Substance name

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A substance name or a substance description (also: continuative , substance expression, substance noun, substance description, substance noun , material noun , material name, material noun , mass noun) is a noun that conceptualizes its referent as a unified, indivisible entity .

Disambiguation

The established term substance name is misleading insofar as it, as an equivalent to the technical term continuative , does not refer to the semantic category of concrete (as opposed to abstract ), but to the semantic category of non-discrete nouns. Non-discrete means that such nouns cannot simply be multiplied by forming the plural without changing the qualitative meaning of the singular. Examples:

  • For Konkreta: Salts is not the multiplication of salt as a substance, but describes various substances in a higher-level category, salt .
  • For abstracts: love is not the multiplication of love , but describes different events of a superordinate category love .

Substance names in German

On the one hand, substance names in the German language include all things that can be measured but not counted discreetly; on the other hand, there are many abstracts that cannot be measured objectively, but can be combined with measuring quantifiers such as little or much . Examples of semantic classes:

  • Solids , liquids and gases, e.g. B. Salt , wood , ore , lead , ice , sulfur , neon , plutonium
    • Foodstuffs and foods of vegetable and animal origin, e.g. B. egg white , butter , meat , corn , cocoa , Jerusalem artichoke , fat , sugar
  • Feelings like love , envy , anger , pride , falling in love , indifference
  • Concepts like money , guilt , benefit , peace , responsibility , willingness to take responsibility , hospitality , xenophobia , trust

Morphosyntax

In the German language, substance names are distinguished from piece names by means of determination : For example, the indefinite article for substance names in German has the form Ø instead of ein . One and the same lexeme can be both substance and piece names. Example:

(a) Wir hatten gestern Ø Känguru zum Abendessen.
(b) Wir hatten gestern ein Känguru zum Abendessen.

In sentence (a), kangaroo is a substance name denoting a non-discrete mass of kangaroo (e.g. meat). In sentence (b), on the other hand , kangaroo refers to a discrete specimen of the genus kangaroo .

Quantification

In the German language the following applies: substance names can only be used with quantifiers that measure a non-discrete mass or determine its frequency, e.g. B. much , little , all- , no- , some- .

Quantifiers that determine a discrete number of referents cannot be used for substance names: * lots of love , * little milk .

Substance names as Inanimata

Substance names are excluded from the semantic animate , i.e. H. Substance names are always Inanimata. Therefore the following addition in (b) would also be possible, but not in (a):

(a2) *Wir hatten gestern Ø Känguru zum Abendessen zu Gast.
(b2) Wir hatten gestern ein Känguru zum Abendessen zu Gast.

Plural formation

This is reflected in the grammatical properties of these nouns in the fact that, in contrast to countable nouns , the continuatives do not form a plural and cannot be combined directly with numerals and quantifiers (such as none, all, many, some ).

The noun milk , for example, does not form a plural (the plural forms milk or milk are used exclusively in technical language) and cannot be counted in general terms by numeralia: two milk, three milk, etc., or the plural does not relate to the singular as usual, but experiences another meaning (for example water is not used as a plural form for water , water is accordingly a substance name, although a plural is present).

Variety plural

Some substance names form special plural types : For example, metal or wood can be used as substance names without plural, but they can also form plural forms to denote different types of metal or wood: metals , woods .

Substance names in other languages

In some languages, such as French , substance names have a partitive genitive , which distinguishes them formally from other nouns:

Tu veux encore de la viande? „Willst du noch (vom) Fleisch?“ (also: einen Teil der vorhandenen Fleischmenge)
Tu veux encore la viande? „Willst du noch das Fleisch?“ (also: die gesamte vorhandene Fleischmenge)

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Fritz Hermans: Language, Culture and Identity. Reflections on three concepts of totality . In: History of language as cultural history. Walter de Gruyter, 1999, p. 365.