Is "gravity" countable or uncountable?

[Hirashin]

Dear Yakkers, I'm Shinji Hirano, a Japanese teacher of English.

I have a question. Would you help me?

I made this sentence : Jupiter has much stronger gravity than Earth.

But two native speakers corrected it as follows:

Jupiter has a much stronger gravity than Earth.

Is "gravity" a countable noun?

The dictionaries I looked it up for shows it is "UNCOUNTBLE".

Why do you have to put "a" in there? In which case does "gravity" need the particle "a"?

Thanks in advance.

平野伸治

[Richard VanHouten]

On 10/30/2018 9:27 AM, Hirashin wrote:
> Dear Yakkers, I'm Shinji Hirano, a Japanese teacher of English.
>
> I have a question. Would you help me?
>
> I made this sentence : Jupiter has much stronger gravity than Earth.
>
> But two native speakers corrected it as follows:

> Jupiter has *a *much stronger gravity than Earth.

>
> Is "gravity" a countable noun?
>
> The dictionaries I looked it up for shows it is "UNCOUNTBLE".
>
> Why do you have to put "a" in there? In which case does "gravity" need the
> particle "a"?
>
> Thanks in advance.
>
> 平野伸治
>

Your sentence sounds better than the corrected one, but my preferred
sentence would be:

Jupiter's gravity is much stronger than Earth's.

Richard VanHouten

[Jens Wilkinson]

It's a great question, and I don't have a really good answer. Essentially, I agree with Richard that "Jupiter's gravity is stronger" is the more natural way to say it. But the question remains, is "gravity" countable? I think that among "uncountable" nouns, there is a variety. There are words like "furniture" and "garbage" that are physical collections that can never be counted. But then there is a whole variety of words that represent concepts, like "love" and "hatred" and, I think, "gravity." And they can be "forced" to be countable. You can definitely say "a love that I never experienced" or "a gravity that I never experienced." Originally, "gravity" means "heaviness," so it's like saying, "a heaviness that I never experienced," which makes sense. Somehow the terms ("furniture" and "love") are not uncountable in the same way, but I'm not confident that I can really explain why.

Perhaps the reason why Richard's response is good is that the gravity of Jupiter and the gravity of the earth are not really different--they are the same thing, i.e. the gravitational constant x the mass of the first body x the mass of the second body / the square of the distance between them. So Jupiter's gravity is stronger because the mass of the first body is larger, but it is essenially the same thing. So it's not a different gravity, and perhaps that is why we feel it is better to phrase it differently. Saying "Jupiter has stronger gravity" actually sounds better to me than "Jupiter has a stronger gravity." So I would disagree with the native speakers that you asked.

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Jens Wilkinson

[Jon Johanning]

I don’t even play a physicist on TV, but it seems to me that what differs between the Earth and Jupiter, or between any two masses, is the *force* of gravity. So one can talk about different “gravitational forces,” but not different “gravities.”

Best regards,

Jon Johanning
jjoha...@igc.org
www.jcjtrans.com

[Steven P. Venti]

Hirashin <phi.hirash...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Is "gravity" a countable noun?

Did you consult a dictionary?

If you didn't, here is a good place to start: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/gravity

> gravity noun, often attributive
> plural gravities

HTH

-----------------------------------------------------------------
Steve Venti
spv...@gmail.com

Oh, you know all the words, and you sung all the notes,
But you never quite learned the song, she sang.
--Mike Heron
-----------------------------------------------------------------

[Warren Smith]

If I were to use the word gravity in this way, I would definitely go with "countable." However, the usage here is not quite correct from a technical perspective (although common among lay folk), where "gravity" is misused for "gravitational force." ("Gravity" is the concept of attraction between masses, while "gravitational force" is the magnitude of that attraction.)

It would be both technically and idiomatically incorrect to say that "Jupiter has *a *much stronger gravity than Earth." A more idiomatic way to express this concept (although, strictly speaking, still technical incorrect) is "The gravity on Jupiter is much stronger than on Earth." 

The reason why I say "countable" (despite not using the word in this way), is that it is possible to compare the specific *gravities* of two substances. ("Gravity" is being used here in an entirely different sense, however.) 

