"too good a shooters" redux, for the masses

Laurence Horn laurence.horn at YALE.EDU
Wed Jun 16 00:55:54 UTC 2004


This time with a mass noun after the indefinite article rather than a
plural.  This was ESPN Baseball Tonight's commentator Harold Reynolds
last night commenting on the aborted pitching duel between the young
Cubs' ace Mark Prior and the old Astros' ace Roger Clemens:

"What a compliment to Roger Clemens, to be compared at 40 to a young
pitcher like Mark Prior--that's quite a stuff he's got."

And just in case we weren't sure he could actually use a mass noun
like "stuff" in this construction, he went on to say of someone else,
I forget who, that he had "not as good a stuff".

Larry



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