много / мало / неколико + Genitive

Understanding amounts with the genitive involves four essential rules:

1. Mass vs. Count Nouns and Adjective Agreement
• Use Genitive Singular for substances, liquids, and abstract notions that cannot be counted individually: много шећера (a lot of sugar), мало воде (a little water).
• Use Genitive Plural for countable entities: много пријатеља (many friends), мало књига (few books).
• Any modifying adjectives within the phrase must agree with the noun in gender, number, and case (genitive): мало хладне воде (a little cold water – fem. gen. sg.), неколико нових књига (a few new books – fem. gen. pl.), много добрих људи (many good people – masc. gen. pl.).

2. Lexical Restriction of 'неколико'
While много and мало can quantify both mass and count nouns, неколико (several, a few) cannot combine with mass nouns (*неколико воде; use мало воде instead). It combines primarily with countable nouns in the genitive plural (e.g., неколико дана, неколико књига). Note that неколико does not combine with neuter collective nouns in -је (*неколико лишћа; use мало лишћа), but it can combine with human collective nouns in -а functioning as suppletive count plurals (such as неколико деце, неколико браће). Importantly, these collective nouns appear in their morphologically genitive singular forms (ending in -е, matching feminine singular declension), not in a genitive plural.

3. Subject-Verb Agreement with Amounts
When a quantity phrase introduced by много, мало, or неколико serves as the grammatical subject, agreement can follow two standard patterns:
• Grammatical Agreement (Formal Baseline): Grammatically, the quantifier phrase acts as a singular neuter head. In the present tense, the verb appears in the 3rd-person singular: Много људи живи овде; Мало студената зна одговор; Неколико ученика чека испред. In compound past tenses, the verb takes the default neuter singular ending је + -ло: Дошло је много људи; Мало купаца је купило нови производ; Стигло је неколико аутобуса.
• Semantic Agreement (Plural ad sensum): In standard literary and everyday Serbian, speakers and writers also frequently use plural agreement (конгруенција по смислу), especially when the quantified phrase denotes people and comes before the predicate: Много људи живе овде; Мало њих знају одговор; Неколико студената чекају / су стигли. This agreement according to meaning is fully established in the standard language. Alternatively, you can make plural agreement completely unambiguous by using the declined adjective многи instead of the indeclinable quantifier: Многи људи живе овде; Многи људи су дошли.

4. Direct Objects and Prepositional Phrases
• In direct object positions, the indeclinable quantifier acts as the head of the phrase and governs the dependent noun in the genitive: Купио сам много јабука (I bought many apples), not accusative *јабуке.
• Similarly, after prepositions (such as са or из), the indeclinable quantifier retains its government: the dependent noun stays in the genitive regardless of the preposition's normal case requirement (e.g., Разговарао сам са неколико пријатеља, never *пријатељима; живи без много новца).