Before someone beats me to the punch...

[Charles C Doyle]

Though I remember hearing arguments about which individual characters the movie title referred to--thence the "adjectives" were not being construed as mass nouns.

But the matter of "number" can be confusing--for instance, in the famous line from Dryden's poem:  "None but the brave deserves the fair" (the reference isn't to Indians).  "None" is the singular subject of the singular verb "deserves," but "the brave" is probably to be regarded as "mass" ('brave ones', not 'brave one')--no?

--Charlie

________________________________________
From: American Dialect Society [ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] on behalf of Margaret Lee [mlee303 at YAHOO.COM]
Sent: Friday, March 04, 2011 7:00 AM

And another set of mass nouns: "the good, the bad, and the ugly."

--Margaret Lee

om: Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>=0ATo: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU=0AS=
ent: Thu, March 3, 2011 9:42:03 AM=0ASubject: Re: Before someone beats me t=
o the punch...=0A=0AAt 3:29 AM -0800 3/3/11, Margaret Lee wrote:=0A>The 'my=
 bad' nouning of adjective does not seem to fit the generic=0A>plural form.=
 Your examples seem to refer to humans, animals, and=0A>things? --Margaret =
Lee=0A=0ARight; I don't think that's part of the same productive process at=
=0Aall.=A0 We don't get "a bad" (or at least not freely) meaning "a bad=0At=
hing".=A0 AHD4 has "weighing the bad against the good", both involving=0Ama=
ss nouns (cf. "Don't let the best be the enemy of the good"), but=0A"I did =
(him) a bad" seems marked.=A0 "My bad" strikes me as sui=0Ageneris.=0A=0ALH=
=0A=0A>=A0 ________________________________ ...I meant to say generic plura=
l=0A>*or mass* readings, as in "The rare tends to be more expensive than=0A=
>the plentiful" >Date: Wed, 2 Mar 2011 10:24:49 -0500 >To: American=0A>Dial=
ect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU> >From: Laurence Horn=0A><laurence.horn=
@yale.edu> >Subject: Re: the rare > >I've always been=0A>puzzled by the fac=
t that this only works to yield >generic=0A>plurals-- > >"Give me your tire=
d, your poor,..." >"Ye have the poor=0A>always with you" >"The rain falls o=
n the rich and poor alike" >*The=0A>poor is not faring as well as the rich =
in the current economy. >*A=0A>rich does not want his daughter to marry a p=
oor. >*The poor on the=0A>sidewalk asked me for a handout > >--while in, sa=
y, French, neither=0A>genericity nor plural is required >for the nouning of=
 "(le/un)=0A>pauvre".=A0 This is not a new discovery, >but as I say it's al=
ways=0A>surprised me. > >LH

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org