Part 3 Nouns and Noun Groups
Quantifiers
Examples
one fish, two fish
many students
too much homework
hardly any time
Definition
Quantifiers are noun modifiers that answer the questions: how much or how many. That is, they tell us about quantity or amount. They include words and phrases like much, many, a lot of , a number of, some, almost all, and any.
Form
Quantifiers appear at the beginning of the noun group, before any adjectives or modifiers (many smiling faces, some drinking water, few clear guidelines). A common grammatical error is to use the wrong quantifier with count and noncount nouns:
| Count nouns only | Noncount nouns only | All nouns |
| much
little, a little a great deal of a large amount of |
many
few, a few several a (large) number of both |
some
no any a lot of (almost) all
|
(Caplan, Grammar Choices for Graduate and Professional Writers, 2nd edition, University of Michigan Press, 2019)
Some quantifiers are tricky to use correctly:
- few and little mean almost none (few ideas, little experience), but a few and a little mean some (a few ideas, a little experience)
- any is only used in negative sentences and questions (do you have any salt? I don’t have any new ideas), except when modified by hardly (there are hardly any people here today)
- much isn’t used by itself in positive sentences very often – we prefer a lot of
