Research on the morpho-syntax of non-native varieties of English has reported a widespread presence of mass noun pluralization such as baggages, equipments and softwares. In this paper we conducted a corpus linguistic study in order to provide empirically substantiated answers to this claim. We examined the purported prevalence of noun countability in World Englishes in a 1.9 billion-token mega...

Much of the recent countability research agrees on the idea that a satisfactory account of individuation in terms of what counts as “one” unit for counting is highly relevant for characterizing a semantics of the mass/count distinction. (What counts as “one” is not necessarily a formal atom in a Boolean algebra or a natural unit associated with natural kinds like cat.) Taking the most parsimoni...