Count nouns can
be counted. E.g. coins, jobs, etc. Noncount nouns
can't. E.g. money, work, etc. Whether
a noun is count or noncount affects the articles and adjectives used with
it, as well as subject/verb agreement.
Count Nouns
A singular count noun must be preceded by an article (a, an, the),
a possessive adjective (the company's, Mark's, etc.) or a possessive pronoun
(my, your, her, his, its, our, their).
A plural count noun
is often, but not always, preceded by the definite article (the).
Noncount Nouns
Noncount nouns do not have plural forms. They take the singular forms
of verbs and have to be counted with quantifiers
(a lot of, much, etc.) A or an can't be used with noncount
nouns. However, they can be used with phrases like a piece of ...,
a bottle of ..., etc.
There are several
types of noncount nouns:
abstract
ideas - power, wealth, truth
areas of
study - architecture, science, history
fluids
- water, gasoline, alcohol
gerunds
- working, traveling, managing
languages
- English, German, Japanese
solids
- silver, ice, steel
some natural
occurrences - sunlight, fog, gravity
things
with individual particles - salt, sugar, dust
types of
sports - soccer, tennis, football
whole groups
made up of similar things - traffic, food, paper
Some nouns can be
count and noncount. When this is possible the meanings of the words
are different. For example:
"capital" means
"a large letter" or "the official seat of government of a country"
(count)
"capital" also means "money or wealth used in trade" (non-count)
"interest" means "a thing you like to do or participate in" (count)
"interest" also means "money paid for the use of money" (non-count)
Quantifiers
There are a number
of different quantifiers.
One, each
and every are only used with singular count nouns.
The following
are only used with plural count nouns: many, both, several, a number
of, two, three, etc.
A little,
much and a great deal of are used with noncount nouns.
Not any, no,
some, a lot of, lots of, plenty, most and all can be used
with count and noncount nouns.
Here are some
examples of noncount nouns.
advice
anger
attire
behavior
capital
cash
caution
clothing
common sense
confidence
courage
crime
despair
employment
engineering
entertainment
equipment
experience
furniture
gas / gasoline
health
help
honesty
humidity
information
insurance
intelligence
interest
justice
knowledge
machinery
mail
merchandise
money
news
optimism
paper
paperwork
patience
pay
permission
pessimism
pollution
poverty
power
praise
produce
progress
propaganda
remorse
research
satisfaction
traffic
transportation
trash
truth
unemployment
violence
water
wealth
weather
work