Thursday, March 11, 2010

A note about distributive adjectives and pronouns: each, every, and all

1) every compared to all

Technically, every means a number of people or things considered individually while all means a number of people or things considered as a group. But in practice every and its compounds are often used when we are thinking of a group.

2) each (adjective and pronoun) and every (adjective)

each means a number of persons or things considered individually. every can have this meaning but with every there is less emphasis on the individual. Every man had a weapon = 'All the men had weapons', and implies that the speaker counted the men and the weapons and found that he had the same number of each. Each man had a weapon implies that the speaker went to each man in turn and checked that he had a weapon.

each is a pronoun and adjective: Each (man) knows what to do.

every is an adjective only: Every man knows...

each can be used of two or more persons or things, and is normally used of small numbers. every is not normally used of very small numbers.

Both take a singular verb. The possessive adjective is his/her.

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Taking into account the very last phrase of the explanation, that's the reason why we write the speaker went to each man in turn and checked that he had a weapon, instead of ... each man in turn and checked that they had a weapon. each, when it happens to be a pronoun, it is always a third person singular one.

That's a small mistake we can commit, passing unnoticed.

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Credits to: "A Practical English Grammar", published by Oxford University

1 comment:

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