• The following sections of A Comprehensive Grammar of The English Language (Randolph Quirk, Sidney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech, Jan Svartik, Longman, London & New York, 1985) were consulted in preparing this entry:
Noun classes: count, noncount, and proper nouns
§5.2 245-246
Concrete and abstract nouns
§5.3 247
Nouns with dual class membership
§5.4 247-248
Reclassification
§5.5 248
further notes:
1. In §5.4, p247-248, there is a useful list of “Nouns with dual class membership.” In some of the cases listed the nouns are identical (for example, beauty, difficulty, experience, talk) in other cases, the count noun and its non-count partner are different words; for example: calves (veal), pigs (pork), sheep (mutton), garment (clothing), permit (permission), job (work), poem (poetry), machine (machinery)