The grammar of mass and count nouns

Mass nouns are often the names of substances like water, wood and air that we can measure on a continuous scale. Count nouns, on the other hand, generally label things that come in discrete wholes that we can count like children, houses and hats. To put it simply, the distinction between mass and count is one between stuff and things.

You can usually guess whether a noun will be of the mass or count variety from its meaning, but what ultimately determines whether a word is classified as a mass noun or count noun is the way it functions grammatically.

Mass nouns are always singular, so like singular count nouns, they trigger singular agreement. Mass nouns also have something in common with plural count nouns because continuous substances and groups of countable objects can both vary in quantity. These factors partly explain which determiners you can use with mass nouns and how they compare with the determiners you can use with singular and plural count nouns:

Nouns: WEDDING vs. MARRIAGE

A wedding is the ritual celebration that marks the beginning of a marriage. A marriage is something that begins with a wedding ceremony and is ended by death or divorce.

Examples:

• Most couples have their weddings in the summertime.
• Erica and Michael have the sort of marriage that brings out the best in people because they experience each other's joy as their own.

Some other ways of talking about weddings:

• Most couples get married in the summertime.
• Most couples wed in the summertime.
• Most couples marry in the summertime.
• Most couples tie the knot in the summertime.
• Most couples get hitched in the summertime.
• Most couples walk down the aisle in the summertime.
• Most couples take their nuptials in the summertime.

Weirdness with plurals

The grammatical distinction between singular and plural does not map perfectly onto the meanings one and more than one.

One way to check whether a noun phrase is singular or plural is by seeing whether it triggers singular or plural agreement with a verb when it appears as the subject of a sentence:

• Singular: This monkey likes bananas. [and not This monkey like...]
• Plural: These monkeys like bananas. [and not These monkeys likes...]

Another way, also illustrated in the above examples, is by looking at whether a singular or plural determiner is used (in these examples, the determiner this is singular and the determiner these is plural), though with a determiner like the, the form doesn't change, and there are a few cases where the determiner appears to be singular, but plural agreement is triggered:

• Plural: A few/dozen/hundred/million monkeys like bananas.