Hi, Paul Quinn!
I read your message from 03.05.2019 13:48

 AK>> [The lack of oxygen at this height saps power.] "saps" is related
 AK>> to "lack" and oxygen doesn't make "lack" uncountable.

 PQ> IMHO: saps is related to power. Power is the thing being sapped by
 PQ> a lack of oxygen.

But "lack" is the subject, and "saps" is the predicate to "lack"

 AK>> or an uncountable form:

 AK>> [Their apparent lack of progress mean they are not doing their job
 AK>> properly.]

 PQ> IMHO: this is unnatural to a native speaker.

Yes, you are right it was my fault. That example from the dictionary was in the
 form of a question (Does their apparent lack of progress mean...) and I remade
 it wrongly.

So, "Their apparent lack of progress MEANS they are not doing their job
properly." -- here we have "lack" uncountable.

[a lack of food]
here we use "lack" as singular noun.

 PQ>  (I don't know where
 PQ> Mike got his rule from, although it may be correct for 99.99% of
 PQ> cases in his locale.) The passage should read: "... lack of
 PQ> progress means they are not...".

If we apply Mike's rule we'll see that "progress" is an uncountable noun, as
should be "lack", and, therefore, it should be "lack of progress MEAN they are
not..." So the rule is not working.

 PQ> It could be countable, in either
 PQ> the case of there being many (persons) involved, or in the singular
 PQ> case of one person, when speaking of 'their'. English can be
 PQ> annoyingly imprecise at times.


Bye, Paul!
Alexander Koryagin
english_tutor 2019

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 * Origin: nntps://fidonews.mine.nu - Lake Ylo - Finland (2:221/6.0)