@article{Grimm_2019, title={Individuating the Abstract}, volume={18}, url={https://ojs.ub.uni-konstanz.de/sub/index.php/sub/article/view/312}, abstractNote={<p>Despite the vast count-mass literature, determining why an abstract noun is countable (<em>arrival</em>) or uncountable (<em>happiness</em>) remains largely unexplored territory. This paper examines several proposals which attempt to derive the countability of deverbal nouns from some aspect of the derivational source, including the well-known hypothesis by Mourelatos (1978) relating countability to aktionsart: nouns derived from states/activities are uncountable, while those derived from accomplishments/achievements are countable. Broad-scale corpus work shows that such hypotheses are not borne out. A second study of abstract nouns from four different semantic domains (bodily states and mental states (<em>sleep</em>), mental properties (<em>intelligence</em>), behavioral properties (<em>kindness</em>) and psych-nouns (<em>irritation</em>, <em>fear</em>)) demonstrates that the noun’s interpretation in a given context determines its countability, in turn influenced by a complex set of factors including lexicalization patterns, ontological contrasts, and world knowledge.</p>}, journal={Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung}, author={Grimm, Scott}, year={2019}, month={May}, pages={182–200} }