[Ads-l] Ever pondered this question?

[Laurence Horn]

Yes, I changed the example partway through and forgot to adjust the ??s.  Exactly, “a few” and “several” are both good here (since they highlight the existence of the errors), while “few” isn’t (because it highlights their insignificance).  

Larry

> On Jul 15, 2020, at 9:37 PM, Mark Mandel <markamandel at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
> 
> Laurence,I think you must have meant approximately
> 
> Unfortunately there were {a few/??few/several} errors in the manuscript.
> 
> MAM
> 
> 
> On Wed, Jul 15, 2020 at 8:43 PM Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>
> wrote:
> 
>> I think it’s important in this discussion to distinguish “a few”, which is
>> essentially a positive quantifier, from “few”, which is negative.  This is
>> also true of the corresponding mass quantifiers “a little” (positive) vs.
>> “little” (negative), and counterparts in French, “un peu” (positive) vs.
>> “peu” (negative).  Linguists have written extensively about these words
>> (Oswald Ducrot on the French ones, everyone from Dwight Bolinger to me on
>> the English ones), citing considerable evidence for this distinction.
>> Consider, for example:
>> 
>> Few if any
>> Few or none
>> *A few if any
>> *A few or none
>> 
>> You’re going to have a little difficulty with that, in face you may have a
>> lot of difficulty/*no difficulty at all
>> You’re going to have little difficulty with that, in face you may no
>> difficulty at all/*a lot of difficulty
>> 
>> Few economists have ever pondered this question.
>> *A few economists have ever pondered this question.
>> 
>> The psychologists Linda Moxey and Sanford wrote a number of papers and a
>> book supporting the psychological reality of these distinctions.
>> 
>> It’s “a few” that’s a fairly close paraphrase of “several”, not the
>> negative “few”:
>> 
>> *Several economists have ever pondered this question.
>> 
>> 
>> *Unfortunately there were a few/several errors in the manuscript.
>> ??Unfortunately there were a few/several errors in the manuscript.*
>> 
>> LH
>> 
>> 
> 
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