Abstract and mass?

Question

They are always the same thing or not?for example, in "There is a war." war is count and concrete?in "War is approaching..." War is abstract and mass.  So do count/concrete go hand in hand like abstract/mass?  THANKS

BarbaraPA · Accepted Answer

Abstract and mass do not go hand in hand. There are plenty of mass nouns that are concrete - police, cattle, furniture, luggage, coffee, sugar, etc.

Anonymous · Answer

thanks youve helped me a lot. does what i said before make sense? as in the two sentences?

BarbaraPA · Answer

There is value in separating the mass nouns from the count nouns so you can use articles and plurals correctly.

For example, you don't say "a furniture" or "a cattle" because they are mass nouns and don't take an article, nor do they have plural forms.

I am not sure of the value in separating concrete nouns from abstract nouns. It may be interesting philosophically, but it won't help you much with grammar. And not everyone will agree with how you classify a noun.

For example, some people will say that "***" is abstract because you cannot see, hear, smell, taste, or touch ***, but others will argue that *** is a concrete subject. In your second sentence, when a country is in a state of war, you can hear the sounds of war, see the people fighting, if you're close enough, smell the effects, maybe even taste smoke.

I suggest you stop trying to link "mass/abstract" and "countable/concrete" and instead try to focus on count/non-count (mass) because that difference will help you with your writing.

Abstract and mass?

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