much

[Benjamin Barrett]

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.

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