Work on regional variation in mass/count nouns?

[Joseph Salmons]

In fact, Jan Freeman, who writes "The Word" for the Boston Globe,
just did a piece on 'a coffee' recently:
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2007/04/22/coffee/

Joe


On May 15, 2007, at 9:35 AM, Mark A. Mandel wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Mark A. Mandel" <mamandel at LDC.UPENN.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: Work on regional variation in mass/count nouns?
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> IMHO the beer examples need no dialectal or cultural explanation.
> Words for
> drinkables, which are normally non-count nouns, are often treated
> as count
> nouns = 'a serving/portion of...'.
>
>  - Two large coffees and a medium decaf to go, please.
>  - The big guy ordered a bourbon.
>
> -- Mark
> [This text prepared with Dragon NaturallySpeaking.]
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