I think I may have made some progress in figuring out what that reason is.
It has to do with specificity.
You can say “A great deal of energy was spent on this problem,” and that means “A lot of…”
You can also say “A great deal of the energy spent on this problem was wasted,” and that means “A lot of the…”
This distinction is lost in many of the posts from Rinkals link. In other words people used “a great deal of” when they meant “a great deal of the.” The reader is left scrambling in some cases trying to understand exactly what was meant. If this is true should those people’s (university professors or not) writing be held up as examples of acceptable usage.
Have a gander at these gems, all taken from the first page and all following several examples of “a great deal of” following demand/ expect etc.
[quote]Personal experiences proved that when teaching, a great deal of students that are
Now that we’ve established that a great number of students is dumb, I’ll give it a rest. I always suspected that a great number of students is dumb, now I know they is dumb.
That would be twice as funny if I had forgotten both quotation marks.
Anyway, you asked the question. Sorry if you don’t like the answer, which basically is that the phrase sounds dumb to a couple of us and that all you have to support it’s usage is examples from a few hundred poorly written internet postings.
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.[/quote]
Opinions do not grammar rules make. Whether it sounds dumb or not is subjective. Let’s stick to whether or not it is grammatically correct.
Please stay on the topic and off each other’s backs. Thank you.
Let’s not. We are talking about more than whether it is grammatically correct or not. We are talking about whether it is acceptable usage. With regard to usage, opinion, the way things sound, and historical precedent matter. “A great deal of students” sounds dumb to a great deal of us (tell me that doesn’t sound dumb to you) and the links provided so far show mainly that only lousy writers use it. If I am right, and it has yet to be shown that I am not, then it would be preferable that teachers don’t teach that usage no?
A well read native speaker of English would subconsciously anticipate a non-countable noun after “a great deal of” and seeing a countable noun there causes, I would imagine, something like a little glitch in the process, something that you might not even consciously notice but that would contribute to a substandard feel to a piece of writing.
It’s a finicky point I realize but we are either talking about this thing or we are not, and if I am a little harsh towards Rinkals that might be because earlier in the discussion he insinuated that I was dumb and called my posts garbage. Perhaps you missed that.
Anyway, I am over all that now and just want to see this thing played through to the end. It’s a bit like a game of chess or something.
Cobuild says that “a great deal of” is followed by an uncountable noun or a definite noun and then goes on to give two examples of it used with uncountable nouns and no examples with definite nouns.
In other words I was half right (spooky how the dearly departed spirit of fred is taking over these days) earlier when I said the problem had something to do with specificity. "A great deal of the students at our school… " is grammatically correct apparently (but still daft sounding if you ask me). “A great deal of students” is grammatically wrong AND daft sounding.
Given the complexities involved it would seem ill advised to include it in any material designed for ESL students.
It sounds strange. It sounds incorrect. But it makes one seem dumb to quantify their reason with a vague adjective like “dumb”. That’s like describing the taste of something as “good”.
Nope. Nothing I can see that would relate to a reasonable argument for this situation.
Perhaps I can be enlightened as to why it is “dumb” instead of “incorrect” or “strange”. I’d like to hear a particular reason why you insist on using that adjective except for the most obvious reason: to flame the OP.
The original use of “dumb” was used to lend an air of informality to what could quite quickly become a terribly dry affair. It was also used to reflect my own feelings of being overwhelmed by what seemed a simple enough issue but that would, we all knew, turn out to be more complicated than it first appeared. The use of dumb you see was not an insult to the OP but a expression of humility with regard to myself. Sandman, jdsmith, puiwaihin, yourself (I would have thought) would have interpreted it that way.
Henceforth I shall use awkward rather that dumb if that is acceptable to you.
[quote=“bob”]The original use of “dumb” was used to lend an air of informality to what could quite quickly become a terribly dry affair. It was also used to reflect my own feelings of being overwhelmed by what seemed a simple enough issue but that would, we all knew, turn out to be more complicated than it first appeared. The use of dumb you see was not an insult to the OP but a expression of humility with regard to myself. Sandman, jdsmith, puiwaihin, yourself (I would have thought) would have interpreted it that way.
Henceforth I shall use awkward rather that dumb if that is acceptable to you.
Thanks.[/quote]
If you used an appropriate emoticon, I would have understood what you meant. I wonder if emoticons will become part of grammar in future?
When Cobuild says that “a great deal of” is followed by an uncountable noun or a definite (we can only assume plural) noun it is not stating a “rule” about the phrase, it is saying that in it’s corpus of 500,000, 000 words of published English that is how it was actually used. BIG difference.
When Cobuild says that “a great deal of” is followed by an uncountable noun or a definite (we can only assume plural) noun it is not stating a “rule” about the phrase, it is saying that in it’s corpus of 500,000, 000 words of published English that is how it was actually used. BIG difference.[/quote]
Sorry Bob but the OP asked…
answered with…
I was therefor answering the OP’s question. What else one may assume is irrelevant.
Yes, but if it is a plural noun following then it needs to be a “definite” plural noun. At least that is how it was used in materials deemed worthy of being included in the data base. And if it is used with a definite noun then it will always have the meaning “a high proportion of” and not “a large number of”. “A great deal of students” is ambiguous. “A great deal of the students” is not.
The entire affair of course is complicated by the fact that many nouns can be used both countably and uncountably. For example when one says that grammar rules are a great deal of shit, shit is uncountable but when one says that a great many of the shits left on my doorstep were soft and stinky “shits” is being used countably. Of course shits can also be used as a noun as in “I have the shits” but such considerations are perhaps beyond the scope of this discussion and best left to the health and fittness forum anyway.
Do you mean vague? If not, please help me see the ambiguity. I honestly don’t see it.
Secondly, I’m not sure the distinction between “high proportion of” and “large number of” is significant. In most cases a large number of people equates to a high proportion of people.
These distinctions seem irrelevant to the discussion of its acceptability.
And I don’t see any difference in how grammatical or acceptable it becomes by making the noun become definite. Seems exactly the same to me.
I think what it comes down to is speech communities. Perhaps in your native speech community “a great deal of” would only be used with uncountable nouns. In mine countable, indefinite nouns are also acceptable. So, to you it seems ungrammatical/dumb. To me it just sounds colloquial (even when used with mass nouns).
