I have noted in my grammar that the pre-article quantifiers half, both, and all, may occur as a sentence adverbial. Pre-article is a kind of determiner. Each is not a pre-article, but an identifier like some, any in its determiner role. But the fact that each also occurs as a sentence adverbial suggests that it plays two roles. My revised generative grammar, yet to be available on my website adopts a point of view of a construction grammar and uses parts of phrase labels, rather than just the 8 parts of speech. The construction is the tree whose leaves (words) guide the interpretation of the phrase in which the word occurs. All of these words may be "grafted" onto the sentence adverbial node in the auxiliary. This transformation is what they all have in common.

Bruce

--- [log in to unmask] wrote:

From: "Hancock, Craig G" <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Grammar question
Date: Thu, 11 Jan 2018 23:34:54 +0000

I did some quick searching on COCA (Corpus of Contemporary American English) and found ample examples of the pattern for all, both, and each. I didn't do a full search, but I did enough to suspect that any finite auxiliary works--We can all agree that...; They should both be there on time for a change; Are we all finished arguing? We might each have been there at different times. My wife and I are both writing teachers.

What is our job as teaching grammarians? To me, the most useful question is what motivates these choices. Does All of us should stop fighting mean the same thing as We should all stop fighting, at least in emphasis?

The average person in the street wants us to say whether these forms are correct. The fact that they occur regularly in the language of native speakers means, of course, that they are perfectly grammatical. We can--and probably should--talk about how to classify all, both, and each when they show up within the verb phrase. Shouldn't we also ask if there are functional patterns as well? Have these options evolved for a reason? Has anyone paid attention to that within the scholarly conversation?

From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar <[log in to unmask]> on behalf of Don Stewart <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Thursday, January 11, 2018 5:40:00 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Grammar question

Both Sergio and Karl have responded to Scott's question.

Sergio and Karl both have responded to Scott's question.

Sergio and Karl have both responded to Scott's question.

So now, I'd like to hear more about that grammar party that the happy teachers and the smiling students enjoyed one and all. Lesson plans?

On Thu, Jan 11, 2018 at 4:56 PM, Karl Hagen <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

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:

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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