Words that are countable in Chinese but not English?

[Pedroski]

Well, I parse

"a piece of fruit"  one  piece (descriptive phrase) 

"three head of cattle" 3 heads (descriptive phrase)

 

English is laden with Latin, here is a Latin perspective:

 

 

A = Accusative (normally the case of what is known as the direct object)

G = Genitive (the genitive case can be considered as an adjective)

 

poculum (A) aquae (G) emi.

Cup (A) water (G) I bought

"I bought a glass/cup of water":

 

gregem (A) vaccarum (G) emi.

Herd cows I bought

"I bought a herd of cows":

 

Aqua = water; aquae = of water

Vaccae = cows; vaccarum = of cows

 

一杯水， 一杯的水

 

我们需要一杯的水。

 

It is also quite ok to go into a pub and ask for 'a water'. The landlord will not try to bring you Lake Windemere, or the Pacific Ocean. So you see, English is evolving to obviate this historical inexactitude.

[tooironic]

I was just inspired to write a blog entry about it. For those who are interested: 14 Nouns That Are Countable in Chinese (But Not in English)

[Demonic_Duck]

It is also quite ok to go into a pub and ask for 'a water'. The landlord will not try to bring you Lake Windemere, or the Pacific Ocean. So you see, English is evolving to obviate this historical inexactitude.

 

...as I mentioned in my earlier example. All that means is that water, and other beverages, can (informally) act as countable nouns, though normally uncountable.

 

I'm not sure what the latin examples prove. In Russian, nouns take on different cases depending on the number of them, but that doesn't prove that the noun is modifying the number rather than vice-versa.

 

 

I was just inspired to write a blog entry about it. For those who are interested: 14 Nouns That Are Countable in Chinese (But Not in English)

 

Nice job. Does 作业 really count, though? I think of "份" as (loosely) "portion", and "这些" as either "these" or "this" (the latter for uncountable nouns). Am I wrong to use "些" with uncountable nouns? Is it incorrect to say "这些水"?

 

Should it be "一大份作业" or "一份大作业"?

[Michaelyus]

些 is a partitive, which just about means it belongs to the measure word universe, but it is the least "quantitative". 

 

There is a continuum of "classifier / measures": you can see it on page 500 of this contrastive analysis. From count nouns to mass nouns, it goes [individual] classifier < partitive < group < "temporary" < container < standard measure.

 

 

 

一份大作业 definitely. I've always thought of 作业 as a form of 业 and certainly countable. Although the more I repeat it, the more acceptable 一大份作业 sounds to me... [!] If 作业 is always uncountable and 份 does turn out to be some kind of partitive as suggested above, I wouldn't be surprised.

[MPhillips]

Thanks to Michaelyus, Shelley ＆tooironic! I think I get it now--Michaelyus & demonicduck saved me from reading a few dull academic papers on the subject. At the risk of muddying the waters, haven't you noticed the decline in use of the various "appropriate" classifiers in favor of the "all purpose" 个 ？

[Shelley]

Yes I would agree with you MPillips ge does seem to more prevalent, is it laziness or just lack  of education? It reminds me of the English word "get "it is being used more and more as a replacement for verbs.

 

The "get" in any sentence can be replace by a verb, usually more descriptive and accurate. For example: He got over the fence  - He climbed over the fence

 

She got some shoes in the sale  -  She bought some shoes in the sale      He gets out of the chair  -  He arose from the chair and so on.

 

I have not been able to find a situation where I could not replace "get" with a more accurate verb. Feel free to show me one where "get" is the only possible choice.

 

I think this is a result of the same kind of laziness or/and lack of education. The lack of education does not necessarily mean it wasn't taught, more because it isn't used

[MPhillips]

Yes, I'm something of an old curmudgeon too when it comes to the English language (at least the American version), although lately I've decided not to care so much anymore and probably have been making more errors myself as a result.