In English (and in many other languages), there is a tendency for nouns referring to liquids (water, juice), powders (sugar, sand), or substances (metal, wood) to be used in mass syntax, and for nouns referring to objects or people to be count nouns. But there are many exceptions: the mass/count distinction is a property of the terms, not their referents. For example, the same set of chairs can be referred to as "seven chairs" (count) and as "furniture" (mass); the Middle English mass noun pease has become the count noun pea by morphological reanalysis; "vegetables" are a plural count form, while the British English slang synonym "veg" is a mass noun.
In English (and in many other languages), there is a tendency for nouns referring to liquids (water, juice), powders (sugar, sand), or substances (metal wood) to be used in mass syntax, and for nouns referring to objects or people to be count nouns. But there are many exceptions: the mass/count distinction is a property of the terms, not their referents. For example, the same set of chairs can be referred to as "seven chairs" (count) and as "furniture" (mass); th,e Middle English mass noun pease has become the count noun pea by morphological reanalysis; "vegetables" are a plural count form, while the British English slang synonym "veg" is a mass noun.