To my ear, "a gravity" sounds very odd indeed, probably because in any idiomatic structure I can think of, the sentence is put together in such a way that it comes out "the gravity." 

W

[Warren Smith]

Haha! You and I seem to agree on this completely on this one Jon (and, depending who I speak with, I do sometimes claim to be a physicist, as I have a degree in physics and used to teach physics (as a low-level instructor) in the university....)

Warren Smith

[timl...@aol.com]

Surely it all depends on the context. "Jupiter has much stronger gravity than the Earth" is a natural way of speaking when scientific precision is not required. Insertion of "a" simply wrecks the sentence.

 

If however the aim is to be scientifically precise I would go with Richard and alter the structure of the sentence to avoid the issue. Would one really say "the gravities of Mercury and Venus are different"? Somehow I doubt it.

 

FWIW

Tim Leeney

 

 

[Alan Siegrist]

Thanks, Warren. I agree in general, but I might niggle slightly here. Ever since Einstein’s theory of general relativity, we have been taught that gravity is not a force but rather a bending or distortion in the fabric of space time created by mass.

 

So the differences between the Earth and Jupiter are the masses of the respective planets and the magnitude of the gravitational acceleration induced by the planetary mass. On Earth the gravitational acceleration is g, assumed to be roughly 9.8 m/s², but with slight local variation depending on the makeup of the local ground. The gravitational acceleration of Jupiter is 24 m/s², which is of course much greater than that of Earth.

 

So to be technically correct, one should say:

 

The gravitational acceleration of Jupiter is much greater than that of Earth.

 

Regards,

 

Alan Siegrist

Orinda, CA, USA

 

From: hon...@googlegroups.com [mailto:hon...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Warren Smith
Sent: Tuesday, October 30, 2018 7:15 AM
To: Honyaku E<>J translation list
Subject: Re: Is "gravity" countable or uncountable?

 

If I were to use the word gravity in this way, I would definitely go with "countable." However, the usage here is not quite correct from a technical perspective (although common among lay folk), where "gravity" is misused for "gravitational force." ("Gravity" is the concept of attraction between masses, while "gravitational force" is the magnitude of that attraction.)

--

[Warren Smith]

Alan points out:

So to be technically correct, one should say:

 

The gravitational acceleration of Jupiter is much greater than that of Earth.

 

You are exactly right of course (and as usual!). Just like back in college, it is always a question of what half-truths about physics to discuss when (back then it was about how far to bend the freshman mind). Well spotted!

Warren

[timl...@aol.com]

The gravitational acceleration due to Jupiter at a given distance is much greater than that due to Earth at the same distance?

 

Tim

 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Warren Smith <drwo...@gmail.com>
To: Honyaku E<>J translation list <hon...@googlegroups.com>

Sent: Tue, 30 Oct 2018 17:04
Subject: Re: Is "gravity" countable or uncountable?

[Herman]

On 30/10/18 06:27, Hirashin wrote:
> Dear Yakkers, I'm Shinji Hirano, a Japanese teacher of English.
>
> I have a question. Would you help me?
>
> I made this sentence : Jupiter has much stronger gravity than Earth.
>
> But two native speakers corrected it as follows:

> Jupiter has *a *much stronger gravity than Earth.

>
> Is "gravity" a countable noun?
>
> The dictionaries I looked it up for shows it is "UNCOUNTBLE".
>
> Why do you have to put "a" in there? In which case does "gravity" need
> the particle "a"?

For abstract nouns such as "gravity", the distinction of countable vs
uncountable is not something fixed at the lexical level, but rather
depends on how the characteristic of gravity, etc. is conceived. If
gravity is understood as a force, then one can think of something as
having its own bigger or smaller instance of force (a greater or lesser
force), in which case it would be countable, or one can conceive of
force as something measured on a continuum, in which case it would be
uncountable (more or less force).

