7 ms·
Mass noun
- somewhereoutth 4y agoYes! Like 'data' - it's singular ffs, so say 'the data in this paper shows' not 'the data show'. Looking at you TWiV!! Maybe if it still makes sense semantically to replace 'data' with 'data points', then the plural is ok. However mostly we are talking about a 'wodge' of data, with discussion, caveats, etc, more than a simple list of 'datums'.
- gnicholas 4y agoI'm pretty prescriptivist when it comes to grammar, but I also think that "data" should be referred to in the way you describe, and for those reasons. When people say "data" they generally mean "dataset", which is unambiguously singular. It just doesn't make sense to say "dataset" when "data" will do.
- ghayes 4y agoI would argue that prescriptivism in English still refers solely to English. The idea that since data is plural in Latin, it must also be plural in English doesn't follow for me. Plenty of words change plurality when being taken into another language, e.g. * Laos is plural in French but singular in English. * Cherise is singular in French, but was rebracketed as a plural in English (and then transformed to cherry as the singular).
- gnicholas 4y agoWow, super interesting. Apparently that is called "back-formation", and applies to other words like "caper", "pea", and "burgle" (from "burglar"). [1] 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Back-formation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Back-formation
- jmole 4y ago"Data" as a grammatic plural seems to be more common in UK english than US. I think the way to properly pluralize it is by adding a unit, the same way we'd do with words like "information" (bits of information), "work" (Joules of work), or other meta/physical quantities (rays of sunshine, pangs of heartache, etc.).
- mhb 4y agoWhat gives you the idea that data is singular? And then what is datum?
- subarctic 4y agoYa, what is a datum? Is that like a piece of data? I've heard that data is actually supposed to be plural, but that "correct" usage is so far outside of my experience that it just seems weird and confusing. The one I actually find annoying though is when people use "an" before a word that starts with a (pronounced) h, like "an historic building". It's like, dude, I know you're trying to seem all smart and superior and it isn't working. (Of course, if they said it with a french accent and a silent h that would make more sense.)
- gnicholas 4y ago> The one I actually find annoying though is when people use "an" before a word that starts with a (pronounced) h, like "an historic building". It's like, dude, I know you're trying to seem all smart and superior and it isn't working. (Of course, if they said it with a french accent and a silent h that would make more sense.) This is something that has puzzled me as well. My wife, a historian (not "an historian!") will write this way, and when I've asked her about it she says it's just the proper way. When I looked into the history of it, I concluded that it probably made sense for the British (who say "historian" with a somewhat silent "H"), and probably for early Americans. But for those of us who speak Standard American English, it seems somewhere between unnecessary and stuffy. I wonder how spell checking software deal with this? IIRC it's an exception for words starting with "H" where there emphasis is not on the first syllable (which would result in the "H" being enunciated).
- scubbo 4y agoI don't know for sure, but I suspect (in keeping with the fetishization of Latin that motivates many prescriptivist rules, like the injunction to never split an infinitive) that this arises from Ancient Greek[0], wherein there is not a separate letter "H" but rather a modification ("breath", if I remember rightly?) on the vowel. If you (mis)apply this rule to English, "hospital" starts with a vowel. [0] this might be true in Modern Greek as well, I don't know - but English professors don't have such a raging boner for the modern version.
- hackyhacky 4y agoJust because it can be singular doesn't mean that it must be singular.
- jltsiren 4y agoI think the difference is in the perspective. The data is the substance you process, while the data are the observations or measurements you analyze. People who use "data" as plural tend to be more interested in the content than in operating the machinery.
- nine_k 4y agoData are plural when you can also refer to a single datum. Data is singular if it's a mass noun, like water. There is a similar conundrum with media / medium.
- foldr 4y ago‘Data’ is the Latin plural, so the traditional prescriptivist advice to say ‘the data are’ is based on the assumption that the word is grammatically plural, not any argument about semantics. There are actually lots of grammatically plural nouns that are used to refer to things that can’t be split into discrete chunks. For example, while ‘the news’ in English has been reanalyzed as singular, it remains ‘las noticias’ in Spanish - without any implication that a specific number of discrete news items are being referred to.
