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conulyJust because a word has an unmarked plural that doesn't mean, ipso facto, that it's a mass noun.
Fish, sheep, moose - these are all count nouns. You can tell because you can count them without having to use special measure words like "head", "piece", "ton", or "cup". You can have ten fish, twenty sheep, a million moose. Or just one.
Mass nouns, by contrast, really are uncountable except in a small limited number of circumstances where the measure word is sort of implied. You can't have one rice, you have to have one grain of rice or one cup of rice or one ton of rice.
Fish, sheep, moose - these are all count nouns. You can tell because you can count them without having to use special measure words like "head", "piece", "ton", or "cup". You can have ten fish, twenty sheep, a million moose. Or just one.
Mass nouns, by contrast, really are uncountable except in a small limited number of circumstances where the measure word is sort of implied. You can't have one rice, you have to have one grain of rice or one cup of rice or one ton of rice.
