"Not Many" meaning

[andrewgong01]

This came from the "Extra LR Drill" 5th edition strategy guide from my student center. It was to negate sentences.

Question 6 wants us to negate "There are not many cookies left in the jar".

I thought the negation would be "There are no cookies left" since many = some on the LSAT and the opposite of some is none. However the answer key says it is "There are many cookies left" but isn't many an abstract number quantity that could be any number and the opposite would need to be none ?


Also, for Q3 of the same question set, there was a sentence that said "Arthur is neither the loudest nor the quietest person in the room"; does it make a difference if I said the negation was "Arthur could be the loudest or the quietest person" because the answer key goes more extreme and says "Arthur is the loudest or quietest person" in the room.

[ohthatpatrick]

"Many" doesn't have an official number, but it IS more than "some".

"Some" = at least one, but you can't you have "many Libertarian friends" if you only have one Libertarian friends. A decent rule (totally invented) is to think of "many" as "at least five".

You negated "There are not many cookies left" as "There are no cookies left". Those don't contradict each other. Negations have to contradict.

If there are 0 cookies left, then there are not many cookies left.

To me, "not many" would mean "less than five". So negating that would be "five or more", i.e. "many".

In general, if a sentence contains a "not", we can usually negate it by just removing that "not".

In terms of Q3, you should go more extreme and say "Arthur IS the loudest or the quietest".

Even though "could be the loudest or quietest" DOES seem to contradict "is neither the loudest nor the quietest", it feels a little too wishy washy to me.

The original statement is saying that "Arthur is NOT #1 for loudness and NOT #1 for quietness".

If we are trying to contradict that, we have to say that Arthur IS either #1 for loud or #1 for quiet.