Subj : Women don't like rain
To   : Alexander Koryagin
From : Dallas Hinton
Date : Tue Jul 02 2019 13:14:25

Hi Alexander -- on Jul 02 2019 at 11:36, you wrote:

 AS>> Not at all, and Dallas Hinton explained it well that in this
 AS>> phrase!?! horse' is uncountable becauase denotes a substance. In
 AS>> Shakespeare, however,!?! snail' certainly refers to the whole
 AS>> individual animal. Observe that Americans use!?! pie' uncountably,
 AS>> too, e.g.: "We had tea and apple pie".

AK> Horse is a substance? ;)

One of the problems here is that many nouns can be both countable and
uncountable, depending on context. To confuse things further, "horse" is a
street name for cocaine (or at least, used to be -- dunno if that's still
true!)

When we say "tea and apple pie", we actually mean "a cup of tea and a piece of
apple pie" (or perhaps several cups and pieces, depending on greed, appetite,
and the host's offerings!).

Now - "horse" in the powder form is uncountable (without a microscope!) but can
be measured in grams (or variants). In the animal form, a herd of horses is
confusing, because while the number of horses in a herd can be counted but the
word "herd" isn't usually. Nonetheless, we might talk about there being a
number of herds of wild horses in the US midWest...and we could count them.

I guess what I'm really saying is that we shouldn't get too hung up on the
concept of countable vs. noncountable -- do what makes sense and remember that
the English language is a hodge-podge of words and phrases stolen from any
other language that will hold still long enough to be robbed!

Cheers... Dallas

--- timEd/NT 1.30+
 * Origin: The BandMaster, Vancouver, CANADA (1:153/7715)

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