{"id":40252,"date":"2017-09-29T16:34:16","date_gmt":"2017-09-29T15:34:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/?p=40252"},"modified":"2017-10-03T21:41:49","modified_gmt":"2017-10-03T20:41:49","slug":"jeffrey-aronson-when-i-use-a-word-language-that-counts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/2017\/09\/29\/jeffrey-aronson-when-i-use-a-word-language-that-counts\/","title":{"rendered":"Jeffrey Aronson: When I use a word . . . Language that counts"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"jeffrey_aronson\"<\/a>Last week I referred to<\/a> \u201c\u2018competence\u2019 and the more recent \u2018competency\u2019”. But both of these words first appeared in English, as cited in the <\/span>OED<\/span><\/i>, in 1594. So in what sense is \u201ccompetency\u201d more recent than \u201ccompetence\u201d? The answer lies in the countability of nouns.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Jens Otto Harry Jespersen (1860\u20131943)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Danish philologist Otto Jespersen expounded the concept of count and non-count nouns in an unpublished lecture to the Copenhagen Academy of Sciences in 1911. As he explained, you can form plurals if you can collect two things alike. For example, two bananas (two of the same things). Or two fruits, an apple and an orange (two of the same kind). But we have no plural word for a magazine plus a stethoscope, except to call them two objects, and certainly no plural word for a magazine plus healthcare. The test of a count noun is that it cannot be used without a determiner or possessive (a book, that book, one book, my book). Music, traffic, and tact cannot be counted and do not need determiners; eyes and ears can\u2014at least in English; in Hungarian the words for pairs of body parts are singular; one eye is referred to as a half eye.<\/span><\/p>\n

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These are the first instances given in the <\/span>Oxford English Dictionary<\/span><\/i> of these uses of the words \u201ccountable\u201d and \u201cuncountable\u201d, both from works by Jespersen.<\/span><\/p>\n

Top panel:<\/i><\/b> \u201c\u2018[C]ountables\u2019 are either material things like houses, horses, portraits, flowers, etc., or immaterial things of various orders, like days, miles. \u2026 Names of countable immaterial objects may be thus used as mass-names.” (<\/span>Modern English Grammar<\/span><\/i>,<\/span> Volume 2<\/span><\/i>, George Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1914)<\/span><\/p>\n

Bottom panel:<\/i><\/b> \u201cThere is a class of \u2018things\u2019 to which words like one, two are inapplicable; we may call them uncountables, though dictionaries do not recognise this use of the word <\/span>uncountable<\/span><\/i>, which is known to them only in the relative sense \u2018too numerous to be (easily) counted\u2019.\u201d (<\/span>The Philosophy of Grammar<\/span><\/i>, George Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1924)<\/span><\/p>\n

Some nouns have it both ways, depending on meaning. Chocolates in a box are countable\u2014two chocolates, a few chocolates, many chocolates (but who’s counting?). Chocolate in a bar is not countable\u2014much chocolate, little chocolate, less chocolate. Morbidity (sickness) is not countable, but comorbidities means diseases. This duality arises, for example, when a noun can mean both a countable object (a medication that you give or a prescription that you write) and an uncountable process (e.g. medication or prescription, acts of medicating or prescribing).<\/span><\/p>\n

However, plurals of non-count nouns are often used, as in the examples given in the Table, and eventually they may become count nouns with new meanings. Here are some b\u00eate noires:<\/span><\/p>\n