much

[Jonathan Lighter]

"I don't much care" sounds old-fashioned (or something) but otherwise OK to
me. Other forms ("I don't much drink," etc.) sound quite strange.

JL


On Thu, Feb 6, 2014 at 7:51 PM, Benjamin Barrett <gogaku at ix.netcom.com>wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Benjamin Barrett <gogaku at IX.NETCOM.COM>
> Subject:      Re: much
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Googling on "I don't much" yields Charles Dodgson writing Alice as saying,
> "I don't much care where--," but it feels marked to me.
>
> "I don't much drink" and "I don't much eat" gets so few hits, they could
> be considered anomalies. "I don't much do" also gets a mere 86 raw hits.
>
> FWIW
> Benjamin Barrett
> Formerly of Seattle, WA
>
> Learn Ainu! https://sites.google.com/site/aynuitak1/videos
>
> On Feb 6, 2014, at 4:40 PM, Brian Hitchcock <brianhi at SKECHERS.COM> wrote:
>
> > What about "Much Ado About Nothing?    -- Clearly, the "much" is
> > adjectival; I don't think  the "nothing" is a negative licenser.
> >
> > I do agree that there is a difference between "I don't drink much
> coffee."
> > and  "I don't drink  coffee much." It does matter whether "much" is used
> > as an adjective or as an adverb. The problem is that when it occurs
> > between a verb and a noun, the noun seems to claim it.  Oddly, one does
> > not say "I don't much drink coffee" -- or does one? This construction
> > would put the "much" unequivocally in an adverbial position (next to the
> > verb, not next to the noun).
> > -- bwh
> >
> >
> > At 2/5/2014 07:25 PM, Laurence Horn wrote:
> > There has indeed been a lot of ink spilled over the negative polarity
> > status of "much".  Essentially, in most environments "much" needs a
> > negative "licenser", as those working on such phenomena call it, much as
> > do "any", "ever", "yet", "lift a finger", etc.
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



--
"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org