[9급 국가직 영어 2014년 20번]

When the children had originally been shown what we think of as an object, like the copper tee, they pointed to an object of the same shape but a different substance, such as a plastic plumbing tee, not to the same substance with a different shape, namely a pile of copper bits. But when they had originally been shown what we think of as a substance, like the hair gel, they pointed to the same substance regardless of its shape, such as three smears of hair gel, and not to the same shape of a different substance, such an identically curved glob of hand cream. So well before children know how the English language distinguishes individual objects from portions of a substance, they distinguish them on their own, and generalize words for them accordingly. Names for solids with a noteworthy shape are taken to apply to objects of that kind; names for nonsolids with an arbitrary shape are taken to apply to substances of that kind.