LEO: Literacy Education Online Count and Noncount Nouns

Knowing the difference between count and noncount nouns will help you do the following:

• Use the noun plural ending -s correctly

• Use the appropriate type of article: definite (the) or indefinite (a or an)

• Use words that express quantities, such as little, much, . . .

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Count vs. Noncount

Count nouns refer to things that can be divided up into smaller units which are separate and distinct from one another. They usually refer to what can individually be seen or heard:

table chair word remark

finger bottle award candidate

Noncount nouns refer to things that cannot be counted because they are regarded as wholes which cannot be divided into parts. They often refer to abstractions and occasionally have a collective meaning:

anger furniture warmth leisure

education courage progress weather

Illustration: Think of the batter from which a cake is made. Before putting the batter into the oven, you cannot divide it into its parts because it is a liquid mix. Once it has been baked, however, it becomes solid enough to be cut into pieces. Think of noncount nouns as the batter which forms a mass, and think of the pieces of cake as the count nouns which may be numbered and distributed.

Pluralizing

The Rules

• Count nouns can be pluralized by adding a final -s to the nouns.

• Noncount nouns cannot be not pluralized at all.

Exception: The rule needs to be slightly revised for a number of nouns. Certain nouns in English belong to both classes: they have both a noncount and a count meaning. Normally, the noncount meaning is abstract and general, and the count meaning is concrete and specific.

Compare the changes in meaning of the following nouns if they work as count or noncount nouns:

Special Case: A special case is the use of the mass/count distinction for the purpose of classification. The nouns which function both ways mainly denote foods and beverages: food(s), drink(s), wine(s), bread(s), coffee(s), and fruit(s).

Examples:

A Revision of the RulesThe exceptions require that the rule for pluralizing be revised: count nouns and nouns used in a count sense can be pluralized; noncount nouns and nouns used in a noncount sense cannot.

Articles

Choosing which article to use with a noun is a complex matter because the range of choices depends on whether the noun in question is count or noncount, singular or plural.

The following chart shows which articles go together with which kinds of nouns. The demonstratives (this, that, these, those) have been included because they also mark the noun they modify as definite or specific.

Note: Noncount nouns are always singular.