Herman Kahn

[Mark Spahn]

Another suggestion:  Avoid the count noun/mass noun problem by adopting a wording like "The pull of gravity is much stronger on Jupiter than on Mercury."  What is being compared here is the gravitational acceleration g (on Earth, it's 9.8 m/s^2) at which a body released at the surface of the planet falls downward toward the planet's center -- except that Jupiter, being a "gas giant", has no solid surface.  It's atmosphere all the way down (or at least all the way down to the stack of tortoises that hold up everything).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtles_all_the_way_down

(The mystery here is, "all the way to to*WHAT*?)

-- Mark Spahn (West Seneca, NY)

[Hirashin]

Thank you for your information and help.

Then I wonder why the two native speakers think that "a much stronger gravity" would be better.

One is American and the other Australian.

The American person said:

'gravity' as a concept is uncountable. However, the way you are using it in your original sentence, it is standing in for the term 'surface gravity', which is countable.

The Australian said:

An uncountable noun is something that number can be assigned to directly. So using ‘water’ as an example, ‘10 water’ is meaningless, whilst a countable noun like table can be used in that sense - ‘10 tables’. Uncountable nouns can be specified with a unit - ‘10 litres of water’ or quantified without specifics ‘a lot of water’. So gravity is like that as well.

What do you think?

平野伸治

2018年10月31日(水) 8:50 Mark Spahn <mark...@twc.com>:

[Warren Smith]

Can't speak about the Australian -- but I have found that many (most) Americans have a terrible level of proficiency in English! Even college education no longer ensures that students even have a rudimentary grasp of grammar, etc. It is even worse when young people are talking about concepts outside of their areas of understanding. As a (former) physicist (and planetarium lecturer), I can assure you that their usage is neither grammatically nor idiomatically correct (and certainly not technically correct!).

This leads to the question of what defines "idiomatically correctness..." We can have philosophical discussions of what constitutes the "living language" of modern English -- but I will always err on the side of greater clarity and use of language that reflects some degree of care, intelligence, and education. For example, it is fashionable today to never use caps or punctuation when sending text messages, and to use abbreviations such as "u" for "you." Maybe I am a snob, but I find such sloppiness and laziness in use of English often maps onto equal sloppiness and laziness in thought processes, and thus such usage is not to be aspired to or emulated. 

The bottom line, Hirashin, is that you have to carefully select those you would set up as models for "proper" English: merely being a "native English speaker" is not enough! 

Warren Smith

[Herman]

On 31/10/18 07:05, Hirashin wrote:
> Thank you for your information and help.
>
> Then I wonder why the two native speakers think that "a much stronger
> gravity" would be better.
>
> One is American and the other Australian.
>
> The American person said:
> 'gravity' as a concept is uncountable. However, the way you are using it
> in your original sentence, it is standing in for the term 'surface
> gravity', which is countable.
>
> The Australian said:
> An uncountable noun is something that number can be assigned to
> directly. So using ‘water’ as an example, ‘10 water’ is meaningless,
> whilst a countable noun like table can be used in that sense - ‘10
> tables’. Uncountable nouns can be specified with a unit - ‘10 litres of
> water’ or quantified without specifics ‘a lot of water’. So gravity is
> like that as well.
>
>
> What do you think?
>

Nouns which may classified as uncountable abstract nouns are typically
used without an indefinite article when referring to the concept,
phenomenon, etc. in general or as a whole, but are often used with an
indefinite article when referring to a particular type or instance of
the concept, phenomenon, etc. Thus, in this second type of context,
where use of an indefinite article is more common, some people may feel
that using an indefinite article is "better" or "more correct". One sign
that an uncountable abstract noun X is being used in this second, more
limited sense, is that it is preceded by an adjective; another is that
it is the "X of something".

For example,

(1) "Knowledge is important" (OK)
(2) *"A knowledge is important" (Wrong)

but

(3) "Good knowledge of Japanese is important" (OK)
(4) "A good knowledge of Japanese is important" (OK)

Here, some people may feel that (4) is better than (3).

Thus,

(5) *"A gravity was discovered by Newton" (Wrong)

("gravity" here refers to the concept/phenomenon in general, so "a
gravity" would be wrong),

but

(6) ?"Jupiter has gravity of 24.79 m/s^2" (probably wrong)

(in this case, where "gravity" refers to a specific instance of the
phenomenon and is conceptualized as a characteristic which something
has, I suspect most people would use "a gravity of..." and would feel
that (6) is wrong or unnatural)

Your example,

(7) Jupiter has [a] much stronger gravity than Earth

lies somewhere in between (5) and (6) and could go either way, depending
on individual preference or other contextual factors.

