My kingdom for a horse?
[quote]“This tale of chivalry and adventure has done much more than stand the test of time.”
[/quote]
Because its not functioning as a verb but as a noun phrase. It is the infinitive form.
What Fox said. It’s a bit more erudite than: “Otherwise it sounds dumb,” which was my original response. I like it. I might approptiate it from little b.
nevermind
“A great deal of” can certainly be used with plural nouns. It’s grammatically correct. The reason we see it used more with non-count nouns is because of stylistic considerations. It may sound “dumb”, but it doesn’t sound wrong.
Thank you very, very much, my brother. Where have you been? Mine enemies have sought to slay me.
Or if they shared a common opinion.
“A great deal of students would jump at the chance to stay home from school.”
Or if they shared a common opinion.
“A great deal of students would jump at the chance to stay home from school.”[/quote]
Who on earth would say that? It’s nonsense. “A great many students would…” is the correct usage.
Or if they shared a common opinion.
“A great deal of students would jump at the chance to stay home from school.”[/quote]
Who on earth would say that? It’s nonsense. “A great many students would…” is the correct usage.[/quote]
Who is the Pope of the English language? Who decides gay doesn’t mean happy anymore? Who dictates thou is old-fashioned?
Me.
(and sandman, of course)
[quote=“bob”]Me.
(and sandman, of course)[/quote]
Sorry, that would have to be “Sandman and I.”
:raspberry:
[quote][quote]
“A great deal of students would jump at the chance to stay home from school.”[/quote]Who on earth would say that? It’s nonsense. “A great many students would…” is the correct usage.[/quote]
Doing a quick search on Google you can see that about 40,000 people online would say “a great deal of people”. A little more than 10 times that number have said “a great many people,” but then you get almost 200 who say both “a great deal of people” and “a great many people” on the same page.
With “a great deal of students” you only get 530 hits, while “a great many students” gets 12,000. 20 times those who would use “a great deal.” But then, some of the people who we see using “a great deal of students” are professors and presidents of universities.
So, it certainly is not nonsense.
I am not saying “a great deal of students” is preferred, only that native speakers use it. It is not abberrant or erroneous. You could even say that a great deal of people would use it that way.
Sure is dumb, though.
I won’t argue that.
I could, but I won’t. 
Just dumb sounding. You have to give us that. I mean how can you argue? If we say it sounds dumb to us it sounds dumb to us and that is all she wrote. Heck it even sounds dumb to my wife and she is no Eienstein herself lemme tell you.
The other thing you have to look at is the number of times “a great deal of people” was used after require/expect/ demand etc. Or did you already figure that in?
I saw that. And there is a significant number of those, so it would lower the ratio a bit. I didn’t do an in-depth analysis, I just took a sample from the first two pages and only a couple turned out to be false hits.
But to make up for it, I didn’t count results from “a good deal of people” or “a good deal of students.”
You also have results for “good many”, but that’s erroneous and the addition to “great many” would boost results for that side much less than for the “good deal of” side.
So, all in all, I think it will cancel out.
In Pat Pong I saw a sign that said “A great deal on people.” What do you think about that?
How much does it cost for a really good looking girl?
I think the price depends on whether you prefer your good looking girls with or without penises. I am certainly no expert on that though so don’t hold me to it.