Object mass nouns and comparative judgements

Abstract

The mass/count distinction is often semantically manifested in comparative judgements as a difference between counting and measurement. Thus, the count nouns in 'more stones/packs' trigger counting whereas the mass nouns in 'more stone/sugar' involve measuring. 'Object mass nouns' (OMNs) like 'furniture', 'weaponry' and 'baggage' are exceptional among mass nouns in showing strong counting effects in comparatives. There is little agreement on the interpretation of this fact. Some works propose that OMNs have discrete meanings while others attribute their countability in comparatives to other reasons. Deciding between these approaches is challenging, partly because it has remained unclear if OMNs in comparatives show any semantic distinction from count nouns. In this paper we demonstrate that they do. We report experimental findings showing that in contexts that favor measurement, counting with OMNs is less frequently preferred than with count nouns. We analyze these results by proposing that although referents of both common nouns and OMNs are perceived as discrete objects, OMN denotations are continuous. The tolerant mass/count syntax of the comparative leaves the discrete perception of both kinds of nouns as the prominent factor in their interpretation. However, when the context primes measurement, the continuity of OMN denotations allows them to trigger non-discrete measures more easily than count nouns. This proposal retains the advantages of semantic theories of the mass/count distinction while employing them in a model that is also sensitive to biases coming from pragmatics and the perception of real-world objects.