Most? How much is that?

Washington: When most people say "most", they mean 80-95 percent, no more and no less, a researcher in linguistics has found. Mira Ariel, professor at the Tel Aviv University (TAU), has quantified the meaning of the common word "most".

"If I say to someone, `I`ve told you 100 times not to do that`, what does `100 times` really mean? I intend to convey `a lot`, not literally `100 times`. Such interpretations are contextually determined and can change over time." Exploring the simple word "most", Ariel was able to use science to solve a central conundrum in linguistics. Academic linguists have traditionally agreed that when we use the word "most" in English, we usually mean anything from 51 to 99 percent of given group of people or collection of objects. "Some linguists have argued that the word `most` includes the 100 percent value as well, and that the meaning of `most` is identical to that of `more than half`. My study has proved them wrong," says Ariel. Working with 60 volunteers from English-speaking countries including Australia, Britain and the US, Ariel and her research team presented each candidate with a dialogue which included a reference to "most", then asked them to choose an appropriate response (one out of two provided for them). "We didn`t directly ask them about how they interpreted the word `most`, but based on the preferred responses, we were able to draw conclusions regarding the classical theory in the field." When people use the word "most", the study found, they don`t usually mean the whole range of 51-99 percent. The common interpretation is much narrower, understood as a measurement of 80 to 95 percent of a sample - whether that sample is of people in a room, cookies in a jar, or witnesses to an accident. Ariel cautions that 80-95 percent is valid today but could shift over the next 100 years, for example. "That`s the nature of language and communication. It changes in the span of a few centuries," Ariel says, as words evolve over time. "`Most` as a word came to mean "majority" only recently. Before democracy, we had feudal lords, kings and tribes, and the notion of "most" referred to who had the lion`s share of a given resource -- 40 percent, 30 percent or even 20 percent," she explains. In law, the precise interpretation of individual words is critical -- it can win or lose a criminal or civil suit. In a recent court case, Ariel recalled, a couple ordered a red car, only to be delivered a burgundy car by the dealer. The dealer refused to take it back, arguing that burgundy is a shade of red. The court ruled against the couple because burgundy is indeed "red" in literal terms. But in this specific case, Ariel reasons, the court wasn`t fair. It ruled against the couple`s, and most people`s, expectations of the colour of red, says a TAU release. Whether one car is redder than another is clearly a matter of debate. But Ariel`s study proves that when we use linguistic abstractions, we may be more precise than we think -- that is, most (80-95 percent) of the time. These findings will be published by the Cambridge University Press this year. IANS