Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2018 January 3

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January 3

All of them are

I know this is right. But how do I explain this is right and the following sound wrong?

• All give to her.
• All gives to her.
• Everything gives to her.
• You everything give to her. SSS (talk) 04:22, 3 January 2018 (UTC)

The first is not incorrect, See here for pronoun uses of "all"; in the first case, "All give to her" means "All (of the people) give to her". It's fine. All is a third person plural pronoun meaning "every", as a third person plural it takes the "s-less" form of the verb, which is why the second is wrong. The third is not strictly incorrect either, if an inanimate subject is doing the giving. See here for uses of everything, it can be a third person singular pronoun. It seems a bit awkward only because inanimate things don't usually "give" to people, but it's not really a grammar issue. The fourth is wrong because in English, the direct object comes after the verb, not before, and should be "You give everything to her". --Jayron32 11:47, 3 January 2018 (UTC)

When a word implies more than one person or thing as the subject, the verb has to be plural. "All of them" implies a group - so the subject is plural and you use "are" rather than "is". "All give to her" is grammatically correct, but sounds incomplete without an object - "all give gifts to her" sounds more normal. You can't say "all gives to her" because that is a plural subject with a singular verb. "Everything gives to her" is also grammatical, but again sounds as if it needs an object. Your final example has the word order wrong - you need to follow the subject-verb-object pattern in English, so "you give everything to her." Wymspen (talk) 11:52, 3 January 2018 (UTC)

Everything takes the third person single conjugation in English, whereas All takes the third person plural. This is usually explained that "everything" is considering each individually in turn (and thus singular in sense) whereas "all" is taking the entire group together (and thus in plural), though this stikes me as a sort of post-hoc rationale. English (and ANY language) is rarely consistent, and most grammatical rules are "just because" rules, with no inherrant logic. --Jayron32 15:39, 3 January 2018 (UTC)