Cover not available
Article published In:
Linguistic Constructions
Edited by Beata Trawiński, Marc Kupietz and Kristel Proost
[Languages in Contrast 24:2] 2024
► pp. 297–323

The mass/count distinction in nouns for foodstuffs

A contrastive view

ORCID logo | University of Stuttgart, Germany
Languages show variation in the encoding of plurality in the domain of foodstuffs. Some foodstuffs are lexicalized by singular mass nouns (e.g., garlic) and others by plural count nouns (e.g., beans). In the paper it is argued on the basis of German and Russian that there is no difference in meaning between these two forms: both denote aggregates as clusters of objects. Since objects are built into clusters, they are inaccessible for counting and both types of nouns uniformly behave like mass nouns. Such a uniform behavior would be unexplainable if these forms differed in meaning and the plural form were a regular count plural. This investigation suggests that two types of plural have to be distinguished: the mass aggregate plural, which indicates a clustered plurality of objects, and the count plural, which designates sets of disjoined objects. Regular plural markers may in principle be ambiguous between these two interpretations. However, if a plural marker is attached to a singulative or unit-denoting morpheme of a noun, the plural is unambiguously interpreted as count plural. The mass aggregate plural may receive a special morphological marking in some languages, as in Russian.
Keywords: mass/count distinction, plural, collectives, aggregate nouns, German/Russian
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Aggregate mass nouns vs. plurals
    • 2.1Aggregate mass nouns: Grammatical properties
    • 2.2Mereotopological analysis of aggregate mass nouns
    • 2.3Plural foodstuff-denoting nouns
  • 3.Plural nouns as aggregate denotations in German
    • 3.1Measuring vs. counting
    • 3.2Non-individuating quantifier viel ‘much’
    • 3.3Combination with classifiers
    • 3.4Adjectival modification of units in a plurality context
  • 4.Plural nouns as aggregate denotations in Russian
    • 4.1Measuring vs. counting
    • 4.2Singulative formation
    • 4.3Combination with classifiers
    • 4.4Adjectival modification of units in a plurality context
  • 5.Discussion of results: Aggregates and two types of plural
    • 5.1Denotation of aggregates in German vs. Russian
    • 5.2Marking of aggregate plurals in Italian and Russian
    • 5.3Count plurals
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Sources
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
Published online: 11 October 2024
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/lic.00048.gei
References (34)
References
Acquaviva, P. 2004. Plural mass nouns and the compositionality of number. Verbum 26(4): 387–401. Available at [URL] [last accessed 20 June 2024].
2008. Lexical plurals. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2015. Singulatives. In Word-Formation. An international handbook for the languages of Europe, P. O. Müller, I. Ohnheiser, S. Olsen and F. Rainer (eds), Vol. 21, 1171–1182. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter Mouton.Google Scholar
Acquaviva, P. and M. Daniel. 2022. Number in grammar: results and perspectives. In Number in the World’s Languages, P. Acquaviva and M. Daniel (eds), 833–910. Berlin/Boston: Mouton De Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Alexiadou, A. 2015. Deriving Fake Mass Nouns. In Proceedings of NELS 451. Amherst, MA: GSLA. 11–24.Google Scholar
Chierchia, G. 2010. Mass nouns, vagueness and semantic variation. Synthese 174(1): 99–149. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Corbett, G. G. 2000. Number. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dudenredaktion (eds) 2009. Die Grammatik. Mannheim: Dudenverlag.Google Scholar
Geist, L. 2021. The Diminutive Suffix -k- in Russian and Individuation: An Empirical Investigation. Paper presented at Dissecting Morphological Theory: Diminutivization workshop at the 46th Austrian Linguistics Conference (ÖLT) . Vienna, 11–12 Dec. 2021.
(in prep.). Mass Plurals in German: An Empirical Study. Manuscript University of Stuttgart.
2024. The mass/count distinction in nouns for foodstuffs (Supplementary information). Available at [URL] [last accessed 20 June 2024]
Geist, L. and Błaszczak, J. (in press). Distributed Plural hypothesis in Russian and Polish. In Syntax, Semantics, and Lexicon. Papers by and in Honor of Ilse Zimmermann, Ł. Jędrzejowski, C. Umbach and K. Schwabe (eds). Berlin: Language Science Press (Open Slavic Linguistics).
