Japanese Learners' Criteria to Judge English Nouns' Countability

抄録

Despite the difficulty in understanding English noun countability and its relevance to the use of English articles, research on noun countability has been rather sparse, and the results have not been integrated into a larger picture. Therefore, this study reviews previous research and summarises the criteria that Japanese learners use to make countability judgments: (1) a tendency to regard English noun countability as fixed, (2) a tendency to regard concrete or visualisable entities as countable and abstract entities as uncountable, (3) a tendency to regard something non-specific as uncountable and (4) a tendency to be unable to apply the idea of 'boundedness' when making countability judgments on abstract nouns. Finally, the reasons for the difficulty in deciding the countability of abstract nouns are discussed and the best and most practical way to cope with the difficulty is proposed.