How to clearly understand Collective Nouns

Question

I think I basically understand the concept of Collective Nouns, but there are several different types of collective nouns and one tendency which applies to some collective nouns do not apply to others.

I still wonder who I can neatly arrange the knowledge of Collective Nouns.

(Type A)
family
people
staff
team
class

These examples can also be used as common nouns depending on the context. "Family" can be either singular or plural.
My family is very large.
My family are all fine.

"People" can be counted like "five people", "many people", but do you say "five family" for "five members of one family"?

(Type B)
audience
furniture

This type is also called Collective Noun, but obviously different from Type A, because "audience" or "furniture" can never be used as "audiences" or "furnitures" under any context.
"Audience" and "People" look very similar but it seems there are quite different grammatically.

(Type C)
information
advice
baggage
clothing

Type C words have no plural forms either.
And to me, these words sound more material than a 'collective of things/persons'.
Should I say these words are rather close to 'water'.

(Type D)
folk

This is unique. Both "folk" and "folks" mean the same.
country folk (<'folks' is wrong here?)
city folk
rich folks (<'folk' is wrong here?)
That's all, folks.(<'folk' is wrong here?)

GPY · Accepted Answer

You may be mixing up two different concepts here: collective nouns and uncountable nouns (also known as mass nouns). Most collective nouns are countable and have plurals, just like any other countable noun: team/teams; group/groups; flock/flocks, etc. Uncountable nouns (e.g. furniture, information, water) do not have plurals. Grammatically, uncountable nouns are treated as singular (they take a singular verb), even though they may refer to what seems like a plurality of things. Singular collective nouns can sometimes be treated as if they were plural, as in your "My family are all fine" example. This depends on context (and possibly region).

"people" is a plural noun (it can also be a singular countable noun in a different sense), considered to be the irregular plural of "person". "five people" is no different from "five apples". "five family" is marginal/casual as an abbreviation of "five family members".

"audience" is countable and has plural "audiences", per your other thread.

"folk"/"folks" seems a complicated case. Both "folk" and "folks" can go after "country", "city" and "rich", but "folks" sounds more chatty or familiar (to me anyway). "That's all, folk" sounds wrong.

CalifJim · Answer

kenkenken9876Collective Nouns

I think you may be fighting a losing battle here, trying to classify the essentially unclassifiable.

In your place I would not put "people" in Type A. It's almost in a class of its own, although "police" is very similar. Aside from its use as "ethnic group", "people" is always plural, and "police" is also always plural. People are ... The police are ...
________________

As for "audiences", you can use that plural in certain contexts. In that usage "audience" is both collective and countable.

This play is suitable for all audiences, whether children or adults.
The audience tonight was much more responsive than the audiences we've had in the past week.

Other nouns that are collective and countable are herd, flock, group, bunch, .... There are many.
_________________

Type C is probably better classified as "uncountable nouns" even though they have some qualities of "collective nouns", especially "baggage" and "clothing".

"folk" is a collective concept, and it's plural. Country folk (as a group) are ...
"folks" individuates more. Country folks (individual people who live in the country) are ...

"folks" is also informally "parents". My folks are coming to visit me.

Expressions with "folk" or "folks" are very informal.

country folk; country folks
city folk; city folks
rich folk; rich folks
~~That's all, folk.~~ That's all, folks.

CJ

Kenkenken9876 · Answer

>You may be mixing up two different concepts here.

Yes, I was!
Now, it's clear.
I have only to regard "furniture" in the same group of "water" or "butter".
In fact, it is a bit difficult to understand why "furniture" is a massive noun because "water" is shapeless but any member of "furniture" is a common noun (desk, chair, sofa, table, etc).

Many Japanese want to count "furniture" just like you can count "animal"s.
Any advice for that?

GPY · Answer

kenkenken9876Many Japanese want to count "furniture" just like you can count "animal"s.Any advice for that?

As far as I understand it, the Japanese language has no concept of a distinction between countable and uncountable nouns, so for Japanese people I think this is a new concept that must be learned. It's easiest to start with examples that are clearly discrete (countable) and non-discrete (uncountable), as you mention, such as "apple" and "water". It should be clear enough that you can count apples, but you can't count water. The extension to less clear-cut cases can seem rather arbitrary. For example, many non-native speakers very naturally want to form plurals like "advices" and "informations", but these are actually impossible and must be changed to something like "pieces of advice" or "pieces of information". It's the same with furniture. I think with the non-obvious cases you simply have to learn that the nouns are uncountable.

CalifJim · Answer

kenkenken9876Many Japanese want to count "furniture" just like you can count "animal"s.Any advice for that?

Tell them to stop it!

But seriously, the Japanese are not the only ones who have trouble with this.

kenkenken9876In fact, it is a bit difficult to understand why "furniture" is a ~~massive noun~~ mass noun

The same is true of 'equipment'.

CJ

How to clearly understand Collective Nouns

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