Each?

[Laurence Horn]

On Mar 21, 2014, at 5:22 PM, Randy Alexander wrote:

> Could you not say "each brother is in love with the same woman"?
>
> Isn't their separateness what causes the conflict? I would think that
> emphasizing that might be something that contributes to selecting "each"
> over "both" (although there's no grammatical problem with either).

Very well put.  That is to say, this is what I was going to say, but better.  These are two separate facts--A is love with Ms. X; B is in love with Ms. X--rather than one--A and B are both are in love with Ms. X.  The distributivity of "each" brings that out, which is why (I think) the reviewer went that route.  But I agree that there's a bit of sleight of mind involved when you get to "the same woman", as Dan suggests.  So there's a trade-off.

LH

> On Mar 21, 2014 3:33 PM, "Dan Goncharoff" <thegonch at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>> -----------------------
>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       Dan Goncharoff <thegonch at GMAIL.COM>
>> Subject:      Each?
>>
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> Read today in the NYTimes book review section:
>>
>> "Many of Ms. Antopol's stories pivot on role reversals. In one of them, two
>> brothers in the Israeli Army -- each is in love with the same woman -- see
>> their tortured relationship upended when one is gravely injured."
>>
>> I would have written 'both are' instead of 'each is', and 'each is' strikes
>> me as wrong, in that it denotes a separateness that is violated when
>> followed by 'the same woman'.
>>
>> Am I completely off base, or is this just a matter of 'to each his own'?
>>
>>
>> DanG
>>
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