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Article: Countable, uncountable and collective nouns in the early eighteenth century English -- an overview. (Linguistics).
- Article from:
- Studia Anglica Posnaniensia: international review of English Studies
- Article date:
- January 1, 2002
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2002 Adam Mickiewicz University. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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1. Introduction
The inflectional pattern of nouns in Early and Late Modern English is almost identical with today's. One interesting exception is the treatment of abstract and mass nouns which in Present-Day English have no plural form and are considered indivisible. In Early Modern English they were regularly used in the plural (Schlauch 1959: 95) and in the course of Late Modern English they seem to have been systematically reclassified (Denison 1998: 96). The paper provides a synchronic analysis of selected countable, uncountable and collective nouns in the early eighteenth century English. The study is based on a corpus comprising five language registers: ...