A Cognitive Grammatical Study of Mass-Count Distinction among Young and Middle-age Persian Native Speakers

Resting on the notion of number, Nouns are divided into two basic subclasses count and mass. This study is designed to examine if young and middle-aged Persian native speakers are different in treating a noun as mass or count. This study is also based on treatment of mass and count nouns presented by Langacker that is a Cognitive Grammar developed by him. Forty male and female participants from Isfahan, who had already been classified into two groups according to their age, took part in this study. The data gathered by using two preference tasks as questionnaire. It was comprised of two sets of ten situations. Each situation has two Persian sentences. The responses collected through questionnaire were classified in line with the treating a noun as mass or count based on participants’ age (the young and the middle-age). The total frequency and percentage of treating a noun as mass or count used by the participants were calculated. Then, the Chi-square test as the statistical procedure was applied in order to analyze the data obtained. This study has shown there is no relationship between the age and treating a noun as mass or count.