Nouns and Countability

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, wellformedness conditions on NP must consider eight levels of countability among English nouns-not, as custom has it, only two.*