The word 'everybody', and 'everyone' are both plural, so when we use 'are/were' with everybody, do we use 'is/was' with everyone?

I hope you understand what I'm trying to ask, without confusing everybody/everyone.
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05-03-03, 08:42 PM
Tree
Take a look at THIS honilov.

05-03-03, 11:03 PM
cattywampus
Hmmm, let's see:

Jesus is with everyone.
Jesus was with everyone.

Jesus is with everybody.
Jesus was with everybody.

What you are talking about here are tenses. "is with everyone" is present tense, "was with everyone" is past tense.

Catty Cool

05-03-03, 11:09 PM
honilov
Thanks so much, Tree. That's an amazing site. How on earth did you find it? I've been bothered by these two words, as if I should use them plural or singular, and oops, there it is.

Every time that I needed to use one of them, I always used 'everybody', because it seem more plural, and I was baffled about 'everyone'. Thanks again.

05-03-03, 11:15 PM
honilov
No Catty, I knew if they were past or present. What I was having trouble with, was, if they were plural or single. Thanks

05-05-03, 11:12 AM
maiku
The pronouns everyone and everybody are both singular, grammatically, honilov, so they should always take a singular form of the verb in agreement--namely, is or was, never are or were.

If you are puzzled at to why these words are considered singular even though both can be used to refer at once to all of the people there ever were, then you are not alone. In his book Reference and Generality, the English philosopher Thomas Geach spends nearly a whole chapter trying to sort out this seeming paradox. Likewise Bertrand Russell, in his book Principles of Mathematics, of all places. Both of these writers were talking about logic, but there is a very interesting connection here, in your question, between logic and language. This is a very special interest of mine, and I hope my comments don't merely confuse you. Try this:

If I say, for example,

Everyone is mortal,

I obviously mean to refer to all people, at any time, anywhere. I could say just as well

All people are mortal,

couldn't I? So why the difference in verb agreement?

The difference is in the quantifiers all and every. Both are used to refer to all of the members of a class, but the first refers to them as a totality, or collectively, and is therefore plural. The second refers to all of them, but one at a time, or distributively.

It might be helpful if you thought of the sentence "Everyone is mortal" being written instead as "Every single person you can chose is mortal."

05-05-03, 08:03 PM
honilov
Thanks Maiku. I've come across this problem so much here on AP, so I decided to ask. I always type everyone, and then I change and type everybody, because I referred to everybody as plural. Now I see it doesn't really matter.

I'm just about tired of people saying I use poor grammar, so I better start getting educated. Big Grin

05-05-03, 08:51 PM
maiku
Thanks very much for your reply, honilov. I hope my reply was helpful to you.

You will never catch me criticizing anybody's grammar, honilov. At most, I might suggest that the preferred usage is this or that. Grammar and usage are quite different things. Anyone who speaks any language at all must necessarily command the grammar of that language, and my grammar of English and yours are so close, honilov, that I never have any trouble whatsover in understanding what you mean (even though we may disagree on entirely trivial points of usage here and there.)

The important questions in life never involve usage, thank God. They do, often, involve thoughtful use of the language our parents taught us, whatever dialect that may be, and in that respect I think you and I can understand each other perfectly.

05-06-03, 01:12 PM
frankvan
Oops, maiku. "Every single person you can chose is mortal." Say it isn't so. Surely just a typo?

05-06-03, 02:31 PM
maiku
Shhh, frank! Red Face

05-06-03, 03:48 PM
Ewood27
Guess it sort of redresses the balance to some extent for those (apparently on the increase) who say "loose" when they mean "lose"!

05-06-03, 04:15 PM
maiku
Well, thank you, all you keen-eyed observers, for zeroing in so nicely on the really important aspect of my answer to honilov.

The distinction between collective and distributive modes of reference is crucial to both logicians and syntacticians. Sorry this topic is not quite so amusing as a typo is.

But to show I'm a good sport, I'll pose another question along the same lines. For most speakers of English, the words each and every are pretty much interchangeable. Thus,

I drive ten miles to work each day, or
I drive ten miles to work every day

come to exactly the same thing. (And of course there is the phrase "each and every," which is pretty much a case of hendiadys, it seems to me.)

But it is rarely, if ever, the case that a language has two different forms that are identical in meaning in all respects. So can any of you think of contexts which would distinguish these two words? (And I mean distinguish them in meaning, not just in likelihood of occurrence).

Both of these are quantifiers which refer distributively to all of the members of some class. What, if any, is the difference between them? Wink

05-06-03, 04:25 PM
methos
hmm...

