a little vs some kind of

a little

det

  • A small amount of. 

adv

  • A lot. 

  • Slightly. 

  • Very. 

  • A lot of. 

  • To a small extent or degree. 

some kind of

det

  • a mediocre; a bare minimum; (denoting that something only barely fits a certain category, or is very mediocre in it) 

  • A remarkable. 

  • Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see some, kind, of. 

adv

  • Used as an intensifier of adjectives: remarkably 

How often have the words a little and some kind of occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )