There can be a verb or an uncountable noun, or an adverb. In the corpus (GLOWBE) all matches of "more or less" + plural noun turned out to be verbs misrecognized as nouns.
I may be wrong but I think "more or less combinations" is not standard English. If you can find Charles Dickens or Jane Austin, or anything that is definitely standard English, with this expression, I will add an exception to the rule. Regards, Marcin W dniu 2014-03-08 08:15, R.J. Baars pisze: > > But Marcin is right. There should not be a noun after this expression, but > most likely an adjective. > > Ruud > >> I understand that U/C part, but "more or less" in >> this case is an idiom meaning "to a varying or >> undetermined extent or degree" (Merriam-Webster's >> Collegiate® Dictionary). We can't have it as "more or fewer". >> >> kb >> >> Marcin MiÅ‚kowski wrote thus at 10:40 PM 07-03-14: >>> I'm not sure it's correct English. "Combinations" is countable, so there >>> cannot be "less combinations", only "fewer combinations". I couldn't >>> find many examples of "more or less" with plural countable nouns in any >>> corpus. >>> >>> So I think this is not a bug but a feature. >>> >>> Regards, >>> Marcin >> >> >> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ >> Subversion Kills Productivity. Get off Subversion & Make the Move to >> Perforce. >> With Perforce, you get hassle-free workflows. Merge that actually works. >> Faster operations. Version large binaries. Built-in WAN optimization and >> the >> freedom to use Git, Perforce or both. Make the move to Perforce. >> http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=122218951&iu=/4140/ostg.clktrk >> _______________________________________________ >> Languagetool-devel mailing list >> Languagetool-devel@lists.sourceforge.net >> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/languagetool-devel >> > > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ > Subversion Kills Productivity. Get off Subversion & Make the Move to Perforce. > With Perforce, you get hassle-free workflows. Merge that actually works. > Faster operations. Version large binaries. Built-in WAN optimization and the > freedom to use Git, Perforce or both. Make the move to Perforce. > http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=122218951&iu=/4140/ostg.clktrk > _______________________________________________ > Languagetool-devel mailing list > Languagetool-devel@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/languagetool-devel > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Subversion Kills Productivity. Get off Subversion & Make the Move to Perforce. With Perforce, you get hassle-free workflows. Merge that actually works. Faster operations. Version large binaries. Built-in WAN optimization and the freedom to use Git, Perforce or both. Make the move to Perforce. http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=122218951&iu=/4140/ostg.clktrk _______________________________________________ Languagetool-devel mailing list Languagetool-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/languagetool-devel
