I am most relieved that you can't. CS made a useful contribution to this discussion. It's not a question of starting another thread - the comment was relevant to this thread.If you know that it sounds cruel, but you want to discuss it start your own new thread then. If I could I would delete your reply.
This has been an area I've been struggling with myself. I was wondering whether there is a comprehensive online source that gives us ALL of the nouns that can be both countable and uncountable. I'd greatly appreciate your help.
I do believe that if you think hard enough you can make any noun countable and any noun uncountable. It's just a matter of making up a suitable context. For some nouns such contexts would probably have to be extremely unlikely though.
Charcoal demands a degree of courage on the part of the artist; pencil is more forgiving.Well, let's take the word "pencil", for example. Can it be uncountable?
Yes, that one I agree with! But, I mean, there ARE nouns that can NEVER be countable or nouns that can never be uncountable, aren't there?
I agree. You cannot count water because that wouldn't make sense. You can count the water molecules.
It CAN be countable as a bottle of water.
Good. It was one you set up as a challenge, and it wasn't so hard to find an example.Yes, that one I agree with!
Well, I can't at the moment come up with a convincing context for 'a furniture'. That doesn't mean there isn't one.But, I mean, there ARE nouns that can NEVER be countable or nouns that can never be uncountable, aren't there?
The idea of nouns being used countably and/or non-countably can be very useful. Any attempt to claim that all nouns are either countable or non-countable is doomed to failure,Someone had to do some subsuming to organize things.
No. All grammatical terminology is but an attempt to help us describe language. There is for example, no such thing as a noun. 'Noun' is simply a very useful label to apply to one of a group of words that generally function in a similar way.Saying that countable/uncountable nouns are a figment of our imagination is but a stretch, isn't it?
Russian doesn't have articles. But it has verb conjugations and noun declensions, which might seem extremely abstruse to a non-native speaker. WE NEED THOSE RULES - WE NEED THEM!
Well, I think it's a marginal example. Note that omtting the article wouldn't do any harm to the meaning. And I actually think most native speakers would not use the article there. But I'm not sure about it.By the way, that "furniture" example should shown to any native speaker whose English instruction books are used all over the world. Personally, I kinda like it! But it totally debunks certain theories non-native learners of English have been following for centuries!
Well, I think it's a marginal example. Note that omtting the article wouldn't do any harm to the meaning. And I actually think most native speakers would not use the article there. But I'm not sure about it.
I'd just like to come back to this.I do believe that if you think hard enough you can make any noun countable and any noun uncountable. It's just a matter of making up a suitable context. For some nouns such contexts would probably have to be extremely unlikely though.
This seems to me to be an attempt to turn a useful guideline into a scientific law. Once we walk down that slippery slope we are, in my opinion, just creating future problems for learners.But, I mean, there ARE nouns that can NEVER be countable or nouns that can never be uncountable, aren't there?
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