which has a singular and a plural form, like 'table': a table, two tables, lots of tables.
A mass noun doesn't have singular and plural form, because the thing it describes isn't quantized into discrete elements. So eg. 'cement': a little bit of cement, two kilograms of cement, lots of cement; but not: one cement, two cements, lots of cements. There is no such word as 'cements'.
Other mass nouns are usually substances, like cement (water, flour, sugar, metal…) or abstracts (cycling, traffic, heat, mathematics… you can't have two kilograms of these, of course, but they're still mass nouns).
Some of them can actually be pluralized (eg. rain is generally a mass noun but one can also talk about 'the rains') but with a different meaning then attached: it doesn't detract from the general mass-noun behaviour. There's also awkward things like 'chicken': when talking about the meat it's a mass noun, but when talking about the animal (or about a set of food orders) it's a count noun.
Mass nouns are not peculiar to English, of course, they exist in lots of languages. But in English there's the curious phenomenon of what might be called faux-mass nouns: ie. count nouns which disguise themselves as mass nouns by appearing not to have different singular and plural forms. An example is 'sheep': you can have one sheep, two sheep, lots of sheep: but not a little bit of sheep, two kilograms of sheep. Awkwardest of all are those which fall into this category and also into the one above, like 'fish': you can have one fish, two fish, lots of fish, but also a little bit of fish, two kilograms of fish.
Any other strange behaviours of noun pluralization come to mind? And those of you who have grammatical understanding of other languages, I'd be interested to learn how it works with those.
A count noun is the usual kind of noun, which has a singular and a plural form, like 'table': a table, two tables, lots of tables.
A mass noun doesn't have singular and plural form, because the thing it describes isn't quantized into discrete elements. So eg. 'cement': a little bit of cement, two kilograms of cement, lots of cement; but not: one cement, two cements, lots of cements. There is no such word as 'cements'.
Other mass nouns are usually substances, like cement (water, flour, sugar, metal…) or abstracts (cycling, traffic, heat, mathematics… you can't have two kilograms of these, of course, but they're still mass nouns).
Some of them can actually be pluralized (eg. rain is generally a mass noun but one can also talk about 'the rains') but with a different meaning then attached: it doesn't detract from the general mass-noun behaviour. There's also awkward things like 'chicken': when talking about the meat it's a mass noun, but when talking about the animal (or about a set of food orders) it's a count noun.
Mass nouns are not peculiar to English, of course, they exist in lots of languages. But in English there's the curious phenomenon of what might be called faux-mass nouns: ie. count nouns which disguise themselves as mass nouns by appearing not to have different singular and plural forms. An example is 'sheep': you can have one sheep, two sheep, lots of sheep: but not a little bit of sheep, two kilograms of sheep. Awkwardest of all are those which fall into this category and also into the one above, like 'fish': you can have one fish, two fish, lots of fish, but also a little bit of fish, two kilograms of fish.
Any other strange behaviours of noun pluralization come to mind? And those of you who have grammatical understanding of other languages, I'd be interested to learn how it works with those.