The Semantics of Mass‐Predicates

‘gold’, ‘trash’, ‘gravel’, ‘clothing’, ‘furniture’, ‘music’, and ‘information’. 1 Some standardly have only count-occurrences, e.g. ‘thunderstorm’, ‘river’, ‘person’, ‘circle’, ‘molecule’, ‘word’, ‘line’, and ‘definition’. Others standardly have both kinds of occurrences, e.g. ‘hair’, ‘chicken’, ‘carrot’, ‘apple’, ‘proof’ and ‘truth’. In each group, there are some nouns which denote concrete things ~e.g. ‘snow’, ‘river’, ‘chicken’ ! and some which denote abstract entities ~e.g. ‘information’, ‘line’, ‘proof’ !. 2