Collective mass affixes: When derivation restricts functional structure

In this paper I discuss a class of nouns which strongly resist number marking, viz. collective nouns (e.g. cutlery). At first sight they falsify the claim that roots can combine with all morphosyntactic structures. I show that they do not: collectives are not roots, but derivations that contain a featureless root and an n0 with a feature specification that is semantically incompatible with number marking.