COUNT/UNCOUNT NOUNS [was FW: "needlepoint" v.]

[Thomas Paikeday]

Hi All,

This is a serious comment, unlike the jocular one I recently made about
analogical sound changes in related languages.

Count/Uncount nouns has interested me very much as a lexicographer.
While the distinction is useful for ESL students (and more so for EFL
students), I think it has little merit as a linguistic distinction.

Countability, I believe, is largely in the mind of the counter, in the
concept involved in the usage; there should not be any hard and fast
rules about it for expert users of the language.

The Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary (Hornby and his successors)
have made much of the distinction. But they seeem to give the lie to it
when certain nouns and senses are labelled (C,U), as "accompaniment" and
"acerbity." In the notes to OALD (mine is the 1996 edition, study pages
B1-3), they labour the point using syntactical distinctions, but I
wonder how it works in practice. If it does, to what extent? Is the
distinction worth making? I haven't had the privilege of teaching ESL or
EFL, but I would contend that even for those who espouse the distinction
as something useful, it is mainly conceptual.

About "solipsisms," I think Buckley should be given the benefit of his
own thinking on the point at issue. If solipsism is a subjective
idealism that denies that the human mind has any valid ground for
believing in the existence of anything but itself (I didn't say that),
why not solipsisms? Or fanaticisms, impressionisms, nationalisms, or any
other isms for that matter? These are subtle conceptual distinctions
made by razon-sharp minds. But I am not a fan of Buckley.

THOMAS PAIKEDAY
P.S. I just read Jesse's and Doug Wilson's comments. The evidence seems
to support my contention.


Fred Shapiro wrote:
>
> Is "solipsism" a count noun?  Isn't likely that Buckley really meant
> "solecisms" instead of "solipsisms"?
>
> Fred
>
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