He gave them two each.
He gave them two every.

They looked at each other.
They looked at every other.


The second doesn't sound right to me in each case, but I am not sure whether or not they are actually wrong/different.

Come to think of it, "The second doesn't sound right to me in each case..." seems to have a different meaning than "The second doesn't sound right to me in every case..."

05-06-03, 04:36 PM
maiku
No good as examples, methos. You're not using the distributive quantifiers at all in these.

This is always a problem in discussing language, because we first have to sort out the cases that use words in senses not related to the ones of interest.

05-06-03, 05:24 PM
maiku
To clarify the question, please note that it's uninteresting that each but not every may occur in English as a pronoun.

Thus, we say, "To each his own," but not "To every his own." That's not what I'm trying to get at.

Try this: restrict your attention to cases in which each or every occurs directly before the noun it quantifies.

Your observation about "The second choice doesn't seem right to me in every case" (as opposed to in each case, is more like it, methos, but as far as I can tell, these have the same meaning. But another big problem is that they're both ambiguous, the ambiguity depending on the relative scope of the quantifier and the negative (and the verb seem, too). "Not in every case" (or "not in each case") can both be construed in English to mean either false in all cases or not true in all cases (since false in at least one case). Wink

[This message was edited by maiku on 05-06-03 at 05:39 PM.]

05-07-03, 02:42 AM
Ewood27
I contend that there is a difference there, albeit a very fine one. Each separates out one member of a group and treats that member as an individual, while every looks at the individual group members and treats them the same.

"Each person is different" simply means that they have individual differences. "Every person is different", however, may be acceptable colloquially, but is technically impossible, since there is now no standard against which to compare.

Do I win a coconut?

05-07-03, 03:11 AM
FredPuli
Yes Ewood, that's how I see it. Perhaps I'm the only person writing who always thinks whether 'each' is more appropriate than 'every' in the context. I would not write 'He judged every candidate in the contest' but 'He judged each candidate in the contest' if I intended to say that the judge inspected the contestants, one by one,with attention to the points of difference between the individuals. He might judge 'every candidate' by taking an overall view, or by dividing them, in his mind or physically, into groups . Incidentally,when there's danger threatening should we yell 'Each man for himself !' or 'Every man for himself!'? The latter is traditional. It seems to me that it is so because it is closer in thinking to 'All men for themselves !'. 'Each'seems more specific and personal ( certainly more prissy ) and inappropriate because of this nuance.

05-07-03, 08:33 AM
maiku
I think you, Ewood, and Fred are both on the right track in pointing to a greater degree of selectivity in the use of each as opposed to every. But I don't think either of you has come up with a decisive example so far.

"Every person is different" is no worse, certainly, than "Everybody is different," which I hear all the time. I think your technical objection to it rests on the fact that it sounds maybe too elliptical. What is meant, of course, is that every person is different from the rest, or something like that. It seems to me that the same objection applies to "Each person is different."

As for judging each candidate rather than every candidate, my problem is that, logically, it comes to the same thing: when the judging is over, each and every candidate will have been judged, regardless of how you put it.

So let me give you an example which I think is entirely convincing: a package containing a powerful bomb is received. When the package is opened, the bomb goes off, unfortunately, killing every person in the room. Bombs just don't have the proper power of discrimination, do they, to do anything like killing each person in the room?

Sorry for the grimness of the example. Eek

05-07-03, 03:05 PM
Ewood27
But surely that's just what Fred and I have been saying, maiku. Every person is treating each one as just one of a group, a set, a class; in this case the people unlucky enough to be in the room. Each person, on the other hand, would be treating them as separate individuals, like the constestants in Fred's example.

How's this? "Every student is required to sit the examination. Each one will be marked according to course work as well as the written paper." Does that point up the distinction?

05-07-03, 04:07 PM
maiku
No, it doesn't, Ewood.

I realize that your language intuition is sharp, and I conceded to begin with that you were on the right track. But you and Fred have both so far failed to appreciate how it is a convincing example of the difference between each and every that's needed.

I've given you one such example above. I might have chosen earthquakes or tornadoes to make the same point: these kind of agencies do not select their victims one at a time. Both each and every refer distributively and exhaustively to the members of a given class. But English seems to be a little richer than quantificational logic in making another (and very much covert) distinction between selecting the members of the class according to some plan (as with each, ideally) or perhaps not (as typically with every). Do you see?