Geist, L., Kagan, O. and Erschler, D. 2023. Mass-Count Distinction and the Russian Singulative Suffix -in- . Journal of Slavic Linguistics 31(30): 1–16. Available at [URL] [last accessed 20 June 2024].
Grimm, S. 2012. Number and Individuation. PhD thesis, Stanford University.
Gunkel, L., Murelli, A., Schlotthauer, S., Wiese, B. and Zifonun, G. 2017. Grammatik des Deutschen im Europäischen Vergleich. Das Nominal. Teilband I: Funktionale Domänen, Wort und Wortklassen. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Haspelmath, M. and Karjus, A. 2017. Explaining Asymmetries in Number marking: Singulatives, Pluratives, and Usage Frequency. Linguistics 55(6), 1213–1235. Available at [URL] [last accessed 20 June 2024].
Kagan, O. and Nurmio, S. 2024. Diminutive or singulative? The suffixes -in and -k in Russian. In Diminutives across Languages, Theoretical Frameworks and Linguistic Domains, S. Manova, L. Grestenberger, and K. Korecky-Kröll (eds), 65–88. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter Mouton. Available at DOI logo [last accessed 20 June 2024].Google Scholar
Khrizman, K. 2016. Numerous Issues in the Semantics of Numeral Constructions in Russian. PhD thesis, Bar-Ilan University.
Kupietz, M., Lüngen, H., Kamocki, P. and Witt, A. 2018. The German Reference Corpus DeReKo: New Developments — New Opportunities. In Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC 2018. Miyazaki (Japan): European Language Resources Association (ELRA), 4353–4360. Available at [URL] [last accessed 26 June 2024]
Mathieu, É. 2012. Flavors of Division. Linguistic Inquiry 431, 650–679. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2014. Many a plural. In Weak Referentiality, A. Aguilar-Guevara, B. Le Bruyn and J. Zwart (eds), 157–181. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mihatsch, W. 2016. Collectives, Object Mass Nouns and Individual Count Nouns. Lingvisticæ Investigationes 39(2): 289–308. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Musatov, V. N. 2015. Singuljativy s sovremennov russkom jazyke. Moscow: Flinta.Google Scholar
Rothstein, S. 2011. Counting, Measuring and the Semantics of Classifiers. Baltic International Yearbook of Cognition, Logic and Communication 61, Article 15, 1–42. Available at DOI logo [last accessed 20 June 2024].Google Scholar
2016. Counting and Measuring: A Theoretical and Crosslinguistic Account. Baltic International Yearbook of Cognition, Logic and Communication 111, Article 8, 1–49. Available at DOI logo [last accessed 26 June 2024].Google Scholar
Savčuk, S. O., Arxangelʹskij, T. A., Bonč-Osmolovskaja, A. A., Donina, O. V., Kuznecova, Ju. N., Ljaševskaja, O. N., Orexov, B. V. and Podrjadčikova, M. V. 2024. Nacionalʹnyj korpus russkogo jazyka 2.0: novye vozmožnosti i perspektivy razvitija. Voprosy jazykoznanija 2024, 21, 7–34. Available at DOI logo [last accessed 26 June 2024].Google Scholar
Schwarzschild, R. 2011. Stubborn Distributivity, Multiparticipant Nouns and the Count/Mass Distinction. In Proceedings of NELS 391. Amherst: GLSA Publications, University of Massachusetts. 661–678Google Scholar
Stolz, T. 2001. Singulative-Collective: Natural Morphology and Stable Classes in Welsh Number Inflexion on Nouns. Sprachtypologie und Universalienforschung 54(1): 52–76.Google Scholar
Sutton, P. R. and Filip, H. 2021. The Count/Mass Distinction for Granular Nouns. In Countability in Natural Language, H. Filip (ed). Cambridge: Cambrige University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Švedova, N. Ju. et al. (eds). 1980. Russkaja grammatika. Moskva: Rossijskaja akademija nauk.Google Scholar
Vries, H. de. 2020. Collective Nouns. In The Oxford Handbook of Grammatical Number, P. C. Hofherr and J. Doetjes (eds), 257–274. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Wągiel, M. 2021. Slaic Derived Collective Nouns as Spatial and Social Clusters. In Formal Approaches to Number in Slavic and Beyond, M. Dočekal and M. Wągiel (eds), 175–205. Berlin: Language Science Press.Google Scholar
Wągiel, M. and Shlikhutka, N. 2023. Clustering and Declustering Things: The Meaning of Collective and Singulative Morphology in Ukrainian. In Proceedings of Semantics and Linguistic Theory 33 1. Washington, DC: Linguistic Society of America. 194–214.Google Scholar
Wierzbicka, A. 1988. The Semantics of Grammar. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar