THE QUANTIFIERS

Quantifiers with countable
and uncountable nouns

Adjectives and adjectival phrases that describe quantity are shown below. Some can only go with countable nouns (friends, cups, people), and some can only go with uncountable nouns (sugar, tea, money, advice). The words in the middle column can be used with both countable and uncountable nouns.

Note: much and many are used in negative and question forms.

Example:

• How much money have you got?
• How many cigarettes have you smoked?
• There's not much sugar in the cupboard.
• There weren't many people at the concert.

They are also used with too, (not) so, and (not) as :There were too many people at the concert - we couldn't see the band.
It's a problem when there are so many people.
There's not so much work to do this week.

In positive statements, we use a lot of:

• I've got a lot of work this week.
• There were a lot of people at the concert.