EVERY 3 in OED : A grammatically neglected determiner ( or two )

It is not unusual for grammar books to treat the determiner every as having one function only, viz. that of more or less parallelling each, disregarding cases such as There is every reason and I wish you every happiness. The present article is an attempt to redress the balance by critically assessing presentations in some of the major grammar books and in the canonical set of five dictionaries for learners. The end result is a tentative description of three different uses of every, EVERY, EVERY and EVERY.


Background
In February 2005, quite a few eyebrows must have been raised by teachers of English who had been avid readers of Quirk et al. (1972 and1985) and other standard grammars when, on February 11, Tony Blair and his cabinet were reported to have sent to Buckingham Palace the message "We all wish them every happiness for their future together" (them being Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles).Quirk et al. (1972: 139 and1985: 257) and Quirk & Greenbaum (1973: 61-62) include every in a set of determiners defined by the property of occurring only with count nouns in the singular: a(n), every, each, either, neither. 1  Happiness is definitely a non-count noun and thus unable to take every as a determiner according to major grammar books.
The instance quoted could of course be explained away as being formulaic and thus exempt from grammatical rules.The formulaic 1 Etymology is outside the scope of this article, but as an ex-teacher of English grammar and word formation I find it interesting that the fairly neat distinction in use between each and every in present-day English is not an age-old one.Every started out as a combination of ever (as a booster) and each (as the head), found in Old English as ǽfre ǽlc, as described in OED s.v.every.
character is implicitly confirmed by the learner's dictionary MED:2 "We wish you both every happiness in your future life together."Similarly in CIDE: "I'd like to wish you every […] happiness in your new home."3In Quirk et al. it is also stated (1985Quirk et al. it is also stated ( : 1241)), perfectly correctly, that the only possible modification of a noun with every (as defined, my comment) as its determiner is of the restrictive kind. 4Another characteristic is said (1985: 1405) to be that a noun determined by every is an unlikely notional subject in existential sentences.
In Quirk et al.'s book, there is only one every. 5Hasselgård et al.  (1998: 134) is in the same tradition.The same holds for Biber et al. (1999: 275), and the statistics presented there for every (1999: 278) simply refer to the string of letters, with no comment on different functions.But there is in fact at least one other every than the one defined by Quirk et al., and the usage in question is by no means isolated to the lexical item happiness.It has the opposite main defining characteristic, viz.that of occurring with definitely non-count nouns or with non-count senses of nouns with dual membership.It can also readily combine with both restrictive and non-restrictive modification and occur as a determiner in notional subjects in existential sentences.
Even the superobservant grammarian Otto Jespersen missed (or at least omitted) this other every; there is a brief mention (six lines) in Jespersen (1949: 598), but the chapter in question was written by Niels Haislund, Jespersen being too old and ill to finish the final volume (no.VII) of his grammar on his own.Haislund glossed this every as "all possible, the utmost degree of", which seems to echo in every detail OED, under every 3.6 Without stating the source, Haislund gave two examples from the dictionary, containing every consideration and every prospect.In addition, he provided two 19th-century literary quotations, containing every use and every business.7Surprisingly, the grammarian refrained from commenting on the grammatical properties of the nouns involved.Zandvoort (1965: 170) noted that every can be used with abstract nouns in the sense of "all possible", using indication and reason as examples, but there is no mention of the degree sense found in the every happiness type.