- archgoon 4y ago[dead]
- k__ 4y agoIn Germany, beer is a mass noun.
- ruph123 4y agoNot true. Bier has a plural (Biere) and you can count it without a unit (1 Bier, 2 Biere, etc).
- morkalork 4y agoEven in English it isn't consistent, ask a Canadian how much they drank and they might say "oh, I had a few beer".
- zwieback 4y agoInteresting one. In my ear "Biere" would only sound right when referring to distinct beer types. I think this is more a case where spoken German would prefer "3 bier bitte" but technically it should be "3 Biere". Reminds me of the old joke where you hold up two fingers and say "4 Bier fuer die Maenner vom Saegewerk".
- ruph123 4y agoYeah you are right using the singular in the plural case is pretty common. But I would count it more as a colloquial/regional variation.
- aix1 4y agoDuden gives "zwei Bier" as an example: ►Bier [bi:ɐ̯], das; -[e]s, -e: alkoholisches Getränk, das aus (meist aus Gerste hergestelltem) Malz und Hopfen hergestellt wird: Bier vom Fass; ein [Glas] helles, dunkles Bier trinken; in- und ausländische Biere (Biersorten); Herr Ober, noch zwei Bier (Gläser Bier), bitte!
- aix1 4y ago> In Germany, beer is a mass noun. Did you mean "Maß" noun? :) P.S. for non-German-speakers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ma%C3%9F https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ma%C3%9F
- ivan_gammel 4y agoInteresting fact is that mass nouns are not always the same in different languages. In German information is count noun and has plural case (Informationen). English spoken in continental Europe often carries the traces of other languages, so you may encounter in local documents written in English by non-native speaker something like „informations“. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euro_English https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euro_English
- xbar 4y agoMy brother speaks seven languages and likes to talk about his challenges in teaching mass nouns to students in South Korea.
- Twisol 4y agoEven in English, depending on who you talk to, "data" might be either count or mass. (I am solidly in the mass camp.)
- gweinberg 4y agoIt's pretty clearly used as a mass noun. Nobody would ever say 3 data (as opposed to 3 data points). Maybe once data was the plural of datum, but today datum isn't even really a word. Nobody says "this datum", they say "this data point".
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- Twisol 4y agoUnfortunately, I have absolutely heard people say "this datum" and "these data" -- admittedly not "three data", but certainly in the style of a count noun, and not in the style of a mass noun. If they used it as a mass noun, they would say "this data", not "these data".
- travisjungroth 4y agoIf you need to take an interview to keep your unemployment checks coming, just treat it like a singular count. One mention of “datas” during a technical round and you’ll be on your way.
- morkalork 4y agoI forget where I read it but the intentional inversion of countable and mass nouns is a good source of morbid humour in English like "I was reversing my car, heard a yelp, and discovered cat all over the driveway".
- dudeinjapan 4y agoAlso sexual humor and innuendo.
- Twisol 4y agoI've heard some people (I think mostly in the UK?) treat corporation names as count nouns, as in "Jagex are" (or "Facebook are") rather than "Jagex is". I can see how this makes sense if you think of a corporation as fundamentally comprising a group of individual people, but it still sounds very strange to my ear.
- nine_k 4y agoI think e.g. Facebook as a product is singular: "Facebook is a social network". But Facebook as a company is plural: "Facebook are certain that metaverse is going to be big". This is because a company cannot think and be certain, so the full form is actually "Folks at Facebook are certain that metaverse is going to be big", and it makes perfect grammatical sense.
- zamnos 4y agoI agree that "Folks (at Facebook) are certain..." sounds right, but less sure about "Facebook are certain...". Why is "folks" the right way to think about that? Why is it not "Mark (Zuckerberg) (at Facebook) is certain..."?
