Mass Count Distinction in English Language:Multi-dimensional Annotations and Investigation
Yong Fang · Wai-yu yu wai-yu jiaoxue · 2009
English mass nouns differ from count nouns on morphological and syntactic properties.The semantic distinction between mass and count nouns should not be determined solely by the denotations of nouns.Morpho-syntactic feature of nouns +PL is able to assign lexical feature +CT,but must conform to lexical and syntactic rules.The concept of aggregation may serve as an effective tool to illustrate syntactic and semantic features of mass and count nouns.By checking syntactic distribution of nouns,it is found out that nouns without modifiers have no syntactic features of lexical words,and they work much more likely as nominal groups.Some nouns can shift between mass domain and count domain,while some others belong to neither of the two.