Confounding of Collective Noun and Mass Noun
There is often confusion about the two different concepts of collective noun and mass noun. Generally, collective nouns are not mass nouns, but rather are a special subset of count nouns. However, the term "collective noun" is often used to mean "mass noun" (even in some dictionaries), because users confound two different kinds of verb number invariability: (a) that seen with mass nouns such as "water" or "furniture", with which only singular verb forms are used because the constituent matter is grammatically nondiscrete (although it may or may not be etically nondiscrete); and (b) that seen with collective nouns, which is the result of the metonymical shift between the group and its (both grammatically and etically) discrete constituents.
Some words, including "mathematics" and "physics", have developed true mass-noun senses despite having grown from count-noun roots.
Read more about this topic: Mass Noun
Famous quotes containing the words confounding of, confounding, collective, noun and/or mass:
“Murder in the murderer is no such ruinous thought as poets and romancers will have it; it does not unsettle him, or fright him from his ordinary notice of trifles: it is an act quite easy to be contemplated, but in its sequel, it turns out to be a horrible jangle and confounding of all relations.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Murder in the murderer is no such ruinous thought as poets and romancers will have it; it does not unsettle him, or fright him from his ordinary notice of trifles: it is an act quite easy to be contemplated, but in its sequel, it turns out to be a horrible jangle and confounding of all relations.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
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—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
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