NMTS-Group5

From Lexical Resource Semantics
Revision as of 09:00, 30 October 2012 by Lara (talk | contribs) (→‎Examples)
Jump to navigation Jump to search

Warning:
The material on this page has been created as part of a seminar. It is still heavily under construction and we do not guarantee its correctness. If you have comments on this page or suggestions for improvement, please contact Manfred Sailer.
This note will be removed once the page has been carefully checked and integrated into the main part of this wiki.

(Back to the group overview)

Wikipage of Group 5

Overview

Members

Short description of the topic

Quantifiers are words that precede and modify nouns; they indicate quantity.

There are different types of quantifiers which can be divided in quantifiers for count nouns and non-count nouns.


Comment

Count-nouns are regarded as individual, countable items: e.g. tree


Non-count nouns are not countable, things that we regard as 'undifferentiated mass': e.g. dancing, the water we spilled on the floor, one big mess


Nouns that can be either count or non-count nouns: e.g. paper, stone, and cake For instance, I can enter a bakery and say 'I want a cake' (an individual bakery product), or, before we enter, I can tell a friend that 'I want cake' and not refer to a specific cake but simply mean that the idea of eating cake appeals to me — any cake or piece of cake with chocolate frosting...


Examples

Quantifier expressions

  • some
  • both
  • all
  • everything
  • nothing
  • at least five
  • most
  • all but one
  • less than half of the
  • three books
  • more...than
  • John and Mary
  • only John


Quantifiers that work with count nouns:

many / a few / several / a couple of / none of the trees


Quantifiers that work with non-count nouns:

not much / a little / a bit of / no dancing


Quantifiers that work with both count and non-count nouns:

all of the / some/ most of the / enough / a lot of trees / lots of / plenty of / a lack of trees/dancing

References and links

References

Links

Our e-learning objects

Our wiki pages

Our podcasts

Our materials for an interactive whiteboard

Our pictures

Our exercises