Grammar mistake under 3rd-party software option

[Marcus Tomlinson]

Under the option to "Install third-party software..." it reads:

"This software is subject to license terms included with its documentation. Some is proprietary."

I believe: "Some is proprietary" should be: "Some are proprietary".

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

I disagree. This is an elided version of "Some [of this software] is proprietary", which is perfectly grammatical. While "Some are proprietary" would be a grammatical sentence in isolation, it would be incorrect in this context, because "software" is not a count noun and so there is no plural referent available.

It may be worth rewording this entirely to avoid other people being confused in the same way, though.

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

I guess the contrary view is that "some" refers to "license terms", in which case it would indeed be grammatical to use plural agreement. Again, it's probably best to reword so that it's clear what the quantifier is actually referring to.

[Phillip Susi (psusi)]

Shouldn't the whole thing be plural since it is referring to multiple different software packages, each of which has its own license? So:

"These software are subject to license terms included with their documentation. Some are proprietary".

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

Software is a mass noun, not a count noun, so "These software are ..." is ungrammatical no matter which way you slice it.

[Phillip Susi (psusi)]

Strange... 5 years of college prep school and 2 years of studying Latin and I never heard the terms "mass noun" and "count noun". Neither have my friends who were English majors.

It seems to me that it is like fish; you can say "I caught a fish", or "Those are some big fish". The word is the same whether it is singular or plural, so you have to infer which it is from the context.

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

It's a pretty standard grammatical term, though local names for the concept may of course vary.

Anyway, I'm afraid dictionaries (treating them as a quick way to check typical usage) don't back you up. Here are a few citations:

  https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/software
    "mass noun", and then gives various examples consistent with that

  https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/software
    "uncountable noun", and then gives various examples consistent with that

  https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/software#English
    "Software is a mass noun (some software, a piece of software). By non-native speakers it is sometimes erroneously treated as a countable noun (a software, some softwares)."

  http://blog.dictionary.com/is-software-a-mass-noun/

If you want the sense you're going for, then you need to say "software packages" or similar.

Regarding food comparisons: "fish" is not a mass noun, but rather a count noun with an irregular plural, which is quite a different, er, kettle of fish. When you say "two fish", you're counting them even if the plural happens to use a zero ending. If you want a food comparison, then try "bread" instead: while you can say "that is some nice bread", you can't say *"those are some nice bread" even if you're talking about more than one loaf, and you would have to say something like "those are some nice loaves of bread" instead.

[Marcus Tomlinson (marcustomlinson)]

Yeah, I was reading the second sentence as a reference to the "license terms" from the previous sentence. That's why the "is" threw me off. A rewording may be the best option.

[Phillip Susi (psusi)]

So what makes it a mass noun rather than an irregular noun like fish?

I'm starting to wonder if this is a British thing because I just can't find anyone here in the states that has ever heard of it. I wouldn't be terribly surprised if it were just me since I never cared much for English classes, even though I did end up learning it pretty well after taking Latin, but I've been asking everyone I know whose understanding of Grammar I know to be better than mine. I had dinner last night with a former English teacher but sadly, I forgot to ask her.

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

dictionary.com is an American site, so I doubt that this is specific to British English. It's possible that you might need to talk to linguistics majors rather than English majors, though, since in many places English courses don't have the same focus on syntax and grammar that you often find in linguistics courses.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_noun gets rather technical but has a good summary near the top: "In English, mass nouns are characterized by the fact that they cannot be directly modified by a numeral without specifying a unit of measurement, and that they cannot combine with an indefinite article (a or an)." For example, you can say "two fish" but not *"two software" (or *"two softwares").

I hope we can at least agree (as Marcus does above) that if it takes us the best part of ten comments to get this far then the paragraph is a dead loss to clarity and should be rewritten.

[Phillip Susi (psusi)]

Oh certainly; you've just gotten me very curious about this mass noun concept now.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Yousuf 'Jay' Philips (philipz85)]

I think the sentence should be change to

"Third-party software is subject to license terms included with its documentation. Some of them are proprietary."