Fernando Pereira recently emailed the headline of a BusinessWeek story, "A Search Engine for Every Subject", with the comment:
1) Google's replacement, or a 2) swarm of specialized engines? You have to read past the first paragraph to realize that they mean 2).
In the language of the old-fashioned predicate-calculus treatment of quantifiers, expressed in "heavy English" rather than pretend-mathematics, this is the difference between
1) There exists a search engine x such that for every subject y, x is for y.
2) For every subject y, there exists a search engine x such that x is for y.
As far as I can tell, given that I'm biased by reading Fernando's note, I agree with his judgment that 1) is more natural than 2) as an interpretation of the BusinessWeek headline. This makes sense, given that 1) preserves the surface order of the operators. However, there are plenty of examples, some of them very common, that go the way of 2). There's the phrasal template "if I had a X for every Y":
If I had a nickel for every time that ...
and hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of ("an X in every Y") variants of
A chicken in every pot.
In fact, in these cases there's the additional implicature that all the nickels or chickens are disjoint, which presumably does not apply in e.g.
She has a finger in every pie.
in which different figurative fingers may be involved in different figurative pies, but there might well be more pies than fingers.
Of course, there are plenty of examples that would require interpretations analogous to 1):
We have entered into a unique partnership with Lumisource, Inc to bring you a must have toy for every weather enthusiast.
Here is a staple for every touring paddler.
The two obvious secrets of every service business
Five Ways to Profit from Every Meeting
America, A Home for Every Culture
In structures of this general sort, each inevitably (?) follows pattern 2):
The doctor or hospital will be paid a fee for each service rendered to the patient.
The new Circular requires an agency to make a formal public announcement for each competition.
often emphasized with modifiers like "separate" or "unique":
Do a separate worksheet for each student.
An extraction of the chest spot pattern allows the generation of a unique biometrical identifier for each penguin.
while all usually follows pattern 1):
A man for all seasons.
This week I'm happy to announce a solution for all other Visual Studio users!
often emphasized with modifiers like "single" or "complete":
A single solution for all your document needs
A complete announcement for all openings is available on the West Human Resources Web.
though all also sometimes follows pattern 1), especially when the head noun in the first noun phrase is plural:
No need to carry separate auto power adapters for all your portable electronics.
The foundation maintains separate accounts for all restricted funds.
The crude method of checking Google counts for a few particular sequences generally supports this picture for each and all, while every seems sometimes to be each-like and sometimes all-like:
| "a solution for __" | "a separate solution for __" | "a single solution for __" | |
| each | 22,000 |
279 |
453 |
| all | 93,400 |
3 |
67,000 |
| every | 60,900 |
56 |
281 |
| "an application for __" | "a separate application for __" | "a single application for __" | |
| each | 40,700 |
75,700 |
148 |
| all | 10,200 |
76 |
528 |
| every | 550 |
822 |
4 |
| "a program for __" | "a separate program for __" | "a single program for __" | |
| each | 20,400 |
709 |
118 |
| all | 34,700 |
50 |
224 |
| every | 13,300 |
58 |
20 |
| "an answer for __" | "a separate answer for __" | "a single answer for __" | |
| each | 30,000 |
232 |
283 |
| all | 22,800 |
0 |
218 |
| every | 44,500 |
0 |
85 |
[Update: David Hargreaves writes
"Life has a paddle for every behind."
My hallway survey leads me to conclude this reading is preferred:
For every behind y, there exists a paddle x such that x is for y.
One interpretation went as follows: since every bottom is unique, there has to be an anatomically correct paddle that fits it.
I first heard musician Wynton Marsalis use the phrase, but my Google search came up with "author unknown."
]
Posted by Mark Liberman at February 15, 2006 08:11 AM