On Less and Amount Used with Plural Count Nouns

Abstract

The present study is concerned with the less and amount constructions that are used with plural count nouns, like less students and ... amount of people, etc. We found out, through the examination of the large-scale corpora such as COCA, COHA, BNC, that these constructions are not new usages and are not increasing these days, contrary to Foster (1968: 217-18), Bauer (2002), Mair and Leech (2006: 320) and others. It is clear that these constructions cannot be ignored as mere speech errors. They have been used for a long time in English. Our argument is that the constant use of these constructions is not ascribed to the changes of less and amount themselves, but to the recategorization/respecification/ reclassification of plural nouns into singular nouns in certain circumstances through semantic extension. The phenomenon of nouns shifting from the category mass to count (e.g. two coffees) is relatively well-known. We argue here that the vice-versa recategorization is possible, as Huddleston and Pullum (2002: 346, 354) and Quirk et al. (1985: 309-10) argue, too. The main evidence for this argument is that other quantifiers such as much, (a) little, deal of and quantity of, which are normally used with non-count singular nouns, can be used with plural count nouns, too, just like less and amount (e.g. (how) much Americans). And we also found that nearly the same specific group of nouns are used with both less and much in their plural forms. Our conclusion is that the much + plural construction might have been the source construction for the less + plural or the amount of + plural constructions.