In any case, I would not characterize this as an issue of being
countable vs uncountable, but rather one of when is an indefinite
article used with nouns that may be classified as uncountable abstract
nouns, because such use of "a[n]" does not imply that the noun in
question can take on all the features of countability (i.e. the fact
that you can say "a knowledge of Japanese" does not imply that you can
also say *"knowledges of Japanese and Chinese", *"every knowledge", etc.).

Herman Kahn

[Alan Siegrist]

Herman writes:

> (6) ?"Jupiter has gravity of 24.79 m/s^2" (probably wrong)
>
> (in this case, where "gravity" refers to a specific instance of the
> phenomenon and is conceptualized as a characteristic which something
> has, I suspect most people would use "a gravity of..." and would feel
> that (6) is wrong or unnatural)

Number (6) is definitely wrong. The number 24.79 m/s^2 is the value of the gravitational acceleration of Jupiter, not its gravity. The gravitational acceleration (or acceleration due to gravity) is a measure of the strength of the phenomenon of gravity but it is not gravity itself. This is much like the relationship between heat and temperature. Heat is a phenomenon, but we often use temperature as a measure of it.

[Herman]

Scientifically speaking, that is correct, but whether one uses the term
"gravity" or "gravitational acceleration" is not relevant to the
grammatical question, since both are examples of nouns which can be used
as uncountable abstract nouns.

I think that "Jupiter has a gravitational acceleration of 24.79 m/s^2"
(and analogous constructs) would be much more common than "Jupiter has
gravitational acceleration of 24.79 m/s^2", but the latter can be
encountered as well, and as far as I am aware, there is no prescriptive
rule requiring the use of an indefinite article before an uncountable
noun, so I don't think one can go so far as to say it is "definitely
wrong".

Herman Kahn

[Mark Spahn]

In English, nouns are divided into two types:  count nouns, and mass nouns (a.k.a. countable and uncountable nouns).  A count noun is one that has a plural and can be counted, like dog, plan, or mile.  A mass noun is one like butter or wheat that has no plural and cannot in itself be counted:  instead, one specifies the units in which the mass noun is thought of and counts the units.  Thus, one counts pats, sticks, or pounds of butter, and grains, bushels, or truckloads of wheat.

In Japanese, all nouns are mass nouns.  That is, to count a Japanese noun, you must specify, by a word known as a "counter" (助数詞 josuushi), the unit in which the noun is to be counted.  The counter is preceded by a number word, usually from the ichi-ni-san series but sometimes, depending on the counter, from the hito-fu-mi series.

Source:  "A Word about Counters", page 1638, The Kanji Dictionary

It came as a revelation to me that "in Japanese, all nouns are mass nouns."  Are there any counterexamples to this assertion? 

When a word -- like wheat -- that is ordinarily a mass noun is used in the plural, the meaning is type/kind/variety/species of wheat, and the corresponding Japanese counter would be 種 shu.  Example: "Most tetraploid wheats (e.g. emmer and durum wheat) are derived from wild emmer, T. dicoccoides."  Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheat  .  Another example: "The Four Freedoms were goals articulated by United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt on Monday, January 6, 1941."  Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Freedoms  (Alas, there is no corresponding Wikipedia article in Japanese allowing us to check whether "the four freedoms" is 4種の自由.  But a search on "four freedoms の" leads to

https://dictionary.goo.ne.jp/word/en/four+freedoms/

i.e., 四つの自由 .

Sometimes a mass noun like water is pluralized in a poetic sense, as in

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SiInyGmA9M

Two errors: the title should say "[Lake] Cayuga's waters", not "... water"; and "Cayuga" should be pronounced /kah-YU-guh/, not /kay-YU-guh/.  See

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=cayuga&atb=v25_g&ia=maps

Another song about the same school:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7Rjk1WGHp8

[timl...@aol.com]

It is not the gravitational acceleration "of Jupiter", which would mean that it is Jupiter which is being accelerated. It is the gravitational acceleration due to Jupiter experienced by an object at a certain distance from Jupiter's centre of mass. At other distances of course, because of the inverse square law the value will not be 24.79, but some other calculable value.

