Counting, Cognition and the Mass-Count Distinction; Semantics of Number

This article discusses the mass-count distinction in Persian, in which counting is a truly productive and general phenomenon interchangeably applied to both mass and count nouns. This contradiction is what the present article aims to resolve. Previous efforts to resolve the above contradiction are subject to some shortcomings. The current analytical review tried to offer acognitive model of counting at the end. to sketch its cognitive model of counting, the present study derived its methodology from predicate logic, set theory, discrete functions, prototype theory, syntactic argumentation, and Idealized Cognitive Models (ICMs). We draw on exceptional uses of classifiers and numeral determiners primarily in Persian. These were put together with the observed prototypes of mass nouns being controversially counted in English. The traditional formal criteria for mass-count distinction turned out to be unable to explain the phenomena. The above-mentioned generality is claimed to be governed by metonymy in the literature, against which the authors argued and proposed the metaphor temporarily as a more efficient substitute. The permanent solution responsible for such a generality is introduced as “the delimitation function” which constructs the core of our present counting model. The mass-count distinction is determined to be primarily the result of a cognitive rather than a grammatical process. Having a proper use of grammar (which manifests the result of the process) one might feel free to introduce objects parallel to his own situational recognition about them.