Countable Noun

A Countable Noun is a Common Noun that has a Singular Form and a Plural Form, and can be modified by a Numeral Word.

• AKA: Count Noun.
  • …
• Example(s):
  • “egg” ⇒ "the 'egg broke.”, “Five eggs broke.”; “Every egg had a crack.”
• Counter-Example(s):
  • “gravel”, a Mass Noun.
  • “geese”, a Collective Noun.
• See: Noun Pluralization Function.

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References

• http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/countable_noun
  • (OED 1914) a noun that has both singular and plural usage, though not necessarily two different forms.
• (Wikipedia, 2009) ⇒ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Count_noun
  • In linguistics, a count noun (also countable noun) is a noun which can be modified by a numeral and occur in both singular and plural form, as well as co-occurring with quantificational determiners like every, each, several, etc. A mass noun has none of these properties. It can't be modified by a numeral, occur in singular/plural or co-occur with the relevant kind of determiner. Below we see examples of all these properties for the count noun chair and the mass noun furniture. As always in discussion of syntax, a star "*" in front of a sentence indicates that the sentence is ill-formed.

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