Collective nouns in english contents introduction

countable nouns
uncountable nouns
accept the indefinite article: a car, a house, an accident, etc.	do not accept the indefinite article: *a money, *an evidence, *a knowledge, etc.
typically have a plural form: car - cars, house - houses, accident - accidents	have no plural form: money - *moneys, evidence - *evidences, nonsense - *nonsenses
can, and sometimes must, be replaced by the pronoun one: I sold my old car and bought a new one.	cannot be replaced by the pronoun one: *Bill prefers empirical evidence to anecdotal one.
in the plural, combine with plural quantifiers like many, a great number of, etc.: many cars, a great number of houses	only combine with singular quantifiers like much, a great deal of, etc.: much evidence, a great deal of money

Partitive constructions (click to expand/contract)


A Swedish perspective: Uncountable/Countable nouns (click to expand/contract)

Inherently plural nouns

Some nouns are such that they cannot be used in the singular, that is, they are always regarded as denoting something plural, and they always take plural agreement. Important members of this category appear in the following examples:
(4) My new jeans are Italian.
(5) We have to buy Peter new pyjamas, since his old ones are worn out.
(6) In this experiment, headphones are to be used.
(7) The ship's doctor made use of tweezers to remove the foreign object.
(8) The minutes were kept by Sheila.
(9) The goods have been exported to Germany.
(10) All our valuables have been stolen.
(11) The police are investigating the case.
(12) There were hundreds of police present in Stockholm in connection with the royal wedding.
(13) Do you know how many people are here?
(14) The cattle were seen grazing in the field.
(15) We do not want vermin in our house, but they are here anyway.