amount/number

[Randy Alexander]

Rodney Huddleston just mentioned to me that in British English,
"amount" is not generally used with count nouns.

I see this in some usage guides on the web, like Brians:
http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/amount.html

I decided to see what I could find comparing COCA and BNC, and this is
what I found:

I tried this search: amount of *s.[n*]

The syntax means "amount of" + any noun that ends in "s".  Of course
there are some uncount nouns thrown in, but COCA gives 1244 hits (COCA
is 385 million words).  BNC (100 million words) gives 371 hits, which
times 3.85 is 1428.35.

Then I tried this search: amount of *s.[*nn2*].

This restricts it to plural nouns (which still contains some uncount
plurals).  COCA gives 758 hits, and BNC gives 282 * 3.85 = 1085.7.

According to this, it looks like in BrE, amount may cover counts more
than in AmE.  One specific example is "amount of things".  COCA gives
14 hits, vs BNC's 8 * 3.85 = 30.8.

I would like to know what people think of this.  Is the usage advice
prescriptivist poppycock?  Do you use "amount" with count nouns?

--
Randy Alexander
Jilin City, China
My Manchu studies blog:
http://www.bjshengr.com/manchu

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