Quantifiers|Learn English

Hi!

Quantifiers are words that precede and modify nouns. They tell us how many or how much. Selecting the correct quantifier depends on your understanding the distinction between Countable and Non-Countable Nouns. For our purposes, we will choose the countable noun trees and the non-countable noun dancing

The following quantifiers will work with countable nouns:

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

The following quantifiers will work with non-countable nouns:

not much dancing
a little dancing
little dancing
a bit of dancing
a good deal of dancing
a great deal of dancing

The following quantifiers will work with both countable and non-countable nouns:

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

There is an important difference between “a little” and “little” (used with non-countable words) and between “a few” and “few” (used with countable words). If I say that Tashonda has a little experience in management that means that although Tashonda is no great expert she does have some experience and that experience might well be enough for our purposes. If I say that Tashonda has little experience in management that means that she doesn’t have enough experience. If I say that Charlie owns a few books on Latin American literature that means that he has some some books — not a lot of books, but probably enough for our purposes. If I say that Charlie owns few books on Latin American literature, that means he doesn’t have enough for our purposes and we’d better go to the library.

This should help you use the quantifiers correctly , but make sure to also learn your countable and non-countable nouns too as that is crucial to understanding quantifiers correctly.