The Comparison of the Countable and Uncountable Nouns
I.
The Historical Aspect
There is an indiscerptible relationship between the meaning and the grammatical
usage of a word, which is illustrated by the fact that vocabulary supplies the materials
of wording and phrasing and grammar provides the rules of arranging the materials.
As Leonard Bloomfield says, “Dictionary is the appendix of the grammar in fact. That
is, it is the appendix of a series of fundamental irregular changes.” Therefore, the
dictionary should provide the grammatical information of the entries, mainly the
changes of the word forms and sentence patterns. For example, for a verb, which
group does it belong to? Namely, is it a linking verb, transitive verb, or intransitive
verb? Can it be used in passive voice? And so on. For a noun, does it a countable noun
or uncountable noun? Is its plural form regular? If it is not, what is its irregular plural
form? And etc. However, this grammatical information was not supplied in the
previous dictionaries until the learners’ dictionaries appeared.
The distinction between‘countable’and‘uncountable’nouns, first recognized
by Jespersen, was introduced initially by Harold E. Palmer, a leading figure in the
twentieth century history of English teaching in his great book, A Grammar of English
Words, which is a ‘seminal encoding dictionary that points the way forward by
providing a systematic account of complementation.’Harold Palmer’s analytical
interests in countable and uncountable nouns can be traced back to the period in
Belgium when he first became aware of the vital importance of structural (or function)
words in the learning of English, and he drew practical inspiration from his historic
insights. In 1926 he published the article‘The noun complex’, which is strikingly
modern, both in its terminology and its analytical approach. The article is concerned
with the subclassification of nouns, and straight away Palmer lays down the cardinal
principle that to arrive at such a subclassification, the analyst must take account of
‘determinative’usage, since determinatives show ‘to what extent the noun is
definite or indefinite, and what sort of definiteness or indefiniteness is to be
understood’.He drew attention to the now familiar distinction between ‘countable’
and ‘uncountable ’nouns and so on.
Palmer focused in his introductory comments on crucial differences, semantic as
well as syntactic, between the categories. Three points are of special interest in
Hornby’s handling of the contrast. As chief editor of a medium-sized, multi-purpose
dictionary, Hornby was much more subject than Palmer had been to pressures of
space, and it was Hornby who first introduced the abbreviations [C] and [U]. As for
placement, the labels were positioned in a way similar to that of the verb-patterns.
Thus, where a noun had more than one sense and these differed in terms of
countability, the relevant labels were inserted after the sense numbers, as here:
glass…noun 1 [U] a hard usually transparent, substance used…: a sheet/pane of
glass… 2 [C] (often in compounds) a container made of glass, used for drinking out
of… : a sherry glass…
This was to become the standard method in later editions and titles-for VPs as for
[U] and [C]- of dealing with syntactic contrasts which paralleled semantic ones.
II.
The Practical Aspect
Here I would like to compare the labels of countable and uncountable nouns in the
two dictionaries, Longman Contemporary English-Chinese Dictionary and Oxford
Advanced Learner’s English-Chinese Dictionary (the sixth edition). The former was
published by Contemporary Publishing Company, collecting 55,000 words, and the
latter was published by the Commercial Press in 2004, containing 800,000 words. The
following are the same words in the two different dictionaries.
Longman
Contemporary
Oxford
Advanced
Learner’s
English-Chinese Dictionary
English-Chinese Dictionary
1. book… n 1 a collection of sheets of
1. book…noun …1 [C] a set of printed
paper…
pages that are fastened inside a
cover…: a pile of books…
2. glass …n 1[U] a hard transparent
solid material made from sand
2. glass…noun 1 [U] a hard usually
melted under great heat: a glass
transparent, substance used…: a
bottle/window… 3[C] an object
sheet/pane of glass… 2 [C] (often in
made of or containing this, and
compounds) a container made of
shaped to make things seem larger,
glass, used for drinking out of… : a
esp. a TELESCOPE…
sherry glass…
3. box… n boxes or box 1 [ Wn1;C;U]
3. box…noun 1[C] (especially in
A type of small tree with dark stiff
compounds) a container made of
leaves that do not fall during the
wood, cardboard, metal…:a money
winter, often planted in rows as a
box… cardboard boxes…11[C.U] a
small EVERGREEN tree or bush
wall or fence 2 [U] = BOXWOOD
with thick dark leaves, used
4. fish…n fish or fishes 1[Wn2;C] a
especially for garden HEDGES…
creature… We caught 3 little
fishes/several fish. 2 [U] part of one
4. fish…noun (pl. fish or fishes) Fish
of these, when used as food: a piece
is the usual plural form. The older
of boiled fish…
form, fishes, can be used to refer to
5. zoo… n zoos [C] a park where many
different kinds of fish…1[C] a
kinds of living animals are kept for
creature…: They caught several
show: go to the zoo and watch the
fish./ The list of endangered species
monkeys…
includes nearly 600 fishes. 2[U] the
flesh of fish eaten as food:
6. child…n children 1 [C] an unborn or
recently born person…
frozen/smoked fish…
7. deer…n deer [Wn3] any of several
5. zoo…noun (pl. zoos) … a place
types of rather large fast 4-footed
where many kinds of wild animals
animal…
are kept…
8. rice… n [U] 1 any of several kinds
6. child…noun (pl. children…)1 a
of food grain grown in wet tropical
young human being who is not yet
places, esp. …
an adult: a child of three/ men,
women and children…
7. deer…noun (pl. deer) an animal with long legs, that eats grass…: a herd of red
deer
8. rice…noun [U] short, narrow white or brown grain…: a grain of rice
As the examples above show, there are several similarities and differences. The
similarities are the following: 1. Both dictionaries use [C] to indicate countable noun
and [U] to refer to uncountable noun; 2. [C] and [U] are at the same place, following
the number of definitions; 3. The irregular plural forms are provided in both
dictionaries; 4. If a noun is countable, having an irregular form and one meaning, [C]
is not used such as ‘deer’. The differences are also four: 1. Oxford Advanced
Learner’s English-Chinese Dictionary supplies the examples indicating the plural
expressions of nouns including regular forms and irregular forms, but Longman
Contemporary English-Chinese Dictionary provides no such examples but only the
irregular forms of nouns at the beginning of the definition. 2. If a noun is countable
and has regular plural form and several meanings, [C] is used in ALD but not in
LDOCE such as “book”; 3. If a noun is countable and has an irregular form and
several meanings, [C] is not used in ALD but in LDOCE such as “child”; 4. If a noun
is countable, and has a regular form and one meaning, [C] is not used in ALD but in
LDOCE like “zoo”
III
The Comments.
Both dictionaries label the countable and uncountable nouns with the
abbreviations [C] and [U], which is helpful and convenient for English learners, but
ALD6 supplies more accurate information about the countable and uncountable
characteristics of nouns with the examples after the definition, which makes the
English learners know not only what their plural forms are but also how they should
be used, and it is the advantage of ALO6.
Bibliography:
A,P. Cowie (2002) English Dictionaries for Foreign Learners: A History (First
Edition) (Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press)
Richard C. Smith (1999) The Writings of Harold E. Palmer An Overview (Second
Edition) (Tokyo: Hon-no-Tomosha)
周 敬 华
曹 京 华
改 进 英 汉 词 典 中 的 语 法 信 息
http://bilex.gdufs.edu.cn/doc/nanjing-lunwen/nj-12.doc