05-07-03, 04:12 PM
FredPuli
You mean that they had no time to yell 'Any man for himself!', Maiku ?Who'd be a teacher of English to foreigners ? The rule seems to be then that in 'every man ' or 'every dog' etc 'every'is used to mean 'all having the defining characteristics of a man' , 'a dog' etc; simply falling within the definition and no more. That's why we yell 'Every man for himself!' or say that the bomb killed every man; so long as all males are warned and we recite the sad killing we are neither needing nor caring to think of individuals, with all that distinguishes them from other men.That is why 'Each dog must have his day' has never caught on as a saying! 'Each' is specific; 'every' is wider; 'all' is widest of , well, all. The example of judging is plain enough in that , whatever tense I used I would use 'each' to denote that the judging was particular and of each individual qua individual; I would write 'every'later only if this distinction was no longer useful or relevant. I concede that this example, though perfectly sound, could be more difficult for the student who would not readily understand how or when 'every'and 'each' had become seemingly interchangeable.

[This message was edited by FredPuli on 05-07-03 at 04:23 PM.]

05-07-03, 04:28 PM
maiku

quote:Originally posted by FredPuli:
...'Each' is specific; 'every' is wider; 'all' is widest of , well, all.



Not true, Fred. Each, every, and all are all equally "wide" in reference in that all of them exhaust the class of referents (in one way or another). None of them is "specific," in the sense that the definite article "the," say, is specific. All of these words can be used to refer to anyone or any thing in a certain class.

This is not the careful use of language which I have come to expect of you, Fred!

05-08-03, 03:23 AM
FredPuli
Maiku, I did not appreciate that 'specific' was a term of art used by grammarians. I hope that the meaning was clear.

05-08-03, 02:50 PM
Ewood27
I'm sorry, maiku, I seem to be going round in circles here. Maybe I'm misunderstanding something. You, Fred and I all seem to agree that there is a fine difference between each and every, albeit easily blurred in daily usage of the language. We keep putting up examples of the distinction, but you seem to be looking for something more.

It is possible, of course, that there is some shading of meaning between American and British English. All I know for sure is my own understanding of how I use these words, and as far as I can tell from this thread Fred agrees with me. In his profession he has to be a wordsmith par excellence, so I am content with that.

I cannot see the point of saying the same thing again and again, so I'll read your reply with interest, but I may feel that I have nothing more to contribute to this thread.

05-08-03, 03:53 PM
maiku
I'm quite sure that you, Fred, and I all do agree on the distinction, covert as it is, between each and every used as distributive, universal quantifiers in English.

At the same time, you are indeed missing at least part of my point: I asked for examples which were decisive, the schlagender Beweis. Your examples, while suggestive, never amounted to anything like that. Fred's latest rejoinder is very much off the mark here, too. There is indeed some art involved in doing linguistic analysis, but I prefer to think of it as a science, the aim of which is clarification and explication. When someone says each is "specific," every is "wider," and all is "widest of all," as a scientist I want to know just exactly what this is supposed to mean. Unfortunately, it doesn't mean much.

To reprise, then: both of the English words each and every are used to refer to each, every, and all the individuals in a given class. The difference is in the manner or mode of reference, which it is very interesting (I think) to note has largely eluded those who deal with natural language and quantificational logic. It is indeed a very, very, elusive distinction. In nailing it down, precision, not mere vague intuition, is what is called for. And, as always in the science of linguistics, the decisive example is, well...decisive.

05-08-03, 05:32 PM
FredPuli
What, every time?

05-08-03, 08:01 PM
maiku
Yes! Each and every time, at all times!

When I say "x is decisive," I mean to say "x is decisive," don't I?

(I grant you that there is room to quibble about the decisivenesss of individual examples.)

Here are a couple of others, in case the first one wasn't clear enough by itself:

The earthquake killed every last man, woman, child, and dog in the village.

The flood dispossessed every resident of Happy Valley.

The range war ultimately destroyed every rancher in the territory.

Each cannot occur comfortably in any of these cases.

05-09-03, 06:52 AM
Ewood27
Hampton Court Palace, on the Thames west of London, has a large number of brick chimneys. It is said that no two have the same decorative design.

We can say that each design is unique, but we cannot say that every design is unique, for the very reason I have stated previously, that every lumps them all together, whereas the essence of unique(ness) is that it is individual. By its very singularity it demands each rather than every.

Your examples of the use of every are perfectly valid, showing the opposite trait, that the elements of the group (be they people or whatever) can be regarded together as all suffering the same treatment.

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