 One point of agreement is that we must have a sortal in mind for counting to make sense. If we are looking at a barnyard and asked to count how many, we need to know what sort of thing we are counting. We could count animals or chickens or goats or tables or legs. Sortals specify the “kind of thing we are counting” and thus are associated with counting and a number. They contrast with other terms that involve measuring and an amount. Linguists distinguish count nouns, nouns that go with “How many?” and take plurals, from mass nouns that go with “How much?” and do not take plurals, Confusingly, many nouns have both a count and a mass meaning, so we can ask both how many chickens the farmer owns and how much chicken you would like on your plate.?