Quantifiers

Welcome to ESL Printables, the website where English Language teachers exchange resources: worksheets, lesson plans, activities, etc.
Our collection is growing every day with the help of many teachers. If you want to download you have to send your own contributions.

ESL Forum:

Techniques and methods in Language Teaching

Games, activities and teaching ideas

Grammar and Linguistics

Teaching material

Concerning worksheets

Concerning powerpoints

Concerning online exercises

Make suggestions, report errors

Ask for help

Message board

ESL forum > Grammar and Linguistics > Quantifiers

Quantifiers

Peter Hardy

Quantifiers

Hi all,

Teaching the quantifiers ďż˝Some and Any ďż˝, I got into some trouble. (My excuse was that these things do happen on a Monday morning.)

After explaining that we use ďż˝some ďż˝ for positive sentences and offers or requests, and ďż˝any ďż˝ for negative and interrogative sentences, both for countable and uncountabe nouns, we did some exercises.

Here we came across two examples that defied the explanations: "You can take any seat you like" and "Do you have any idea?".

Both ďż˝seat ďż˝ and ďż˝idea ďż˝ are singular, so how can I explain that to my very confused students? I was thinking of linking to the indefinite quantifiers (anything), but is that right? (Apart from the fact it might be confusing as well.)

Any ideas???

Looking forward to those marvellous explanations.

Cheers, Peter

15 Feb 2015

Mariethe House

Very humbly, I ďż˝d say, "any" in the first example is not a quantifier but an indefinite article

take a seat : take any seat (giving an idea of choice and not of quantity)

"Do you have any idea " It ďż˝s the same as in the previous example: do you have an idea ?

Wouldn ďż˝t it be preferable to say: "do you have any ideas"

Anyway, I ďż˝ll just take a seat now and wait and see if anyone has a better , any better idea! Wink

16 Feb 2015

Gi2gi

I would say that "any" in affirmative (positive) sentences means "it does not matter which/what kind of"

You can visit me any time (it does not matter, be it evening or morning).

Any doctor will say that smoking is bad. (= every doctor).

16 Feb 2015

Peter Hardy

Thanks guys. You got me on the right track, so I could work out the grammar rules:

As a general rule, we use SOME in affirmative sentences and ANY in interrogative and negative sentences, but we can also use ANY in affirmative sentences. We can use ANY in an affirmative sentence (singular or plural) meaning "no matter which".

ANY in affirmatives sentences:

You can take any book you like. (You can take one book, no matter which one)
You can take any books you like. (You can take more than one book, no matter which ones)
That exercise is very easy. Any child here could answer that. (This boy or that girl, it doesn ďż˝t matter who you choose, they all know the answer)
You don ďż˝t need to go there at the weekend. You can go any day you want. It ďż˝s always open.

ANY in conditional sentences

We usually use ANY after "if" even in affirmative sentences (but SOME may also be possible)

If you see anything strange, tell me
If you like any of these books, you can borrow it.

Cheers, Peter

16 Feb 2015