Noncount Nouns

 

Welcome to Our Online English Grammar HELP! Student Handbook!

Today we continue with our Grammar HELP! Book's discussion of nouns and pronouns. It is for beginners and intermediate learners of English.

We begin with written activities.  You can print out the exercises below and complete them.

In our Library, you can locate the lesson One, Two, Three Little Countable Nouns. You may want to review that lesson before you begin today with the exercises.


How to Quantify a Noun

 

What do you call words and phrases such as few, lots of, not enough, less, more, and too much?

We call them quantifiers.

Quantifiers are words that indicate how much of something there is.

The quantifier exists in the noun determiner position; that is, it exists right before the noun.  The quantifier and the noun will, together as a unit, constitute a noun phrase.

There are different quantifiers for count and for noncount nouns.

Look at the following two sentences.  Can you identify each noun as count or noncount?


It now takes me less time to do my work.  I can now finish my work in two hours.

CLICK HERE TO FIND THE ANSWERS.

In our last lesson, we discussed "How to quantify a (Plural) Countable Noun. If you wold like to review that lesson, click here now. Otherwise, continue below.

How to Quantify a Noncountable Noun

 

Here are some examples of quantifiers for noncountable nouns:

            

little* a little* a lot of a great deal of
much too much all (of) enough (of)
not enough (of) half (of) less more


The quantifier exists in the noun determiner position, which means right before the noun.  The noun, because it is a noncount noun, is in the singular form.

  • The sofa bed and all of the garbage was on fre.
  • He saved a little bit of money.
  • How much sleep should I get a night?
  • She has a lot of knowledge about that subject.
  • I'd like to have a large vocabulary.
  • Everybody should have a little privacy.



Quantifiers can exist in combination with other quantifiers.

  • I wish we had a lot less grammar homework.

Let's continue.

 

CLICK HERE TO LEARN THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN "LITTLE" and "A LITTLE".


Are you ready for more exercises?  

Let's go to the next page, "HOW TO COUNT A NONCOUNTABLE NOUN"
in our "NOUNS AND PRONOUNS" unit.

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