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, without reference to quantity. Because of this, the choice can serve a
semantic purpose. However, some abstract phenomena like "fun" and "hope" have properties that are very difficult to
quantify, and thus make it very difficult to refer to them with a count noun. Below are examples of all the properties of count nouns holding for the count noun
chair, but not for the mass noun
furniture. Some determiners can be used with both mass and count nouns, including "all", "no", and "some". Others cannot: "few", "many", "those", and numbers ("one") are used with count nouns; "little" and "much" with mass nouns. According to a controversial prescription, "fewer" and "fewest" is reserved for count nouns and "less" and "least" for mass nouns (see
Fewer vs. less), but "less" has always been commonly used for count nouns. Despite this, "more" is uncontroversially the proper comparative for both "many" and "much". This criticism only dates back to 1770, but the criticized usage dates back to
Old English.
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 frequently as both count nouns (with or without a classifier) and mass nouns. For example: :*"I'll have a
cup of
coffee." (count noun with classifier) :*"I'll have two
coffees." (count noun without classifier) :*"I'll have
coffee." (plain mass noun) :*"I'll have
some coffee." (mass noun with determiner) :*"I'll have
too much coffee." (mass noun with modified determiner) ==Theory==