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I took a test with the following question:

__________has changed at work since the last employee survey was carried out.

a. Little
b. Some
c. Few.

Now, I know that the correct answer is little, but why specifically can't I use few here? What is the rule for this?

Also, it seems to me that we could make a sentence like

Few have survived fighting polar bears barehanded.

So, could someone kindly explain why we can't use few in the example?

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We use "little" for uncountable nouns and "few" for countable nouns.
In your sentence

Little has changed at work since the last employee survey was carried out.

The general situation has changed a bit. And "general situation" is an uncountable noun, therefore "little" is correct.

In your second sentence

Few have survived fighting polar bears barehanded.

"Few have survived" implies few people have survived, and you can count people.

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This sentence would work:

Few have changed at work since the last employee survey was carried out.

The difference is that few requires a plural verb form. Few has is ungrammatical, but few have is fine.

Note the subtle difference in meaning based on the words that could be implied to exist but that have been left out:

Little [of anything] has changed at work since the last employee survey was carried out.

Versus:

Few [people / things] have changed at work since the last employee survey was carried out.

The subject goes from something general to something more specific.

However, the multiple choice question didn't use have as its second word; it used has. With has, few isn't an option.

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  • "Few [people / things] have changed at work since the last employee survey was carried out.|" This sounds grammatically incorrect to me for some reason.
    – BrainDefenestration
    Commented Mar 18, 2019 at 8:04
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    @JasonBassford: I don't think you can omit the "things" in "Few things have changed" without changing the meaning. Without it, it strongly implies you're talking about people.
    – Flater
    Commented Mar 18, 2019 at 9:29
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    @Flater. With suitable context it could be fine (e.g. "How are the trains?" "Few have run on time this week"). Without context I agree it implies people.
    – Mark Perryman
    Commented Mar 18, 2019 at 11:58
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    @Flater I don't think it strongly implies anything. WIthout any context, "Few have changed at work" is almost meaningless IMO. My reaction would be to wonder "Few what have changed?"
    – alephzero
    Commented Mar 18, 2019 at 12:29
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    Last year one of the things to come out of our staff survey was provision for lockers for cyclists so they can change once they get to work. So the statement 'Few have changed at work since the last employee survey was carried out." not only is perfectly meaningful, it might even be true at my office.
    – Pete Kirkham
    Commented Mar 18, 2019 at 13:11
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____ has changed at work since the last employee survey was carried out.

Both "few" and "little" occur as fused determiner-heads, but the former only occurs with personal plural nouns, as in Few would disagree with the decision, where we understand "few people".

By contrast, paucal "little" occurs with non-personal nouns, as in your example.

Edit: For those not familiar with the term 'fusion', as used to describe "few" and "little", it means that a determiner and the noun it determines (the 'head') are combined, or fused, into a single word. For example, "few" is a determinative combining the functions of determiner and head, hence the term 'fused determiner-head'.

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  • so your saying that whenever we read the word few, we subconsciously understand "few people"?
    – WendyG
    Commented Mar 19, 2019 at 10:29
  • @WendyG Yes, we understand "few" to mean "few people". Note that a determiner cannot function alone as a subject; by definition it requires a noun to determine.
    – BillJ
    Commented Mar 19, 2019 at 10:37
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Groups of people have often been described as "The Few" or "The Many":

Casting these as definite nouns, is used to emphasise their commonality as a group (the few as a group, or the many as a group). As such, they are also in principle a countable number, although in practice that often isn't done or expected.

But in your situation, you want a comparative ("not a lot") and not a countable specific small number. For that, little is the correct word.

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