Count noun

A count noun is a noun that expresses a meaning that its referent consists of one or more discrete units.

For example, in English, cow is a count noun in I have six cows, because we can count cows; one cow, two cows, three cows, etc.

They can be contrasted with non-count nouns, which either have a meaning that refers to a single mass (mass nouns) or are plural but cannot be divided into units (non-count plurals).

Meaning

The meaning of count nouns considers their referents to consist of discrete units. There may be a single unit, which could be joined by additional units — for example, if I am holding a pen, I can pick up another pen, and then I am holding two pens. There may be a very large number of units, to the point where actually counting them would be ridiculous. I could have a pen collection consisting of thousands of pens, be unaware of exactly how many I have, but continue to use pen as a count noun, to refer to them.

A contrast can be made in some categories between words that are count and words that are non-count. For example:

• Food-related noun phrases such as ∅ cornflakes, ∅ noodles and ∅ nuts are headed by count nouns, but ∅ rice, ∅ popcorn are headed by non-count nouns.
• Clothes words:
  • Shirts, jackets and dresses are count nouns, but clothes, dungarees and pyjamas are non-count plurals
  • Shoes in a pair of shoes, and socks in a pair of socks, are count nouns (we can also have three shoes or three socks); but trousers in a pair of trousers, glasses in a pair of glasses (meaning “eye-glasses”) are non-count (we can't have *three trousers, or *three glasses).

Form

Which nouns can be count nouns

Some noun lemmas may be count in some uses and non-count in others. For example, contrast cake in:

We ate cakes. (count)

We ate cake. (non-count)

Some noun lemmas can’t be employed as count nouns; these are obligatory mass nouns.

It is thus unhelpful to talk about “countable nouns” because count/non-count can only to a specific usage of a noun.

Determiners

Count nouns take an indefinite article in the singular form, in the absence of other determiners; in contrast, non-count nouns take a zero determiner.

Identification

During analysis, it may be necessary to identify whether a noun is a count noun or a non-count noun.

Singular noun phrases

A singular noun phrase contains a count noun as its phrasal head if that head can be expressed with an indefinite article in the absence of all other determiners. For example, the word cow is count in the noun phrase my brown cow, because the following sentences:

My brown cow is a cow. (with indefinite article — makes sense)

*My brown cow is ∅ cow. (with null article — erroneous)

By contrast, in he drank the water, the water is non-count because:

^#The water is a water.

The water is ∅ water.

Plural noun phrases

For plural noun phrases, the parse test is “given its current meaning, does this plural have a singular form?.” For example, the phrase my brown cows has a singular form my brown cow and is count. By contrast, my clothes is non-count because clothes lacks a singular form; *clothe. The vast majority of English plural nouns are count nouns; only a few are non-count; these are uncountable plurals. This leads to a rule of thumb that “Nearly all plurals are countable” — but this rule is somewhat unreliable.

Base plurals

With base plurals, it is sometimes impossible to tell whether it’s count or non-count. For example, the noun phrase my fish might be a non-count singular (generally referring to fish meat) or a count plural (meaning “fish that I possess”).

Pedagogy

Count nouns are often distinguished from non-count nouns in the food category. Some of the classification of count v. non-count is quite arbitrary. This may lead to EFL learners making language errors.

EFL learners are often taught that much, many, little and few are to do with countable and uncountable nouns. This is incorrect and misleading.