 in linguistics, a count noun (also countable noun) is a common noun that can be modified by a numeral and that occurs in both singular and plural form, as well as co-occurring with quantificational determiners like every, each, several, etc. a mass noun has none of these properties. it can't be modified by a numeral, occur in singular/plural or co-occur with the relevant kind of determiner. ==examples== below are examples of all the properties of count nouns holding for the count noun chair but not for the mass noun furniture. * occurrence in plural/singular. : there is a chair in the room. : there are chairs in the room. : there is a furniture in the room. (incorrect) : there are furnitures in the room. (incorrect) * co-occurrence with count determiners : every chair is man made. : there are several chairs in the room. : every furniture is man made. (incorrect) : there are several furnitures in the room. (incorrect) some determiners can be used with both mass and count nouns, including "some", "a lot (of)", "no". others cannot: "few" and "many" are used with count items, "little" and "much" with mass. (on the other hand "fewer" is reserved for count and "less" for mass (see fewer vs. less), but "more" is the proper comparative for both "many" and "much".) ==grammatical distinction==  the concept of a "mass noun" is a grammatical concept and is not based on the innate nature of the object to which that noun refers. for example, "seven chairs" and "some furniture" could refer to exactly the same objects, with "seven chairs" referring to them as a collection of individual objects but with "some furniture" referring to them as a single undifferentiated unit. however, some abstract phenomena like "fun" and "hope" have properties which make it difficult to refer to them with a count noun. classifiers are sometimes used as count nouns preceding mass nouns, in order to redirect the speaker's focus away from the mass nature. for example, "there's some furniture in the room" can be restated, with a change of focus, to "there are some pieces of furniture in the room"; and "let's have some fun" can be refocused as "let's have a bit of fun". in english, some nouns are used most frequently as mass nouns, with or without a classifier (as in "waiter, i'll have some coffee" or "waiter, i'll have a cup of coffee"), but also less frequently as count nouns (as in "waiter, we'll have three coffees.") ==theory== followi
Grammatical_number Nouns_by_type