 

Tim Leeney

 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Alan Siegrist <AlanFS...@Comcast.net>
To: honyaku <hon...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Wed, 31 Oct 2018 22:34
Subject: RE: Is "gravity" countable or uncountable?

Herman writes:

> (6) ?"Jupiter has gravity of 24.79 m/s^2" (probably wrong)
>
> (in this case, where "gravity" refers to a specific instance of the
> phenomenon and is conceptualized as a characteristic which something
> has, I suspect most people would use "a gravity of..." and would feel
> that (6) is wrong or unnatural)

Number (6) is definitely wrong. The number 24.79 m/s^2 is the value of the gravitational acceleration of Jupiter, not its gravity. The gravitational acceleration (or acceleration due to gravity) is a measure of the strength of the phenomenon of gravity but it is not gravity itself. This is much like the relationship between heat and temperature. Heat is a phenomenon, but we often use temperature as a measure of it.

Regards,

Alan Siegrist
Orinda, CA, USA

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[Hirashin]

Thank you all for your advice and useful comments.

Warren Smith wrote:

The bottom line, Hirashin, is that you have to carefully select those you would set up as models for "proper" English: merely being a "native English speaker" is not enough!

Thank you for your advice. But that is tremendously hard. The textbooks that we are supposed to use often have unnatural (or even incorrect) English sentences and we don't have reliable native English speakers around us to give us useful information about English. (The school I work for doesn't hire any native English speakers!)

How should we find reliable native speakers who will give us good advice on English? I'm going to quit the school next March.  

[Alan Siegrist]

The constant that we call the “gravitational acceleration of Jupiter” or the “gravitational acceleration due to Jupiter” (there is no functional difference between these two different names) is the acceleration that an object undergoes at the surface of the planet Jupiter due to the mass of the planet. Technically, Jupiter itself is also simultaneously accelerated due to the object and toward it, but the magnitude of that acceleration depends on the mass of the object, which is usually small (such as a person or a spacecraft) and is usually considered negligible compared to the enormous mass of Jupiter.

 

There is a small amount of uncertainty as to the point or radius that should be considered the “surface” of the planet Jupiter, since it is a gas giant. I think the general convention is to consider the radius of the visible cloud tops as the “surface” since any liquid or solid core is only postulated at this time, and would at any rate be much deeper within the planet at a currently unknown depth.

 

Regards,

 

Alan Siegrist

Orinda, CA, USA

 

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[Herman]

On 31/10/18 23:33, Mark Spahn wrote:
> In English, nouns are divided into two types:  count nouns, and mass
> nouns (a.k.a. countable and uncountable nouns).  A count noun is one

> that has a plural and can be counted, like /dog/, /plan/, or /mile/.  A
> mass noun is one like /butter/ or /wheat/ that has no plural and cannot

> in itself be counted:  instead, one specifies the units in which the

> mass noun is thought of and counts the units.  Thus, one counts /pat/s,
> /stick/s, or /pound/s of butter, and /grain/s, /bushe//l/s, or
> /truckload/s of wheat.

>
> In Japanese, all nouns are mass nouns.  That is, to count a Japanese
> noun, you must specify, by a word known as a "counter" (助数詞

> /josuushi/), the unit in which the noun is to be counted.  The counter
> is preceded by a number word, usually from the /ichi-ni-san/ series but
> sometimes, depending on the counter, from the /hito-fu-mi/ series.
>
> Source:  "A Word about Counters", page 1638, /The Kanji Dictionary/

>
> It came as a revelation to me that "in Japanese, all nouns are mass
> nouns."  Are there any counterexamples to this assertion?
>

There is the notion, expressed by some linguists, that "classifier
languages have only mass nouns". However, this hypothesis clearly does
not apply to Japanese.

