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Which is ok?Yesterday we went to the hospital. We sang (some) songs and told (some) stories to the.. Which is ok?Yesterday we went to the hospital. We sang (some) songs and told (some) stories to the sick children. Thanks

Answers · 7

1
Quantifiers are used by natives mostly for prosody -- to make what is a simple speech act into something more personal. Compare: I have books. <too simple to satisfy a sophisticated adult I have quite a few books. <not tons, not millions but more than 'just a few' (3 or 4 or 5) I need help. <too simple, too vague -- not enough flavour I need a LOT of help. <This could take a while -- I am hopeless, can't do this on my own She is friendly. <too simple, no nuance She is pretty friendly. <More than most people but I don't know her well enough yet to say anything more conclusive. The movie was good. <So was dinner, the walk to the theatre, the conversation, etc, etc. The movie was VERY good. <Better than I expected, I recommend it, you should go To respond to your question -- including quantifiers (some) is a PLUS but when you repeat the same one that detracts from what could have been an improvement. We sang some songs and then told some stories. OK (it has nice balance / parallelism in the prosody) We sang some songs and then told a few stories. GOOD! We sang a whole lot of songs and then told a few of our favorite stories. GREAT! ('some' is not the richest quantifier -- combinations add even more flavour)
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Both work just fine :)
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It is ok with or without the word some

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