A 'distributive pronoun' considers members of a group separately, rather than collectively.
They include ''each, every, either, neither'' and others.
★ "to each his own" —
'each2,(pronoun)' ''Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionary'' (2007)
★ "Men take each other's measure when they react." —
Ralph Waldo Emerson[1]
Languages other than English
Biblical Hebrew
A common distributive idiom in
Biblical Hebrew used an ordinary word for man, 'ish'' ().
Brown Driver Briggs only provides four representative examples — Gn 9:5; 10:5; 40:5; Ex 12:3.
[2]
Of the many other examples of the idiom in the
Hebrew Bible, the best known is a common phrase used to describe everyone returning to their own homes. It is found in 1 Samuel 10:25 among other places.
[3]
★
★ ... 'ish l'beyto''.
★ ... a man to his house. [literal]
★ ... each went home. [sense]
This word, 'ish'', was often used to distinguish men from women. "She shall be called Woman () because she was taken out of Man ()," is well known,
[4] but the distinction is also clear in Gn 19:8; 24:16 and 38:25 (see note for further references).
[5] However, it could also be used
generically in this distributive idiom (Jb 42:11; I Ch 16:3).
[6]
Greek
The most common distributive pronoun in classical
Greek was ''hekastos'' (, each).
See also
★
Adjective
★
Pronoun
★
Quantification
References
1.
William Malone Baskervill and James Witt Sewell,
''An English Grammar'', 1896.
2.
Brown Driver Briggs: 36.
3.
Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia
4. King James Version of the Bible
5. Also Ex 22:15; Lv 15:16, 18; 20:10f; Nu 5:13f; Dt 22:22f; Is 4:1; and others. Brown Driver Briggs:35.
6. Brown Driver Briggs:36.
External links
★ Jeffrey T. Runner and Elsi Kaiser. '
Binding in Picture Noun Phrases: Implications for Binding Theory'. In ''Proceedings of the HPSG05 Conference''. Edited by Stefan Müller. Lisbon: CSLI Publications, 2005.
★
Glossary of English Grammar Terms UsingEnglish.com