Meaning of universal grinder | Babel Free

Definitions

A notional mechanism whereby countable nouns are made uncountable.

Examples

“Consider a machine, the “universal grinder”. This machine is rather like a meat grinder in that one introduces something into one end, the grinder chops and grinds it up into a homogeneous mass and spews it onto the floor from its other end. The difference between the universal grinder and a meat grinder is that the universal grinder’s machinery allows it to chop up any object no matter how large, no matter how small, no matter how soft, no matter how hard. […] The reader has doubtless guessed by now the purpose of our universal grinder: Take an object corresponding to any (apparent) count noun he wishes (e.g., ‘man’), put the object in one end of the grinder and ask what is on the floor (answer: ‘There is man all over the floor’). […] It is apparent that this test can be employed at will, always giving us a mass sense of count nouns having physical objects as their extension.”

“I do not think it is too farfetched to imagine a universal grinder (as does Pelletier) that can grind up anything and everything such that whatever spills out is an amount of what goes in. […] The universal grinder does help us realize how our language can be used (and is used in describing these examples) with mass occurrences. But it is not just grinding and mashing that does the job.”

“Part of the reason for constructing universal grinders and objectifiers, for considering "kind of" meanings for mass terms, and generally for inspecting a wide range of sentences of the sort that we have considered, is to convince one that there is no point to an expression approach. Every noun – even hole and pore – sometimes occurs in noun phrases which we would intuitively call +mass. And every noun sometimes occurs in noun phrases we would intuitively call +count.”

“Substances survive [Francis Jeffry] Pelletier's universal-grinder test (are homogeneous) where objects do not, and substance kind supports different inferences from object kind.”

“Furthermore, universal grinders and packagers show that at least the non-abstract nouns have these sorts of mass and count meanings already embedded within their semantic values, needing only some appropriate context to become highly salient.”

“Contrast the universal grinder with the so-called universal sorter, which converts mass nouns into count nouns by sorting and packaging the entities denoted by mass nouns: / There is water on the floor. [MASS] / There are two waters in the cooler. [COUNT]”

CEFR level