Calculating Countability — A Corpus-Based, Mereological Study of the Count/Mass Distinction of a Group of English Nouns

Abstract

Calculating Countability — A Corpus-Based, Mereological Study of the Count/Mass Distinction of a Group of English Nouns

A mereological, part-whole perspective is applied in a corpus-based study of noun countability to explain why some English nouns like peas, flowers and pebbles are countable and others like maize, grass and gravel are not, despite the fact that the size and other physical qualities of their referents are practically equal. The countability of a group of English nouns is linked with the average quantity of their referents in random British National Corpus samples.