A quantifier used on many occasions
Many evoking diversity in positive sentences
Prescriptive grammarians advise against the use of the quantifier many in informal positive sentences, unless it is modified by too, so, or as. However, because these grammarians may not have conducted a thorough corpus-based analysis, such advice may be unsound. This is why this article attempts to identify the actual constraints on the use of many, by searching corpora for data for many and its competitor a lot of, with plural count nouns in positive sentences. Conducted within the conceptual framework of cognitive linguistics, the analysis suggests that quantities denoted by many are construed as heterogeneous and discrete, hence the relative affinity of many for nouns of place and time, as part of adverbial phrases. This core meaning may also account for many’s relative affinity for personal nouns in subject position. Unlike a lot of, many seems to associate awkwardly with homogeneous substances, which may be why it is rarely found in object noun phrases.
References (43)
Alexander, L.G. (1995). Essential American English Grammar. London, UK: Longman.
Biber, D., Johansson, S., Leech, G., Conrad, S., & Finegan, E. (1999). Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English. Harlow, UK: Longman.
Busuttil, P., & Roques-Frampton, V. (1997). Exercices de Grammaire Anglaise: Avec Corrigés Systématiques. Paris, France: Nathan.
Carter, R., & McCarthy, M. (2006). Cambridge Grammar of English: A Comprehensive Guide. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Croft, W. (2003). Typology and Universals (2nd ed.). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Crosbie, D. (2009, August 25). Re: On many [Web log message]. Retrieved from [URL] (last accessed February 2015).
Davies, M. (2011a). BYU-BNC: British National Corpus. Retrieved from [URL] (last accessed February 2015).
Davies, M. (2011b). The Corpus of Contemporary American English: 425 Million Words, 1990-2011. Retrieved from [URL] (last accessed February 2015).
Dixon, R.M.W. (2005). New Approach to English Grammar, on Semantic Principles. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Eastwood, J. (1994). Oxford Guide to English Grammar. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Fox, C., Manning, E., Murphy, M., Urbom, R., Cleveland-Marwick, K., & O’Shea, S. (Eds.). (2003). Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English. Harlow, UK: Longman.
Google. (2011). Google UK. Retrieved from [URL] (last accessed February 2014).
Greenbaum, S. (1996). The Oxford English Grammar. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Hands, P. (Ed.). (2011). Collins Cobuild English Grammar (3rd ed.). Glasgow, UK: HarperCollins.
Hanks, P. (2013). The corpus revolution in lexicography. International Journal of Lexicography, 25(4), 398–436. 

HarperCollins. (2012). Mycobuild.com. Retrieved from [URL] (last accessed July 2013).
Hewings, M. (2013). Advanced Grammar in Use (3rd ed.). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Huart, R. (2010). Nouvelle Grammaire de l’Anglais Oral. Paris, France: Ophrys.
Huddleston, R.D., & Pullum, G.K. (2002). The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. 

Israel, M. (2011). The Grammar of Polarity: Pragmatics, Sensitivity, and the Logic of Scales. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. 

Jackendoff, R. (1991). Parts and boundaries. Cognition, 411, 9–45. 

Lallement, B., Brion, C., & Pierret, N. (2006). La Grammaire de l’Anglais. Paris, France: Hachette.
Larreya, P., & Rivière, C. (2010). Grammaire Explicative de l’Anglais (4th ed.). Paris, France: Pearson.
Leech, G.N., Cruickshank, B., & Ivanic, R. (2001). An A-Z of English Grammar and Usage (2nd ed.). London, UK: Longman.
Lindquist, H. (2009). Corpus Linguistics and the Description of English. Edimburgh, UK: Edimburgh University Press.
Mair, C. (2007). Change and variation in present-day English: Integrating the analysis of closed copora and web-based monitoring. In M. Hundt, N. Nesselhauf, & C. Biever (Eds.), Corpus Linguistics and the Web (pp. 233–247). Amsterdam, Netherlands: Rodopi. 

MM. (2009, August 24). Re: On many [Web log comment]. Retrieved from [URL] (last accessed February 2015).
Murphy, R. (2012). English Grammar in Use (4th ed.). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Neuman, R. (1975). Much confusion, a lot of problems, lots of questions, many (?) answers. (Unpublished assignment). University of California, Los Angeles, Unites States of America.
Parrott, M. (2010). Grammar for English Language Teachers. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Partee, B.H. (1989). Many quantifiers. In J. Powers & K. de Jong (Eds.),
ESCOL 89: Proceedings of the Eastern States Conference on Linguistics
. Papers presented at The Eastern States Conference on Linguistics, University of Delaware, Newark, 6-8 October (pp. 383–402). Columbus, OH: OSU.
Quirk, R., Greenbaum, S., Leech, G., & Svartvik, J. (1985). A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language. London, UK: Longman.
Silverstein, M. (1976). Hierarchy of features and ergativity. In R.M.W. Dixon (Ed.), Grammatical Categories in Australian Languages (pp. 112–171). Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press.
Sinclair, J. (1984). Naturalness in language. In J.M.G. Aarts & W. Meijs (Eds.), Corpus Linguistics. Amsterdam, Netherlands: Rodopi. Retrieved from [URL] (last accessed February 2015).
Sinclair, J. (Ed.). (1992). BBC English Dictionary. London, UK: HarperCollins.
Sinclair, J. (1996). The search for units of meaning. Textus, 9(1), 75–106.
Swan, M. (2005). Practical English Usage (3rd ed.). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Wallen, N. (2012, February 6). The world is full of summer in Australia, Burma, Vietnam, Thailand and many other places [Web log message]. Retrieved from [URL] (last accessed February 2014).
Wood, F.T. (1981). Current English Usage (2nd ed.). London, UK: MacMillan.
Cited by (2)
Cited by two other publications
Ekaterina Chon & Yoon-kyoung Joh
2018.
Prepositional Variation Observed in the Adjective Effective.
The Journal of Studies in Language 34:1
► pp. 93 ff.

Raksangob Wijitsopon
2017.
Collocations and local textual functions of quantifiers in learner English essays.
Linguistic Research 34:1
► pp. 1 ff.

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 5 august 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
Any errors therein should be reported to them.