A question regarding quantifiers

Question

In my exam, there was this sentence: (Can you give me ______ advice?". There was no clarification given or additional context. Just this sentence. The options were (much, any, many) and I was hesitated between "much" and "any". Are both answers supposed to be correct? I chose "much" btw.

Answer 1

In this case, the correct answer would be "any" as it is more commonly used in this context. The phrase "Can you give me any advice?" is a common expression that means "Can you offer me some advice, no matter how much or how little?". "Much" is not typically used in this context, as it implies a large quantity of advice. While "much" could be grammatically correct, it would not be the natural choice in this context. Therefore, "any" would be the best choice for the given sentence.

Answer 2

The correct answer here is "any."

"Can you give me any advice?" is the ordinary, idiomatic way of phrasing the question. There are other words that work as well, e.g. "Can you give me some advice"?

"Many" is grammatically incorrect because "advice" is singular.

"Can you give me much advice"? is not idiomatic. It's difficult to express some universal "rule" that explains this—there are similar sentences that work perfectly fine with "much": "He didn't give me much advice."