For native speakers of English...
 

I'd like to ask the specific usage of the simple word 'some'. I'm re-studying English grammar at the moment, and I saw the following sentence in a grammar reference book:

'I've seen some good films recently.'

The book just says 'not "I've seen good films recently"'. Then I started to wonder how different they are, or we can't say 'I've seen good films recently' in any situation? etc. Could anyone possibly tell me the difference between them? I looked up some dictionaries but I couldn't find the answer.

try to use the word "alot"

You can certainly say "I've seen good films recently" but it's very book-sounding... it feels like something's missing. I mean, most of the time if you're going to say something like that you're going to quantify how many. For example "I saw a good film recently" for one, "I've seen some good films recently" for a few, "I've seen a lot of good films recently" for a lot.

I guess the "some" here just makes it sound a little more normal for what your average person would say rather than what a textbook would say. It also helps to give the person you're saying it to an idea of how many films you've seen. I'm also guessing you would want to say different things based on the context of the conversation.

Anyway, point being you *can* say "I've seen good films recently" and have it be grammatically correct, but I don't think I would ever say that to anyone or write it. Does that help?

"Some" helps make what you're talking about more specific. It's usually used to say how many of whatever there is.
Grammatical number - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This gives a decent explanation.

"alot" is really "a lot." Don't get too confused.

To me 'some' is basically 'a number of' or 'a few'- perhaps it's used just to spice up the language with specifics.

Wow, never thought of that....

Yeah, if you wanted to be technical, we just say it to quantify the direct object. Intuitively, we anglophones really like general details; if you say "I've seen good movies", the listener is stuck wondering how many. Like fliliadragongurl said, we feel like something is missing from the whole statement. "How many movies have you seen???"

Of course, you can change the meaning of the whole thing by placing the emphasis on certain words, but that'll be a subject for a whole different line of study.

Wow...
 

:eek: Thank you all for your help!! Now I get it completely at last...thanks a lot :)

Yes... I remember when "normal" debated with "grammatically correct" in my life. I chose the latter on Christmas Eve, 2006. It has been with me ever since.

If you want to worry about "normal," go ahead and do so. I am just telling you what happened to me.

I figured it out while I was away!

"I've seen good films recently" implies that you have seen only good films recently. "I've seen some good films recently" states that you have seen other qualities as well.

also, 'films' is more of a British word, so if you want a more American word, go for 'movie' instead. both of the statements sound ok, though!

There are instances where the word "some" doesn't (really) carry any specific meaning at all, semantically speaking. Sometimes we say it just so that we can emphasize the next word, "good", to produce the ultimate meaning of "I have seen excellent/awesome/incredible movies recently".

Then again, saying that you've seen ones that are really good requires first that you have a basis for comparison and also that these really good ones exceed your standard for what is a "good movie", which obviously can't be 'all' movies, so you could make a case for "some" as having very implicit semantic meaning.

Ultimately, this sentence can mean a couple of things depending on which word is emphasized. Emphasis on "good" yields what I said already. Emphasis on "some" would mean that you've seen only a few ("There are SOME good chick flicks out there", implying that most chick flicks aren't that good in your opinion). Emphasis on "I" means you and only you, or rather "Me, but I don't know about you". Emphasis on movies can mean a few things all at once, but the first thing I would think as a listener would be that you have seen some good movies but have not read good books/heard good music/etc.

English language - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A simple way to understand why "some" is used is that it fills in the quantity part of the sentence.

It is too exact to say "I have seen six good films recently" as you sound too scientific and cold, or as if you are about to list them all.

To say "I have seen good films recently" sounds too vague, and is missing a vital part of the sentence.

I have seen some/a lot of/ a few good films recently, gives the quantity without sounding like you sit counting them, which makes you sound a bit of an otaku. :mtongue:

:ywave:

You could say simply that in certain types of English it is a quantifier, a way to denote that only a portion of the movies that they either saw or were seen were good. "I saw a lot of good movies." "I saw some good movies." Depending on where this English speaker is from can change the actual descrition, it would normally come out though that they only saw a couple or maybe one or two good movies