Count-mass coercion, and the perspective of time and variation

In an earlier study (Ziegeler 2007), it was emphasised that it was redundant to discuss construction coercion in the face of more transparent mechanisms of cognitive pragmatics such as metonymy, and within the sphere of grammaticalisation studies. The present paper extends such arguments, including examples of (apparent) coercion of count-to-mass nouns in Colloquial Singaporean English, and, comparing the data with examples of noun referentiality in earlier historical English, illustrates that what on the surface may appear to be coercion is just a sub-type of metonymy, involved in the metaphorical generalisation of constructions across lexical-syntactic boundaries. Comparison with retention and unresolved mismatch in grammaticalisation is also considered.