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I'm doing my homework. The question is

Is this sentence
‘Paul drinks much milk.’ grammatically correct?

For me the answer is yes, because the quantifier "much" is used before non-count noun. But according my book my answer is wrong. Anybody can help me, please?

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3 Answers 3

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I think the lesson on Learn English Today is very clear.

A lot of can be used in all sentences: affirmative, negative and interrogative.
Much and many are used in negative and interrogative sentences.
They are rarely used in affirmative sentences, except if they begin the sentence.

So, the sentence in the question is most commonly written or spoken as: "Paul drinks a lot of milk."

The context seems informal, and using "much" in an affirmative gives a more formal tone that sounds odd when used for a simple statement like that one.

Here is an example of using "much" in an affirmative sentence from an article on theguardian.com: "There was much talk last week of how he would be remembered for keeping Britain out of the euro[...]"

It is common to use "much" in a negative, as in: "Paul doesn't drink much milk."

or in a question, like: "How much milk does Paul drink?"

"Much" is also used with too or so, as Damkerng T. points out: "Paul drinks too much milk." or "Paul drinks so much milk!"

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    Another way to make it okay is using so much or too much instead of just much.
    – Damkerng T.
    Dec 7, 2014 at 16:16
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    I love reading questions on this stack exchange. As a native English speaker, I don't notice some of the weird little rules, that even some really simple words have! I'm glad I didn't have to learn it as a second language!
    – Adi Bradfield
    Dec 7, 2014 at 18:53
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    I'd really hate to believe that "rarely used in" and "grammatically correct" are mutually exclusive. But maybe that's a WHOLE other topic.
    – Dawood ibn Kareem
    Dec 7, 2014 at 22:24
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    @DavidWallace I don't follow. It's not grammatically incorrect to say for example "There was much debate." but it is formal sounding and it would probably be better for a learner to use "a lot of" in most affirmatives until they have more mastery.
    – ColleenV
    Dec 8, 2014 at 0:15
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    @DavidWallace Ah, I see. I answered the question to explain why the book said the sentence wasn't correct, not to answer the question that was in the book. I don't much care for the question "Is this grammatically correct?" because there are a lot of ways to be grammatically correct and still make it impossible for folks to understand you :) I should probably explain more about formal/informal though. I'll give it some thought.
    – ColleenV
    Dec 8, 2014 at 0:22
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I think the key is that much isn't about countability, but about emphasizing the increased size when compared to another. Sentences with "much" in them are almost always have an implicit comparison that isn't stated. In your example "Paul drank much milk today" doesn't have an unstated comparison.

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The sentence is: " Paul drinks much milk "

Here, Paul - subject
(Drink + s ) - verb
Much - adverb
Milk - object

Actually, much and many are used only in negative sentences and questions. But also, much is used for uncountable nouns. So, here MILK is uncountable. Then we can use it.

As well MUCH is used for emphasizing that people, things, situations,....etc are very similar.

Example:

If I'm going to a club, I wear much the same as I wear for work.

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