Is this example sentence grammatically correct?
I like music that emanates life, such as those composed by Beethoven.
Music is an uncountable noun, but isn't "those" the plural of "that"? I'm confused.
Your example is not correct. Beethoven composed music, not ∗musics, so the demonstrative should take the singular form:
I like music that emanates life, such as that composed by Beethoven.
answered Dec 24 '14 at 14:23
-
So are all these sentences: love behind those music, Attend and enjoy those music and when all those Music started making sense to me all wrong and can be corrected by replacing "those" with "that"? – Gao Dec 24 '14 at 14:39
-
1@GaoWeiwei Indeed. I note that all of those are posted by non-native speakers. – StoneyB on hiatus Dec 24 '14 at 14:54
-
@StoneyB Is the noun 'music' still considered a non-count noun here even though it has been referenced by that? Or is 'music' as a separate, countable noun considered to be left out of that music? – user6951 Dec 24 '14 at 17:50
-
1@CarSmack Non-count nouns can take demonstratives and other determinatives: "I like this music, but not that." The music is divided into categories, and it is the body of music within each category, otherwise undifferentiated, which is pointed to, not individual "musics". Occasionally we do find it semantically necessary to pluralize ordinarily non-count nouns--"Ben & Jerry's markets 91 different ice creams"--but even here we prefer to avoid this by substituting a countable category--"Ben & Jerry's markets 91 flavors of ice cream". – StoneyB on hiatus Dec 24 '14 at 18:07
-
2@CarSmack Music is music, one and indivisible, even when it is categorized. It is not 'counted' grammatically, even when an idiom seems to call for it: "a music to be enjoyed, not analyzed". – StoneyB on hiatus Dec 24 '14 at 20:29