- Twisol 4y agoI'm a bit wary of offering a logical explanation for something that is less reasoned and more habitual/cultural, but if I had to, I'd say corporations present a single unified posture that is not necessarily reflective of the posture of any single constituent of the corporation. Thus, it is somewhat fallacious to attribute that (carefully curated) posture to any(/many/most/all) of the individuals within that corporation. Incidentally, I think it's funny (but justifiable) that you used "is" here: > But Facebook as a company is plural
- Tagbert 4y agoI think the implied statement is "the word for Facebook as a company is plural".
- IIAOPSW 4y ago
- ggm 4y agoFewer/less and 'countable' enter the room.
- rflrob 4y agoFor some scientific disciplines, code (software) is not a mass noun. “I wrote a code that does processes the data files” is acceptable, even though it sounds wrong to my ears.
- zwieback 4y agoWhat about "police", is that a mass noun? I feel like my English is pretty much error free at this point but I still sometimes mess this one up. I might say "the police is coming" (as I'm running the other way) but the correct phrase is "the police are coming".
- samtho 4y agoI’m not sure if “Police” is a considered a mass noun, but it is inherently plural as per its definition which is “a collection of enforcement officers.” There is no singular form but it is also can be used as an adjective and a verb.
- smegsicle 4y agothat's a good one. i think that's right though- 'police officer' would of course be a regular singular noun, while 'the police' could represent any mass or representation of law enforcement. but even though it's usually used as plural, when the representation is a bit more abstract it sometimes feels right to use a singular again? "the police are looking into it": boots are on the ground, people are currently active. "the police is looking into it": we've informed the police of the problem, it's in the system, people should be on the case soon. but this almost sounds a bit dismissive? like "the police" maybe isn't going to bother at all, and if you want it solved maybe go to someone who cares... that's tricky.. and still maybe sounds a bit off, so if you want to be safe i don't think you can go wrong with plural.
- IIAOPSW 4y agoThe grammar police is coming!
- cperciva 4y agoOne interesting example from Latin is the word "virus", which roughly means "slime" -- being a mass noun, it has no classically attested plural. I think that if it had a classical plural, it would be virora (like corpus -> corpora, tempus -> tempora) but ultimately the concept of "a virus" is a modern invention.
- macleginn 4y agovirus is second-declension neuter (genitive singlular viri, not *viroris), therefore the plural should be vira, as recommended by Wiktionary: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/virus#Latin https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/virus#Latin
- sadur 4y ago'Virus' is a neuter second-declension noun, while 'corpus' and 'tempus' are third-declension nouns. So, if you want to use 'virus' in plural maybe the best form is 'vira'.
- cperciva 4y ago'Virus' is a neuter second-declension noun Citation needed. As far as I'm aware, there is no classical attestation for either second or third declension.
- grey_earthling 4y agoIn the UK, “Lego” is treated as a mass noun, whereas the U.S. always seems to treat it as countable, “Legos”. Historically “pease” was a mass noun, before it became the countable noun “peas”. Drinks can be either, if the unit is assumable: “much water”; “3 waters” (meaning 3 bottles of water). I suspect that “sheep” and “fish” are behaving the same way, like “cattle”.
- Hamuko 4y ago>In the UK, “Lego” is treated as a mass noun, whereas the U.S. always seems to treat it as countable, “Legos”. Both of those are incorrect as far as the LEGO Group is concerned. "The Trademark must always be written in capital letters. The LEGO name is always spelled in all capital letters and the bricks (and/or elements) must always be referred to as “LEGO bricks” (or “LEGO elements”) – never “LEGOs” or “legos”."
- dasil003 4y agoAs the cofounder of a streaming service with a 4-letter all-caps name that was misspelled 80% of the time in media coverage, I feel their pain. But also, they can pry my legos from my cold dead hands.
- tpoacher 4y agoPet peeve mass nouns wrongly used in the plural: codes ("e.g. download the source codes") advices feedbacks evidences moneys ("e.g. how much moneys does this cost", but "exchange of moneys" or "source of moneys" indicating variability of payment amounts is fine ) datas syntaxes works (e.g. "thank you all for your hard works") experiences (e.g. "work experiences" on a CV) informations spaces (leave enough spaces for references) businesses (we have businesses to take care of) medias (share to social medias) softwares / hardwares