quantifiers
Some of the websites say there are not so much differences between "more than " and "over" but the others say it's better to use "more than" when it comes with numerous expressions. Is that common for native speakers of English?
For example
This movie has been loved more than ten years.
Can I use "over" instead of "more than"?
The website http://www.onlinegrammar.com.au/more-than-and-over/
Use "much" to describe a relative amount of a noun that can't be easily counted or quantified. If you can't put a number before the noun, use "much."
Also, if you replace the object with a pronoun, it should be singular (it). Consider "collective nouns" that are singular but describe an unquantifiable volume.
"Much" is often combined with a modifier like "too," "not," or "very."
There is not much snow on the ski slopes this year. It's a small amount.
There's much work ahead before the end of the project. It's a big one!
There's too much sand on the beach to count it all. It's everywhere!
"Many" describes a quantifiable, countable noun. If you can put a number before the noun you should probably use "many." Here if you replace the object with a pronoun, it will be plural (them, they).
Many ski-lift operators will be looking for jobs. Who will employ 30 of them?
This project has many complex parts to consider. They are all critical - all 1000 parts.
There are too many grains of sand on the beach to count them all. At least a million of them are in my left shoe.
Using "a lot of" or "lots of" is sort of personal preference. In most cases the 2 are interchangeable.
There is a lot of ice on the road, so drive carefully! Also, there's lots of snow!
We still have a lot of work to do - lots of separate tasks to complete.
I found a lot of sand in my right shoe, and lots more in places I didn't know existed.
A lot of people make the mistake of writing "alot," so don't do that!
In most cases either one works fine, but you should be careful about replacing "a lot" or "lots" with "many" or "much." Note that in the examples below "many" works in place of "lots/a lot", but "much" doesn't work at all.
At first there was just one monkey, but then the banana truck exploded and there were lots of monkeys running all over the place!
A lot of the monkeys ran off to the beach afterward. Lots of bananas still litter the road though.
The town will need to hire a lot of people to clean them up. Lots of people need jobs now anyway.
Yes, they convey different meanings.
- I didn't have many apples.
- I had few apples.
Simply put, sentence one conveys the meaning that the speaker didn't have as many apples as it would take to call the apples "many". Sentence two tells us that the speaker had a small number of apples.
They could mean the same, but they do not. "I didn't have many" means "I had less than what could be called many". That has a broad meaning: I could be having a relatively large amount of apples, but not as many that would fit the label "many". However, "I had few" means "I only had a small number". It couldn't imply the meaning "I didn't have many" represents. In other words, sentence two implies sentence 1, but sentence 1 has a more general meaning. Take a look at the diagram I draw to get a better picture. A more elaborate description is given below.
More info on this can be found on Cambridge Grammar of English Language §5.2 — scalar entailments and implicatures; page 366–368.
CGEL points out that negating "many" results in a paucal implicature. It's useful to compare this pair to the more restrictive negative quantifier "no". Indeed, "few" is the opposite of many; but "not many" is not as restrictive as them. Compare these four instances:
- None of the sailors tried to defend their captain.
- Few of the sailors tried to defend their captain.
- Not many of the sailors tried to defend their captain.
- Not all of the sailors tried to defend their captain.
We can apply what's been said here. "None" is the most restrictive,; "few" is less restrictive than "none" but still more than the other pairs, "not many" is only more restrictive than "not all".
Hence, we can say that if sentence one is true, so are others. If sentence two is true, then so are 3 and 4, but we can't judge whether one is correct or not; and the same story goes for three and four. If we know that not all of the sailors helped their captain, we can't necessarily judge whether none of them helped the captain, or there were only a few exceptional sailors that didn't help the captain.
However, it should be noted that this difference in meaning is very subtle and may go unnoticed, since this was all about implicatures: context-dependent. We can conclude that the sentences do not convey 'precisely' the same meaning, although the difference is passable in most cases.
Best Answer
Choosing between more than and over with respect to numerical values seems to be a matter of style now, not grammar. If we check the Cambridge Dictionary, we get
So for example, Most of these rugs cost over $1000 is equivalent in meaning to Most of these rugs cost more than $1000.
You will often see and hear people using over in this way, at least in the US. Either option is acceptable.