A distributive pronoun considers members of a group separately, rather than collectively.
They include '' 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
Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803April 27, 1882), who went by his middle name Waldo, was an American essayist, lecturer, philosopher, abolitionist, and poet who led the transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century. He was seen as a cham ...
Besides distributive
pronoun
In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun ( abbreviated ) is a word or a group of words that one may substitute for a noun or noun phrase.
Pronouns have traditionally been regarded as one of the parts of speech, but some modern theorists would not ...
s, there are also distributive
determiner
A determiner, also called determinative ( abbreviated ), is a word, phrase, or affix that occurs together with a noun or noun phrase and generally serves to express the reference of that noun or noun phrase in the context. That is, a determine ...
s (also called distributive adjectives). The pronouns and determiners often have the same form:
* ''Each went his own way'' (''each'' used as a pronoun, without an accompanying noun)
* ''Each man went his own way'' (''each'' used as a determiner, accompanying the noun ''man)''
*''Each'' ''of the answers is correct'' (''each'' used as a pronoun, with an accompanying prepositional phrase ''of the answers'')
Languages other than English
Biblical Hebrew
A common distributive idiom in
Biblical Hebrew
Biblical Hebrew (, or , ), also called Classical Hebrew, is an archaic form of the Hebrew language, a language in the Canaanite branch of Semitic languages spoken by the Israelites in the area known as the Land of Israel, roughly west of t ...
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.
Of the many other examples of the idiom in the
Hebrew Bible
The Hebrew Bible or Tanakh (;"Tanach" '' iteral*... each went home.
ense
Ense () is a municipality in the district of Soest, in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany.
Geography
Ense is situated on the river Möhne, approx. 12 km north-west of Arnsberg and 12 km south-west of Soest. Ense lies at the northside ...
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, but the distinction is also clear in Gn 19:8; 24:16 and 38:25 (see note for further references). However, it could also be used generically in this distributive idiom (Jb 42:11; I Ch 16:3).Brown Driver Briggs:36.
Greek
The most common distributive pronoun in classical
Greek
Greek may refer to:
Greece
Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe:
*Greeks, an ethnic group.
*Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family.
**Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...
was ''hekastos'' (, each).
See also
*
Adjective
In linguistics, an adjective ( abbreviated ) is a word that generally modifies a noun or noun phrase or describes its referent. Its semantic role is to change information given by the noun.
Traditionally, adjectives were considered one of the ...
*
Pronoun
In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun ( abbreviated ) is a word or a group of words that one may substitute for a noun or noun phrase.
Pronouns have traditionally been regarded as one of the parts of speech, but some modern theorists would not ...