'Each' as a floating quantifier
In a recent piece in the LA Times June Casagrande writes about the word each. This is syntactically a fascinating word, which behaves in different ways depending on the company it keeps.
Specifically, she writes about the following sentence:
Our team wrote, published and promoted a series of 12 human interest stories that each honors a California veteran who has served our country proudly.
She claims that there is an error here that needs correction. Did you spot this error?
Casagrande argues that honors should have been written as honor instead:
If “each” had been the subject of the verb — “each honors a veteran” — then the singular verb “honors” would be correct. But that’s not how the sentence is structured. Instead, the true subject of the verb is “stories,” plural. The “each” isn’t a pronoun, so it’s not the subject of the verb. We’re not saying “each honors.” We’re saying “stories honor,” which is why I made the edit.
I agree that honors should have been rendered as honor, but not for the reason Casagrande gives. She claims that the Subject of the verb is stories, but this is strictly speaking not accurate.
Let’s look at the sentence that Casagrande discusses more closely.
The Subject of the overall sentence is the noun phrase our team. We regard our as a pronoun (functioning as Determiner), and team as the Head.
This NP is followed by three coordinated verbs: wrote, published and promoted.
Following these verbs is a long noun phrase that functions as the Direct Object of the sentence: a series of 12 human interest stories that each honors a California veteran who has served our country proudly. We can represent the structure of the sentence as follows:
[NP Our team] [VP wrote, published and promoted [NP a series of 12 human interest stories that each honors a California veteran who has served our country proudly]]]
Let’s now look inside the NP that functions as Direct Object. Its Head is the noun series, preceded by the determinative a.
The noun series is followed by a long prepositional phrase whose head is of. This Head of takes a noun phrase as its Complement: 12 human interest stories that each honors a California veteran who has served our country proudly:
[PP of [NP 12 human interest stories that each honors a California veteran who has served our country proudly]]
This noun phrase has two relative clauses inside it. The first, introduced by that, (that each honors a California veteran) is associated with the plural noun stories. The other relative clause (who has served our country proudly) is introduced by the relative pronoun who, and is associated with the noun veteran.
[NP 12 human interest stories [relative clause that each honors [NP a California veteran [relative clause who has served our country proudly]]]]
What is the Subject of the first relative clause? Different grammars will give different answers, but it’s not stories.
For Quirk et al. (1985) that is a relative pronoun which functions as the Subject of the relative clause. Now, because its antecedent is stories, we expect a plural verb form honor, as Casagrande rightly observes.
The analysis in Huddleston and Pullum (2002) of relative clauses introduced by that is considerably more complex, because for them the word that is a subordinating conjunction. But this will need to be discussed in another post.
Now what about each? Which word class do we assign this word to? Typically, when it is placed before a noun this word is a determinative that functions as Determiner, as in this example:
[NP Each summer] we go to the beach.1
Notice that each can only ever precede a singular noun Head, never a plural noun Head. It is never a pronoun, even when it occurs on its own.
However, in Casagrande’s example each is not followed by a noun at all, so how do we deal with this? This is actually quite a different instance of each. Notice that we can separate that from each by adding a modal verb to the clause:
… stories [relative clause that will each honor a California veteran who has served our country proudly]
Words that behave in this way are called floating quantifiers. All behaves in a similar way
All the kids went swimming.
The kids all went swimming.
Huddleston and Pullum (2002: 428) claim these quantifying words function as Adjunct in the clause.
References
Huddleston, Rodney and Geoffrey Pullum (2002) The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Quirk, Randolph, Sidney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech and Jan Svartvik (1985) A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language. London: Longman.
Strictly speaking each is a determinative phrase.
When I read the example, my brain wanted to ditch "that" and fill in "of which" after each. There seems to be a migrating away from "which" to "that," at least here in the U.S.
Thank you for posting this. It's such an interesting study.
I am surprised this post says that "each" is not a pronoun even when it occurs on its own. In the kind of analysis detailed in 'Oxford Modern English Grammar' (Arts 2011) those words considered determinatives when used before nouns are considered pronouns when used on their own. Although "each" can float, it can - unlike its cousin "every" - occur in subject position without a following noun: "Each was given their own reviewer", for example. Why should "each" not be considered a pronoun there?