amount – English Grammar Profiler

I have little to no interest in politics. (I have very little or no interest in politics.) There is next to no evidence for his claim. (There is almost no evidence for his claim.)

She left but to no avail. (She left but it was useless.)

( LITTLE | NEXT | BUT ) TO NO + noun Read More »

In the English Grammar Profile, A2 point 32 in the category of ADVERBS/ as modifiers: limited range of adverbs (‘only’, ‘just’) to focus on or point to something

In all of the examples in the EGP, the adverbs “only” and “just” are used to point out or emphasize a small amount or number.

only | just (focus) Read More »

‘BIT’ related to quantity is countable = a bit of … bits of … For example: By inserting those genes into yeast, we could produce little bits of that smell and be able to, maybe, smell a little bit of something that‘s lost forever. TED A2 in the English Vocabulary Profile: bit = a small amount or piece of something B1 in the Oxford Learner Dictionary: [countable] bit of something (especially British English) a small

a little | bits of | a bit of | a bit of a | a little bit of Read More »

‘All’ and ‘both’ are predeterminers, meaning they come before other determiners.  For example: “All the things”, “both our children” In the English Grammar Profile, A2 point 22 in DETERMINERS is defined as: increasing range of quantifying determiners with plural nouns ‘all’, ‘both’, ‘a few’ In the English Vocabulary Profile: a few = A2 some, or

all | both | a few + PLURAL NOUN Read More »

The text discusses the use of “so much” and “a lot” as adverbs of degree in English grammar. These phrases modify verbs to indicate a high degree or intensity of an action. For example, in the sentence “You bother me a lot”, “a lot” intensifies the verb “bother”. Similarly, in “He loved it so much that he continued to show up every week”, “so much” intensifies “loved” and the phrase “so much that” establishes a cause-effect relationship between the high degree of love and the action of showing up every week.

SO MUCH | A LOT adverbial phrases in end position Read More »

A search in playphrase.me for “so much as” reveals the following 3 most common collocations/multi-word units containing negative meaning or being surrounded with negation:  You let your wife throw you out of your own house  without so much as a whimper. listen to the example The phrase “without so much as a” means “not even the slightest amount of“. In the example above, it emphasizes that the

so much as | in as much as Read More »