Dave's Whiteboard

I think of myself as a generalist (unless I’m cross with myself, in which case I’m a dilettante). I like learning about things in a variety of fields that have almost nothing to do with how I earn my living. Rummaging about, I find unexpected connections with things I do know something about. (That’s what I like to think, but maybe I just like rummaging.)

One frequent source of “how about that?” for me is the Language Log, a blog centering on linguistics and meaning. Arnold Zwicky posted there the other day on Countification — starting with the word “porns” (meaning porn films, and discussing “porns” as an example of C nouns.

In English, C nouns are words like shrub — things you can count (hence, “C”). They have plural forms and can take articles (“Those are nice shrubs.” “We need a low shrub over there.”).

M nouns, in contrast, are mass nouns — indivisible things that you don’t count. Singular but construed as plural, no articles — like shrubbery. That gives oddity or humor to expressions like “a nice shrubbery.”

Zwicky gives several examples (like “rice”) and goes on to the morphing of some words from M to C — email and spam, for instance. We used to talk about “a piece of email” or “a lot of spam messages.” Now you’re hearing “thirty-five emails about the project.”

He pointed out other words that seem to be trying the same shift from mass to count status: “a porn,” “a slang,” “a folklore.” All three strike me as odd, but then, I’ve always disliked “a CBT.”

I don’t mean the format, necessarily; I mean the term. Saying something like “we had a good training” is clunky to my ear, though heaven knows I ought to be used to it by now. I don’t have a campaign in mine to try and stop this, any more than I have one to prevent the mindless insertion of “e-” in front of perfectly competent words (e-learning, e-meeting).

Language Log has a number of regular contributors besides Zwicky. Often posts are closed — no comments allowed. I think that’s too bad (how else to share my valuable insights?), but it’s at least straightforward.

I took a look at their comments policy, and if you’re a blogger, I think you’ll enjoy it too. And if you don’t like it, well, the policy concludes with this admirable guarantee:

As always, the Language Log Complaints Department stands ready to refund double your subscription price if you are less than fully satisfied.

Photo of a shrubbery and a transportation by flashboy / Tom Phillips.