Quantifiers

[Grablevskij]

Could you suggest where can I find any information about quantifiers.
Namely about "a great deal" with a plural noun.

My sentence was:
A great deal of firefighters was dousing a second-floor window with foam.

The "was" was marked as an error by my teacher. I can find anformation about agreement of other quantifiers (a lot and so on). But not about "a great deal". Will you suggest a link, please.

Michael

[engee30]

Originally Posted by Grablevskij

Could you suggest where can I find any information about quantifiers.
Namely about "a great deal" with a plural noun.

My sentence was:
A great deal of firefighters was dousing a second-floor window with foam.

The "was" was marked as an error by my teacher. I can find anformation about agreement of other quantifiers (a lot and so on). But not about "a great deal". Will you suggest a link, please.

Michael

When you use any kinds of quantifiers as the subject of a verb, the verb is singular or plural depending on whether the quantifier refers to one thing or to more than one thing.

[magdalena]

There are some quantifiers that can be used with both, countable and uncountable nouns, like : lots of, a lot of. Countable nouns can have plural form while uncountable can not, so: lots of people are stupid (people-countable, plural) but There is lots of money in that suitcase.(money- uncountable, singular) A great deal of sth is usually used with uncountable nouns like in: She has spent a great deal of time in the East. In the first place it would be better not to use a great deal of with countable noun in plural (firefigters) but if you decided to do so, you should have agreed 'firefighters' with the verb.