Unit 4

UNCOUNTABLE NOUNS

Unlike countable nouns, uncountable nouns are substances, concepts etc that we cannot divide into separate elements. We cannot "count" them. For example, we cannot count "milk". We can count "bottles of milk" or "glasses of milk", but we cannot count "milk" itself. Here are some more uncountable nouns:

music, art, love, happiness, advice, information, news, furniture, luggage, rice, sugar, butter, water.

We usually treat uncountable nouns as singular. We use a singular verb. For example:

This news is very interesting.

Your luggage looks heavy.

We do not usually use the indefinite article a/an with uncountable nouns, we use them with countable nouns. We cannot say "an information" or "a music". But we can say a "something" of:

a piece of news

a bottle of water

We can use some and any with uncountable nouns:

I've got some money. Have you got any butter?

We can use a little and much with uncountable nouns:

I've got a little money.I haven't got much rice.

To quantify an uncountable noun we use a unit of measurement - a measure word. For example, we cannot usually say “two waters” because “water” is uncountable. So, if we want to specify a quantity of water we use a measure word such as “bottle” or “glass” in a structure like “two bottles of water” or “two glasses of water”. We call this structure a partitive structure. Later will explain it in more detail.

We can use the same uncountable noun in different partitive expressions with different meanings. For example, a loaf of bread and a slice of bread are partitive expressions with different meanings. A loaf of bread is what we call a whole unit of bread that we buy from a baker. A slice of bread is what we call a smaller unit of bread after it has been cut from a loaf.