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A Lot of Nothing
How to Quantify a Noun
 

Today is Tuesday, February 27th, 2007, and this is the ESL Help Desk inviting you to listen to today's podcast.  Our website provides grammar lessons, audio stories and more.  All of our examples and audio stories are authentic language generated by other learners of English.  We're glad you have visited us today and to all of our listening audience today, welcome to www.ESLHelpDesk.com! 

Today we are going to continue to discuss countable and noncountable nouns, a topic which we began last week.  In this lesson, we are going to talk and learn about quantifying countable and noncountable nouns. 

To read the previous lesson and one which will provide background to today's lesson, read  "One, Two, Three Little Countable Nouns".

The Problem. 

I recently received the sentence below from a learner of English.  The meaning of the statement is clear, but there are some problems with grammar.  Here is the sentence:

I went to Back Bay station yesterday to buy train tickets, but  there is no parking space.

The problem in the sentence concerns the use of count and noncount nouns, and the use of noun quantifiers.  There are several ways to write this sentence correctly,

How would you correct the above sentence?  Those of you who are online can type your idea into the IDEA BOX below.
 

The Foundation

Quantifiers are words that indicate how much of something there is. There are quantifiers for plural countable nouns and for noncountable nouns (which only exist in the singular form).

Its Placement in the Sentence

The quantifier exists in the noun determiner position, that is, right before the noun.

Examples of Quantifiers

Examples of quantifiers for plural countable nouns are as follows:

• few, a few, a couple of, a lot (of) lots of, a number of, many, too many, no, not enough, enough, a half (of), all (of), etc.

a lot of grammar lessons
many grammar lessons

Examples of quantifiers for noncountable nouns are as follows:

• little, a little, a lot (of), a great deal of, much, too much, all (of), no, not enough, enough, half (of), less, more, etc.

a lot of grammar
much grammar

Other Things We Need to Know

When quantifying a plural countable noun, the head noun should be in the plural form. 

A friend of mine joined the army a couple of months ago.

Apply Our Rules to New Situations

Below is a picture of garbage.    The word garbage is a noncount noun.

How would you describe what you see, using a quantifier? Write a sentence in the textbox below.

 

And the correct sentence is -

I see a lot of garbage.
 

Now let's try to correct the original sentence, "I went to Back Bay station yesterday to buy train tickets, but  there is no parking space."   Did you know that the word space exists as a count noun and as a noncount noun?  If you didn't know that before, now you do.  So this sentence can be rewritten in two different ways.  As we rewrite each sentence, notice that the verb form also changes due to the rules of subject-verb agreement.

1.  SPACE as a (PLURAL) COUNT NOUN   (Notice the plural verb form.)        
  
I went to Back Bay station yesterday to buy train tickets, but  there are no parking spaces there.
 

2.  SPACE as a NONCOUNT NOUN (Notice the singular verb form.)

I went to Back Bay station yesterday to buy train tickets, but  there is no space there for parking.
 

Additional Activities for Practice

Now you can practice using quantifiers with the common noncountable nouns listed below.   Create a sentence for each in which you use a noun quantifier, just like you did for the word garbage, above.  The quantifiers are listed below the line.  

1. money

2. sleep

3. knowledge

4. vocabulary

5. privacy

6. English

Examples of quantifiers for noncountable nouns are as follows:

• little, a little, a lot (of), a great deal of, much, too much, all (of), no, not enough, enough, half (of), less, more, etc.

 Answers to Last Week's Question:

That's today's lesson from the ESL Help Desk.  If you have any questions about this lesson, please email us. 
Thanks for listening to us this week.   At the ESL Help Desk, your feedback is our feed.

Photograph of Vegetables, Copyright Carla Saliba.

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