Universal grinder

The term "universal grinder" was first used in print by F. Jeffry Pelletier in 1975, after a personal suggestion by David Lewis.

For example, bare count nouns in Mandarin Chinese do not receive mass interpretations: a sentence such as Qiáng-shang dōu shì gǒu (墙上都是狗) can only be interpreted as 'There are dogs all over the wall,' not as 'There is dog all over the wall.

'[2] The "universal sorter" describes one way in which mass nouns are understood when they are used in the plural.

Harry Bunt suggested the universal sorter in his 1981 doctoral dissertation.

[5] Some scholars use the phrase universal packager to refer to both the concrete and abstract understanding of plural nouns; others use it to refer only to the concrete sense, and use universal sorter for abstract meaning.