earticle

영어

The purpose of this study is to investigate the possible ways of dividing collective nouns into three groups: aggregate noun, collective noun and superordinate. The preceding studies had difficulty suggesting clear criteria on dividing collective nouns. For example, there were no clear standards on classifying furniture as a mass noun and tool as a countable noun even though collective nouns such as furniture, tool are distinguished a set of countable entities. Also, it was difficult to reveal characteristics that collective noun like committee is different from collective nouns like furniture, tool. Therefore, in this study, five arguments(countability vs. non-countability, contiguity vs. similarity, inheritance vs. non-inheritance, kind of vs. part of, individuation vs. non-individuation) were presented to suggest a new clear-cut terminology that distinguishes collective nouns, aggregate nouns and superordinates. And it was concluded that collective nouns and superordinates tend to show the opposite pattern and aggregate nouns share the both characteristics of collective nouns and superordinates, but aggregate noun has more superordiante characteristics