“A few does(m)”, or “a few do(m)”?
Is the word ‘a few’ a plural or singular? “A few does” or “a few do”?
What are some graphs/graphs using https://www.og.com/ngrams/? Content=a+few+does+%2C+a+few+do&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Ca%20few%20does%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Ca%20few%20do%3B%2Cc0
I cannot paste a link.
how can I do it?
If on the page of N-Gram you link to, you click through ” a few does “, you will see that most examples of ” does” in question is not 3rd person singular of the verb “to do”, but the plural of the noun “doe”, and you don’t get a woman deer. I
got in the stand before daylight, and by 11 o’clock I’d seen a few did and one fairly nice buck, maybe a 110, but I let him walk. Example: Im a 30 buck fan and got off before 5 o’clock, but I don’t understand if it’s a 608 or something else.
“A few”, is plural, and takes “do”.
Adendum: Oh, hey, Google’s N-Gram doesn’t respect punctuation, and there’s quite a lot of “a few does” hits which have punctuation between “few” and “does” which completely changes the relationship of the words. Does
she have many memories? Does she enjoy thinking about, and remembering things that matter?
Does the Man take boarders? He takes a few. Does the woman run a boarding-house?
In a more general sense, there is no reproof that an all statement is true. ‘A few’ is a positive quantifier, which Oaksford et al. used. designate by Few+ (Moxey & Sanford 1987, 1991; Paterson et al. 1998 (forks & arteries);Sanford et al. 1994, 1996).
It is an old maxim that “He who mentions a few, does not deny that there are more” ”
apparently google’s N Gram viewer isn’t necessarily good for phrases.
