Cattle: mass noun?
The wikipedia article says "The term cattle itself is not a plural, but a mass noun."http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CattleIs that right?I thought mass nouns take the singular forms of verbs, whereas...
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Cattle are to chattel what livestock is/are to fee.I'm a little hazy on the difference between a plural noun and a mass noun. Presumably we're all happier because there's no governing body of...
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I would disagree to some extent with the Wikipedia article's apple example "There is apple on the floor." I would use this only if one or more apples had become all mushed up and the number of...
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I think part of the difference is in countable/uncountable rather than just mass/plural.5 cattle means 5 cows (or 5 sheep)5 chattel means 5 items of property (or 5 slaves)but 5 sugars only makes sense...
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OP Tipping is right. From the Oxford Companion to the English Language:An uncountable noun (also non-count noun, mass noun) has no plural forms, takes only a singular verb, and can occur without a...
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What about 'Cattle,' the collective noun? A single bovine is a 'neat,' admittedly rare (if so ordered!), so 'cattle' is the collective noun for a herd of neat(s).
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I remain confused. Skib makes a good point, or asks a valid question: is cattle indeed a collective noun? Or is a collective noun only a noun of assembly? (pride of lions, gaggle of geese)I am...
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There is in fact no singular form for cattleThe out-of-date 'neat' is supposed to fit the bill.
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I can see no intrinsic or qualitative differenceYou're using the wrong categories. When we analyze language, we have to do so in its own terms. "Intrinsic" qualities are for philosophers; linguists...
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Formal definitions are the only workable ones.Which, philosophically, makes linguists pragmatists.It isn't necessary to know how the computer works in order to work the computer.
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Skib- That's a neat solution but neat already has its own plural: neats! (Sounds a bit Pythonesque.) You can't really say "one neat, two cattle" although I guess you could say "How many neats are in...
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"King of Beers" This Budwieser slogan has been troublesome for me. It works for me only if 'beer' refers to the brewing process such as 'porters', 'stouts' or lagers."King of Budwieses" may be more...
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This may be a southern Ontario Canadianism, but my uncle and all his neighbors referred to cattle-beasts rather than "head of" when the number thereof was important. I raise cattle.There are only 4...
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Major diegogarcity here. Just a couple days ago I encountered this old meaning of neat in a different forum. Before that I was completely unaware of it. Then I looked it up in M-W and found that they...
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I had never heard the term "mass noun" until I read it here. However, a moment's thought reminded me there a several common such nouns that, somewhat waywardly, we use as plurals when grammatically it...
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grammatically it makes no senseJust to repeat myself: grammar isn't supposed to "make sense." People who make fun of the fact that tables, chairs, &c are "masculine" and "feminine" in, say, French...
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per foolscap but we still don't have a category for the word "cattle."So, the category, like so much grammatical, is, it is,---until it isn't.BUT, it appears there is something stinky in Helsinki,...
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Use it however you want, but just be aware of the circumstances in which you do so. It's one of those words which jump the boundary between spoken and written.In the former, it's OK to say: "The...
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I'd expect to hear as correct spoken English: The cattle are roaming, not is roaming. Cattle refers to more than one animal in both spoken and written communication. In fact, I've never heard anyone...
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And yet your dear Queen says odd things like, "My Government are committed to delivering a world class education system...."I agree with you about cattle. We just sang a few days ago, "the cattle are...
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