Prepositions: OVER vs. ABOVE

Native speakers of English usually find it very difficult to explain the difference between the prepositions over and above, but nevertheless have very clear intuitions about when each should be used. Today's post will be getting into some detail about the factors driving these intuitions. The system is quite beautiful in its logic and very revealing about semantic structure.

Weirdness with plurals

The grammatical distinction between singular and plural does not map perfectly onto the meanings one and more than one.

One way to check whether a noun phrase is singular or plural is by seeing whether it triggers singular or plural agreement with a verb when it appears as the subject of a sentence:

• Singular: This monkey likes bananas. [and not This monkey like...]
• Plural: These monkeys like bananas. [and not These monkeys likes...]

Another way, also illustrated in the above examples, is by looking at whether a singular or plural determiner is used (in these examples, the determiner this is singular and the determiner these is plural), though with a determiner like the, the form doesn't change, and there are a few cases where the determiner appears to be singular, but plural agreement is triggered:

• Plural: A few/dozen/hundred/million monkeys like bananas.

Adverbially adjectival: GOOD vs. WELL

Many adjectives have an adverbial form produced by adding an -ly ending:

• quick → quickly
• accidental → accidentally
• local → locally
• recent → recently
• frequent → frequently
• happy → happily [replace -y with -ily]

Other adjectives have an irregular adverbial form:

• good → well [instead of goodly]
• early → early [adjective already ends in -ly]

Modern theories of grammar include adverbial forms of adjectives within the class of adjectives much as singular and plural nouns are included within the class of nouns. The reason is because they share most of the behaviour of the adjectives they are derived from. For example, gradable adjectives and adverbs both behave the same way in comparisons:

Pronouns aren't the only pro-forms

The way pronouns work is familiar to everyone. If someone has just mentioned the old man with green hair who lives in an apple tree by the lake, you can save some time by using he and him to refer to him afterwards.

But pronouns are a special case of a more general category known as pro-forms. While pronouns stand in place of noun phrases (NPs), other pro-forms stand in place of preposition phrases (PPs), verb phrases (VPs) and adjective phrases (APs). Some examples:

A PP pro-form:

• Jill will stay at the hotel.
• Penny will stay there too. [there interpreted as at the hotel]

A VP pro-form:

• Jill will stay at the hotel.
• Penny will do so too. [do so interpreted as stay at the hotel]

An AP pro-form:

• Jill was angry with the priest.
• Penny was even more so. [so interpreted as angry with the priest]

How many is A LOT?

Among quantities like a couple, several, many, a few, and a lot, some can be mapped to specific values. A couple usually means two (or approximately two), a dozen means 12, and there is a long tradition of dictionaries trying to place limits on others. For example, Merriam-Webster defines several as "more than two but less than many".

But another way of thinking about these expressions is that they tell us where a quantity lies in relation to standards and expectations. From this perspective, the word several is used to counter the expectation that a number is limited to one or two:

It is possible to send an email to several people at once. [several, not just one or two]
WRONG: The news said that many people were injured in the protest, but only several were. [several can't usually be contrasted with many]

The same several people you sent an email to could be described as a few people when you want to say the number is fewer than someone thinks it is:

I did email those naked pictures to several people.
She thought I emailed those naked pictures to everyone, but I only sent them to a few people.

It is impossible to say approximately how many items a few, a lot and many refer to without knowing the context. Four is a lot of fish for one person to eat, but it isn't a lot of fish to find swimming around in a lake. The interpretation of a lot depends on our understanding of how many items there should be in a given context. A lot is a large enough number to impress and a few is close to none.