There's a fair bit of disagreement on that. It's been called a pronoun (the traditional label), a determiner, a predeterminer, and an adverbial quantifier that I'm aware of, and I'm sure there are some analyses I'm unaware of. How you analyze it will depend a lot on your theoretical assumptions.

Like Sergio, I see its form as a determiner (or determinative if you use the CGEL terminology). I'm also inclined to see it as _not_ a constituent of the subject, even though semantically it quantifies it. Notice that if we add an auxiliary, "all" naturally sits in the post-auxiliary position:

The happy teachers and their smiling students have all enjoyed the grammar party.

For that reason, I'd say it functions as a quantifier, as an adjunct within the VP. That said, there are a number of different analyses, in both the generative and the GPSH/HPSG traditions which do take it as a constituent of the subject, at least when it's not sitting in post-auxiliary position, but it remains an adjunct (albeit of the subject) pretty much any way you slice the analysis.

Regards,

Karl

On 1/11/2018 1:07 PM, Sergio Pizziconi wrote:
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Hello Scott,
I would say it is a determiner.
If it were in a more canonical position, but clearly less probable (statistically speaking), such as "All the happy teachers and all their smiling students....", its nature of determiner would be apparent.
Sergio Pizziconi

2018-01-11 21:51 GMT+01:00 Scott Woods <[log in to unmask]>:
Hi All,

In the following sentence <The happy teachers and their smiling students all enjoyed the grammar party> how would you characterize the word <all>?

What is its function and what would you call it?

Thanks,

Scott Woods
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