‘They cost me less pains than tragedy does’: on the configuration of the quantifiers <i>less</i> and <i>fewer</i> in English

Abstract Although less and fewer are supposed to have their particular domains for the expression of quantification, this has not always been the case in the history of English. These two quantifiers coexisted in free variation – irrespective of the typology of the noun – down to the eighteenth century. While some scholars have believed that the advent of prescriptivism seemed to specialise their distribution – with fewer being used exclusively for count nouns – the issue has been controversial on two grounds. On the one hand, it is unclear whether the distinction between fewer and less resulted from the codification of English grammar or if it was a usage-derived development later confirmed by grammarians. On the other hand, the state of affairs in present-day usage is uncertain, as less is lately being used regardless of the typology of the noun. In light of this, the present paper provides an overview of the phenomenon over time, paying attention to the historical and contemporary distribution of the quantifiers less and fewer in combination with count and mass nouns. From a corpus-based perspective, the paper examines the phenomenon throughout Modern English as well as across World Englishes today and concludes that usage preceded codification and that, while less is indeed spreading into the domain of fewer , the process appears to be slow and localised so far.