TransWikia.com

Why do distributive adjectives mostly take a singular noun while quantitative adjectives mostly take a plural noun?

English Language & Usage Asked by user19536 on March 23, 2021

I am sure that there are some exceptions to this, but I have noticed that distributive adjectives like “each”, “every”, “either”, “neither”, etc., mostly take a singular noun, while quantitative adjectives like “some”, “many”, “all”, “few” etc., in most cases take a plural noun. Both of these set of words refer to the number of something, sound similar and are used in similar contexts, but they have different rules guiding them. Is there some deep reason for why this is the case?

One Answer

The 'quantitative adjectives' determine the size of a group, but the 'distributive adjectives' consider all members of a [mentioned] group taken one at a time -- which makes them obligatorily singular.

Answered by AmI on March 23, 2021

Add your own answers!

Ask a Question

Get help from others!

© 2024 TransWikia.com. All rights reserved. Sites we Love: PCI Database, UKBizDB, Menu Kuliner, Sharing RPP