Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Boodleheimer]

anybody know the difference between those two?

it seems to me that when it comes to quantity, they can be used interchangeably. but other expressions (e.g., A few weeks ago, the kitten was no more than a ball of fur) might only take one.

and how would you teach this???

[Boodleheimer]

my working theory is that "no more than" corresponds to "merely", while "not more than" corresponds to "limited to"

[Woland]

I don't know the difference, but I have a sense of how I would figure it out/learn it and how I would teach it: using a concordance of real examples.

Go to The Compleat Lexical Tutor at this address:

http://132.208.224.131/

and enter the English concordancer programs.

(You can also get there by using 'I feel lucky' with the name of the site at Google; and yes, the spelling is 'compleat')

Once in the concordancer, I set it to 'All of the Above' giving me access to a total corpus of about 4 million words. Enter your key phrase, hit 'Get Concordance' and voila, you have a contextualized list of every example of the phrase in the corpora.

For 'No more than', this search produces 66 examples (I give a sample of the first five here, with the key phrase bolded):

1 in the near future if they . And it must pay no more than a reasonable service fee to agents. Middle p
2 rn Ireland, per se entire electoral regions, no more than a single distribution would be required.
3 rs and consumers, with the government being no more than "a clearing house for pressures". Like ours,
4 wift, disciplined steps reached the terrace no more than a couple of yards behind Miss Danziger. "F
5 to the Interlude the E/F figure is suddenly no more than a detail in the seascape, a gull's cry perha

For 'Not more than', the search produces 21 examples (so you already know which is more common; a similar sample is here):

1 left, I think, for that number you gave me. Not more than a block or so". Shayne got in the left-ha
2 g no traces of former restoring. Apparently not more than dusting had ever been done, and not much of
3 was shot, or who had left the party within not more than five minutes (make five arbitrary) positivel
4 ms. (a) The fire should be detected in not more than 1� minutes from ignition (or from the
5 lete ration containing not less than 20 and not more than 50 grams of Aureomycin per ton. To reduce vi

Once you have the full samples, you can begin to work through them, looking for patterns of use. I just looked (did no more than look) quickly at the full data presented, but one thing that I noticed was that only 'no more than' can precede a finite verb. I'm sure that other patterns of/restricutions on use would appear with closer analysis. You might try to see where you see one form as substitutable for the other as a clue to meaning differences. Again, a quick glance at the full data suggests that KWhitehead's distinction, which I initially found attractive, isn't true. Other things to look for that come to mind which are not meaning related: Is one or the other more likely at the beginning of a sentence? (My sense is that 'Not more than' is, but the data will tell.) Is one more common than the other in speech or writing (Looking within particular corpora rather than using the aggregate one can show this.) Is one likely than the other in certain genres? (I'm guessing that this might be true; again, the data will tell.)

Once you've sorted it out for yourself and figured out what aspects of this you want yoru students to learn, you can then start thinking about how to turn this material into activities for students. A good way to do that would be to look at some of the literature that has built up around 'data-driven learning', especially the writings of Tim Johns of University of Birmingham. You'll find useful practical tips there.

There are a number of other concordnace programs available on the web, such as MICASE, which is purely spoken academic English in an American context. Search for the ones you want to find out what you need to know.