Timeline for I learned much of my English watching
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
6 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jan 28 at 22:04 | comment | added | Acccumulation | It's important to distinguish between grammatical properties and real-word properties. Vocabulary consists of words, and "word" is a count noun, but the word vocabulary is singular. Words that refer to a set can take "much" to describe their contents: "Much of my inventory", "Much of my staff", etc. | |
| Jan 28 at 14:30 | comment | added | Andy Bonner | I would say that “vocabulary” is usually used either as a singular (“I have a big vocabulary”) or noncount (“OK, class, let’s learn some vocabulary”). The only way I can imagine it as count is when discussing the “word-hoards” specific to several people, groups, etc: “They have differing vocabularies.” | |
| Jan 28 at 13:20 | comment | added | kaya3 | I'm not sure that vocabulary really is as countable as you suggest. Are "hot", "hotter", "hottest", "hotly" different words in one's vocabulary? If not, how should we count it when somebody who previously knew only "hot" then learns "hotter"? If yes, suppose a person learns the word "weak" and also knows these patterns for changing adjectives into comparatives, superlatives and adverbs, so that they would be able to form "weaker", "weakest" and "weakly" when needed ─ but the person hasn't yet seen or formed those yet ─ how should we count them? | |
| Jan 28 at 12:44 | comment | added | Michael Harvey | Much of my mother's vocabulary was derived from her career in the navy. | |
| Jan 28 at 5:57 | comment | added | Peter | By that argument wheat would be countable because it is made up of grains. I believe much of is quite correct and idiomatic in this context, though it is a little more formal than "a lot of" | |
| Jan 28 at 4:55 | history | answered | david | CC BY-SA 4.0 |