For one thing, Japanese has plural forms formed by adding suffixes such
as ーたち、ーども、ーら or by reduplication (日々、木々 etc.), which are applicable
only to count nouns. For example, 犬たち unambiguously indicates that 犬 is
not a mass noun.

Japanese also has quantifiers (一部の、ほとんどの、数多くの、etc.) the usage
or semantics of which unambiguously distinguish between count and mass
nouns. For example, it is possible to say 数多くのリンゴ but not 数多くの水,
because 数多く only goes with count nouns. Likewise, while 一部の水を飲んだ
signifies "drank some of the water (a portion of the water)", 一部のリンゴを食った
unambiguously means "ate some of the apples" and not "ate a portion of
the/an apple", i.e., the semantics of 一部の differs depending on whether
the following nouns is a mass or count noun.

Herman Kahn

[Herman]

It depends on what sort of advice you are seeking. If you want to get
something like an analysis or explanation of some particular aspect of
English grammar or usage, you would need to find somebody with the
corresponding subject matter expertise, e.g., a linguist who has
actually studied the aspect of English grammar or usage which you seek
advice on.

Native speaker informants who are not subject matter experts can still
be useful, provided that the question to them is properly formulated.
Questions of the sort "how do you understand this statement" or "what
would you say in such and such a situation" are valid, while questions
such as "is this sentence correct" or "can you say such and such" are
dubious in terms of the reliability of the information they will elicit
from an informant selected solely on the criterion of being a native
speaker.

I wouldn't be particularly concerned about "unnatural (or even
incorrect) English sentences" in Japanese textbooks, because given the
status of the English language in Japan as it has developed to date, it
is altogether unrealistic to expect that the English spoken in Japan
will be something other than a "Japanese variety" of English, which will
in part be "unnatural or even incorrect" with respect to other "more
native" varieties or to some hypothetical "standard English". This is
all the more so true, given the fact that the trend toward
standardization of languages, after making substantial progress over the
past two centuries or so since it was initiated, has more recently
largely petered out, giving way to the emergence of vaguely defined
multi-regional, multi-polar, multi-standard standards, of which, in the
case of the English language, the Japanese variety of English is clearly
one such significant pole or standard. To put it another way, while not
nearly as significant in the English language realm as the US or UK, the
significance of the English language production coming out of Japan is
no doubt more significant than that coming out of New Zealand, and
possibly Canada and Australia as well.

Herman Kahn

[Mark Spahn]

On 11/1/2018 1:46 PM, Herman wrote:
>
> There is the notion, expressed by some linguists, that "classifier

> languages have only mass nouns". However, this hypothesis [that in
> Japanese all nouns are mass nouns] clearly does not apply to Japanese.

>
> For one thing, Japanese has plural forms formed by adding suffixes
> such as ーたち、ーども、ーら or by reduplication (日々、木々 etc.), which
> are applicable only to count nouns. For example, 犬たち unambiguously
> indicates that 犬 is not a mass noun.
>
> Japanese also has quantifiers (一部の、ほとんどの、数多くの、etc.) the
> usage or semantics of which unambiguously distinguish between count
> and mass nouns. For example, it is possible to say 数多くのリンゴ but not
> 数多くの水, because 数多く only goes with count nouns. Likewise, while
> 一部の水を飲んだ signifies "drank some of the water (a portion of the
> water)", 一部のリンゴを食った unambiguously means "ate some of the apples"
> and not "ate a portion of the/an apple", i.e., the semantics of 一部の
> differs depending on whether the following nouns is a mass or count noun.
>
> Herman Kahn
>

Thanks for noticing and explaining this.
（我々が）一部のリンゴを食った。　We ate some of the apples (plural).
（ネズミが）リンゴの一部を食った。 The mouse/mice ate some of the apple
(singular).

[Herman]

On 01/11/18 15:17, Mark Spahn wrote:

>>
> Thanks for noticing and explaining this.
> （我々が）一部のリンゴを食った。　We ate some of the apples (plural).
> （ネズミが）リンゴの一部を食った。 The mouse/mice ate some of the apple
> (singular).

In my understanding, the first example above is unambiguously plural,
but the second is actually ambiguous in terms of number.

Herman Kahn