This article explores the use of Danish neuter gender quantifiers noget, meget, and lidt with singular and plural common gender nouns. The use of these lexemes can be explained by the two tendencies in modern Danish, both of which entail the violation of the grammatical norm, i. e. the use of common gender nouns with neuter gender lexemes (noget mad, noget sygdom, meget tid etc.). The study of linguistic data also demonstrates that the use of these units in combination with countable nouns is getting more common in the Danish language (noget ananas, meget læge, lidt problemer, noget mand). Both tendencies are relevant to the dichotomy “discreteness/non-discreteness” present in modern Danish, where non-discreteness is connected with neuter gender lexemes, such as noget, meget, lidt, while denotations are thought of as one unit. Various denotations can be nondiscrete in Danish. A vast group is constituted by nouns related to food (en ananas — noget ananas; en kage — noget kage etc.). Lack of agreement in gender as well as number between a noun and a quantifier may cause a shift in meaning of a noun, thus abstract nouns acquire a more particular meaning, i. e. kunst ‘art’ and noget kunst ‘a work of art’. It shall also be noted that the change of grammatical norm may be connected with pragmatics, when the speaker expresses his attitude towards the situation, underlying its insignificance to the listener, which is often seen in contexts where nouns describing some events are used (fest ‘celebration’, dåb ‘christening’, sammenkomst ‘party’). Examples presented in this article are taken from Danish tv-series, TV programs and everyday communication.
Nemtseva A. PECULIARITIES OF DANISH DETERMINERS NOGET, MEGET AND LIDT