The understanding of the quantifiers ‘many’ and ‘most’

Quantifiers are an essential part of linguistic summaries, which are used to describe data sets using template-based sentences in natural language. Often used quantifiers are the words `many' and `most', for example as used in the sentences `many cars are black' and `most rooms are booked'. In this paper, we conduct a study among university students to define the meaning of the quantifiers `many' and `most'. We focus on the relative use of these quantifiers. The outcomes of this survey are then used to create membership functions. Since literature suggests that there might be a difference in the use of language of native and non-native English speakers, the participants are split into these two groups and the resulting outcomes are compared. The results of this study suggest that native speakers make less distinction between the quantifiers `many' and `most' than non-native English speakers.