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Obligatory mass noun
An obligatory mass noun is a noun lemma that can only be used as a mass noun.
In English, examples include words like information, furniture, etc. There’s also a group of words that are nearly always mass nouns, such as evidence, which can be safely taught as being always singular.
As such, these are defective nouns, as they only have a singular form; they don’t have a plural form. They are also always non-count, so they can’t be determined by an indefinite article (a/an), but take a zero article if need be. e.g. ∅ information, not *an information.
Pedagogy[edit | edit source]
Learner errors[edit | edit source]
English language learners will often incorrectly pluralise mass nouns. Common examples include *furnitures, *informations, etc. It may well be that these words are plurals in their L1. For example, information is countable in French; des informations.
Learners may also use an indefinite article with a mass noun. For example, in French un parking[1] is a loanword from English meaning “a car park” or “parking space;” learners may incorrectly translate it back into English as *a parking, whereas in English parking is an obligatory mass noun.[2] If this error is made, it may be a covert error unless an indefinite article is used, making it an overt error.
