Talk:molta

[Italian] "is molta ever used as a noun?"

@Catonif You are right, sorry, it is never used as a noun. I was incorrectly thinking of "molta" in a sentence like "La voglia di vederti è molta" as a noun.

It is actually more like a "subject is adjective" sentence, but "molta" is not an adjective either.

I don't think "subject is determiner" sentences exist, so it must be a "noun is pronoun" sentence, right?

Do you think "molta" is ever used as pronoun outside of "subject è molta"? Can it only be used as object, or am I not thinking of some uses?

I can think of various uses of "molta" as determiner "molta gente non lo sa", "gelato con molta panna", etc, but the only case of "molta" as pronoun I can think of is "subject-feminine-singular è molta".

Maybe we could also add some examples to avoid confusion, and maybe also a note that says that Molta is only an object pronoun if that is true.

Thank you o/ Emanuele6 (talk) 08:53, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

The examples in molto helped me come up with this other example use of molta f sg (pronoun): "Di farina, non ce ne vuole molta".

I still can't think of a use of this pronoun as subject though.

I am trying to look for one because "molto", "molta", "molti", and "molte" are all grouped as different gender+number forms of the same pronoun, but there seems to be more nuisance to that.

molti m pl (pronoun) and molte f pl (pronoun) can definitely be used as both subject and object pronouns:

• Molti non lo sanno
• Sono molti
• Molte non lo sanno
• Sono molte

But it seems to me that molta f sg (pronoun), and molto m sg (pronoun) are only object pronouns.

Perhaps, at least the subject forms of molti m pl (pronoun), and molte f pl (pronoun) should be defined separately with examples in their own page (or at least in one of the two plural forms), instead of being defined as "masculine plural of molto" (with examples in the page for molto) and "feminine plural of molto".

What do you think? Emanuele6 (talk) 09:33, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

@Emanuele6 You raise interesting questions, I agree the current situation is a bit messy.

I believe part of the confusion is due to the discrepancy between Italian and English terms used for parts of speech. We call them simply "determiners" on enwikt, but essentially an aggettivo determinativo (in this case, it's an aggettivo indefinito, which is a subset thereof) is still an adjective and works as one. Hence X è molta formations are just how normal predicati nominali work. To make similar examples to yours with other determiners, you can say la casa non è questa or ce ne vuole un'altra.

You're also right about plural molti/molte working very much differently from the singular forms, as "molta" is never used as a pronoun either. As a pronoun molto means "much" (as in molto è stato già fatto), while molti means "many people" (as in your molti non lo sanno) and molte, albeit somewhat uncommon, means "many female people". Molta doesn't really mean anything as a pronoun, there can be no female equivalent of "much".

I took a look at the page molto and noticed many usage examples were misattributed to the incorrect parts of speech. I hope I cleared it up somewhat. I'm intrigued by your suggestion to move the "many people" sense from molto to molti however that might confusing, leaving the "in the plural" label will hopefully get the message accross. For now I left the "noun" header as is though I'm starting to doubt that as well. Catonif (talk) 14:44, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

@Catonif Thank you so much for this explaination. Realising that the determiner definition is actually an adjective helps me make a lot of sence of this.

Then "sono molti" and "sono molte" are not using those words as pronouns, but rather as adjectives (determiner meaning).

You said that the molti is a pronoun for "many people", and less commonly molte is a pronoun for "many all-female people", and molta is never used as pronoun.

But what about my di farina, ce ne vuole molta (regarding flour, a lot of it is needed) example? There I still believe molta functions as a pronoun, right? It is not an aggettivo determinativo, because if you wanted to use an adjective in that sentence I believe you would need to use di (preposition); e.g. with buona f sg (adjective) Di farina, ce ne vuole di buona, not Di farina, ce ne vuole buona.

I think a "a lot of a thing" pronoun exists commonly as molto, molta, molti, molte in sentences such as the one above.

But maybe I am just getting something wrong, and molta is still an aggettivo determinativo there, and not a pronoun. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Emanuele6 (talk) 15:40, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

I forgot to mention an example of molte used commonly with that meaning: Di uova, ce ne vogliono molte (Regarding eggs, a lot of them are needed). Emanuele6 (talk) 15:45, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

@Emanuele6 AFAIK, the pronoun in those sentences is actually ne, here as a complemento partitivo. But hmm, this are interesting considerations. So summarising,

• Di farina ce ne vuole molta/tanta/poca/parecchia/una. (agg. indefiniti and numerali, both subsets of determinativi in traditional Italian grammatical analysis)
• Di farina ce ne vuole di buona. (agg. qualificativi)

Making another example,

• Non volevo dargliene molta/molte/tanti/tre. (agg. indef. and num.)
• Non volevo darle quella buona. (agg. qual.)

It seems that agg. qualificativi, here simply "adjectives", behave differently that what are here "determiners" and "numerals". So it's not a case of molto in particular occasionally being a pronoun, rather its whole subclass of adjectives behaving differently from qualificative adjectives. Catonif (talk) 16:22, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

@Catonif Thank you so much! Yes, ne is the pronoun there of course. This was very interesting, I should refresh my Italian grammar knowledge. Emanuele6 (talk) 17:59, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

Commenting on:

The examples in molto helped me come up with this other example use of molta f sg (pronoun): "Di farina, non ce ne vuole molta".

I still can't think of a use of this pronoun as subject though.

Actually, in this example "molta", if a pronoun, would be a subject; I got confused because I was reasoning about this using my mental you need a lot of it translation in which it is the object, despite of the fact that it literally translates to a lot of it is needed. :p Emanuele6 (talk) 16:04, 29 October 2024 (UTC)