Lexicography and grammar
In OED, even OEDonline, there is no later example of this every (presented under 3) than 1891 (OED simply quotes the list of examples invented for the 1891 instalment of its predecessor, NED): "I feel every respect for him", "They showed him every consideration" and "There is every prospect of success".The third example, by the way, demonstrates that "every 3" can readily occur as a determiner of the noun (phrase) in a notional subject in an existential sentence, a function in which the "standard" every does "not so easily" occur according to Quirk et al. (1985Quirk et al. ( : 1405)).
The absence in OED of instances later than 1891 can easily be misinterpreted as an implicit report of the death of every 3.However, this is only a reflection of the simple fact that the extensive revision programme for the online version has not yet reached every.The wording that James Murray and his colleagues produced in the late 1880s still stands.For the revision programme, I have sent to the present editors the following examples from 20th century literary sources.Dictionaries for learners show considerable differences as to grammatical information about the use of every, including every 3. 8 Their general defining style is functional (Svensén 2009: 241), i.e., semantic with a tinge of pragmatics.Typical wordings are "used when referring to", "used for showing", "used to emphasize", and "you use every to indicate". 9 Traditionally, there has seemed to be little need for grammatical explanations in a dictionary mainly used for decoding, but the addition of an encoding function should have changed the situation in favour of grammar. 10Apart from the general tag "determiner", grammatical terms and explanations are totally absent in CIDE, which is in line with the semantic focus of this dictionary.The same absence is noted in LDOCE.In addition to "determiner", MED also has "singular countable noun".OALD has "indef det", "singular countable ns" and "abstract ns". 8For logistic reasons and for some degree of uniformity, I will be using the editions from 1995 ("the year of the dictionaries") for the learners' dictionaries CIDE (from its second edition, not used here, called CALD), COBUILD, LDOCE and OALD.For MED, which appeared later, the first edition (2002) will be used. 9Surprisingly, only two out of five dictionaries (LDOCE and OALD) remember to include individuality in their definitions.To take one example of the opposite, MED has "used for referring to all the people or things of a particular type or in a particular group, or all the parts of something." 10Lord Quirk's preface to the third edition of LDOCE may give the impression that the encoding function and the grammatical information are unique to this dictionary.However, in the first edition (1948) of the mother of all dictionaries for learners, ALDCE, in later editions known as OALD, A. S. Hornby mentions in his introduction the focus on idioms and syntax (emphasis mine), and as for encoding (without using the term), he says that "for writing English [the foreign student] will continue to find this volume useful." COBUILD, using its "Extra Column", boasts the largest set of terms, but even so there is nothing about countability or abstractness.In order to cover examples such as "his every whim", COBUILD (alone) makes an ad hoc reclassification of every and labels it "adjective".
Table 1 lists the lexical items used to exemplify what I (following OED) call every 3. Bold face marks the one word that occurs in all five dictionaries, whereas those occurring in three out of five are italicized.In my opinion, the set of examples for every 3 in OED is heterogeneous, which is actually hinted in the duality of the heading of section 3: "All possible", "the utmost degree of".There is a thin line between the two paraphrases proposed, but whereas the first one seems to go with amount, the second one explicitly refers to degree. 12In the above table for learners' dictionaries, it can be noted that clear-cut "degree" examples are found only in CIDE and MED, the two newest additions to the market, and in OALD.Also worth noting is the status of every reason, which seems to be a candidate for inclusion in the category of set phrases.

Conclusions
On the basis of observations in grammars, dictionaries and other sources, I would like to submit the following tentative description, using considerably more grammatical terms and concepts than the average learner's dictionary.On the other hand it is simplified as compared with the dictionaries, which often set up separate groups for adverbial functions of the whole noun phrase.In my opinion, there is no difference as to the function of every in relation to its head between "Every year has twelve months" and "We go to Italy every year".
EVERY each is a determiner used with count nouns in the singular. 13It is normally possible to paraphrase such a construction by means of all + plural. 14Typically, the nouns involved refer to something or somebody actually existing in a group or set.EVERY each can take a postdeterminer (or adjectival?) position after a genitive (including possessives).The individuality along with the universality can be strengthened through the expanded form each and every.Examples: Every home should have one.I'll be watching your every movement.
EVERY possible is a determiner used with abstract count nouns in the singular or abstract non-count nouns (or non-count senses of nouns with dual membership), often referring to something not (yet) in actual existence.
You will be given every support. 13It is not unusual to find statements, without further comments, to the effect that every goes with plurals, as in "every two weeks".This is a superficial and mechanical way of looking at things.The situation was correctly and concisely described a century ago in Jespersen (1914: 113): "Very frequently a unified plural is found after any, no and especially every …".Regrettably, his nice term "unified plural" does not seem to have caught on to the extent that it deserves. 14This simple rule of thumb was formulated "… the noun may be put in the plural and every replaced by all" in the first (1948) edition of ALDCE, but it is not to be found in any present-day dictionary for learners.
EVERY complete is a determiner used with abstract non-count nouns (or non-count senses of nouns with dual membership). 15The nouns are typically derived from gradable adjectives or otherwise semantically associated with gradability.
I wish you every happiness/success.

Famous (?) last words
To conclude, I have every complete confidence that every each reader of this will see that there is every possible reason to improve the grammatical analysis and description of every each EVERY. 16 However my daughters and I join in wishing you every happiness in your married life.(EvelynWaugh, Decline and fall (1928, p. 141  in the 1937 Penguin edition), from a congratulatory letter composed by a head of school) This she had done […] from an early age with every naturalness.(Iris Murdoch, The time of the angels (1966, p. 38 in the 1968 Penguin edition))

Table 1 .
Nouns used after "every 3" in example sentences