onizo I've been hearing talk that she plans to run for president.I got this from a dictionary and couldn't understand why 'talk' is without articles. What does it mean? Why it needs no articles?

See this:http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/talk

onizocouldn't understand why 'talk' is without articles.

It's the uncountable form and it doesn't take "the" in the expression to hear talk ~ to hear people saying things, spreading rumors about one thing or another.

It's like anything else uncountable. You add more of the same thing to it, and it's still the same thing.

If you have s

CalifJim It's the uncountable form and it doesn't take "the" in the expression to hear talk ~ to hear people saying

Thank you CJ,

But isn't talk here defined by that phrase coming right after?
And doesn't the go with uncountable nouns as well--like the water, the air, the wind, the sand, etc?

CalifJim It's like an

onizoBut isn't talk here defined by that phrase coming right after?

Yes and no. The that-clause explains what people are presumably talking about, but the topic itself is new to the conversation. In these cases, we don't use "the". Later, we might use "the" or "this" or "that", but not usually when introducing an unfamiliar topic for the first time.

onizo I've been hearing talk that she plans to run for president.I got this from a dictionary and couldn't understand why 'talk' is without articles. What does it mean? Why it needs no articles?

There are some nouns that can be both uncountable when they refer to something in general and countable when they refer to a particular thing. There are many such word