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I wonder what’s the grammatical function of “all” in the following sentence?

“We all felt ill after the meal.”

“All” can function as four different grammatical roles, I mean: adverb, determiner, predeteminer, and pronoun. But in the sentence it comes after a pronoun so it cannot be a determiner, predeterminer, or pronoun. So is it an adverb in the sentence?

Cardinal
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shapoor
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  • You may want to read this related thread: https://ell.stackexchange.com/questions/76622/can-an-adverb-modify-nouns-pronouns – Cardinal May 09 '20 at 16:53
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    From ELU - [This has come up before here. "All" in these examples is a **floated quantifier**, produced by the transformation "Quantifier Float".](https://english.stackexchange.com/a/500508/2637) If that helps. Me, I'd just call it an "optional intensifier" for ***we***. It has also [been asked about on ELL](https://ell.stackexchange.com/questions/14857/in-the-sentencei-break-them-all-in-the-shop-what-is-the-part-of-speech-of-al), but I'm not sure how helpful *that* answer will be either. – FumbleFingers May 09 '20 at 16:55
  • (Dictionaries wouldn't normally get down to such details. To them it'll just be an *adjective / determiner*.) – FumbleFingers May 09 '20 at 17:01
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    "All" belongs to the word class (part of speech) 'determinative'. In your example it functions as an adjunct in clause structure. – BillJ May 09 '20 at 18:36

2 Answers2

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The simplest way to parse this is to consider "we all" to a compound pronoun.

The two words have been brought together and now function as a single "word", although the spelling doesn't (yet) reflect this (y'all is sometimes seen for you all)

As such "all" isn't functioning on its own, but "we all" is functioning as a pronoun.

James K
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  • I guess this is also a "valid" way to categorise the collocation. But it doesn't cover ***We each** agreed to participate.* – FumbleFingers May 09 '20 at 17:07
  • I think you're confusing it with the compound pronoun found in, for example, "They invited **us all**" / "she likes **you all**", where the two are inseparable. But in the OP's example they are separable, thus "all" is an adjunct in clause structure. – BillJ May 09 '20 at 18:50
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We all felt ill after the meal.

"All" belongs to the word class (part of speech) 'determinative'.

In your example, "all" is separable and not part of the subject NP but a quantificational adjunct in clause structure.

This is evident from the fact that when the verb is an auxiliary it preferentially follows rather than precedes it:

We had all felt ill after the meal.

Note also the possibility of inserting an adjunct after the pronoun:

We certainly all felt ill after the meal.

BillJ
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