"We're gonna each of us be responsible …"
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Daniel Mahaffy points out an interesting phrase in President Obama's pre-Super Bowl interview with Bill O'Reilly:
At about 7:21, the president says:
That's saying to Americans, we're gonna each of us be responsible for our own health care.
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Daniel's comment:
I know that the split infinitive is a non-error, and I know that most often it is an adverb that splits an infinitive. Sometimes a pronoun is possible, as in "He tried to himself make the presentation to the committee." This morning I was watching The Early Show which played a few moments of Mr. Obama's interview with Bill O'Reilly. In his remarks, Mr. Obama said, "We are going to each of us be responsible for our own health care." This is the first I had caught someone uttering such a phrase in an infinitive. He seemed to speak without hesitation or self-consciousness so that I believe that it was a very natural act. Have I merely been inattentive? Is this common enough that it goes undetected?
(Daniel's use of "caught" suggests that he's not totally sold on that non-error business…)
First, let's note gonna has become a sort of modal auxiliary in colloquial English, and I doubt that Daniel would have noticed the more formal phrasing "We will each of us be responsible for our own health care".
But even if we treat "going to be" as containing an infinitive, it shouldn't be suprising to find certain kinds of quantification of the infinitive's subject. Some relevant examples from COCA:
… the company asked the four experts to each write separate opinions because they " don't all agree on everything, "
that's when they made the risky decision to each withdraw $6,000 from their 401 (k) s
… the state governments themselves have ordered utilities to each acquire the specified amount of 300 megawatts renewable capacity.
… it had selected three contractors to each perform a 7-month preliminary design effort to refine the Navy's LCS concepts.
… parallax can cause drivers in two different traffic lanes to each be absolutely positive that they are the one in the correct lane for the tollbooth.
In preparation for this activity, the instructor obtains enough 24-piece puzzles for a group of 2-3 to each have one.
I'm not a syntactician, but I'm pretty sure that this all has something to do with the phenomenon traditionally known as "quantifier floating", and also with the quantified NPs that sometimes appear in subject position in imperatives, which normally (like infinitives) lack a subject there:
Don't everyone step forward at once!
All of you just take a seat.
[Note, as usual, that this is not a writing clinic — the topic is not how Mr. Obama's phrase might or should have been re-worded, but rather what its structure is and what other constructions it's related to.]
Graham said,
February 7, 2011 @ 10:52 am
I'll just state up front I'm still very new to this so the following might not be as relevant as I think it is.
I recall watching in the cinema the film The Bourne Identity and being struck by the phrasing of the following line:
"Conklin: We will burn for this. We will both of us burn."
Struck mostly because of how effectively the sentiment was put across by it, but also because I would never normally have consciously thought to speak a line like this in normal speech.
I appreciate that this isn't the same wording as being discussed in the original post, but the particular phrasing of that second sentence has always stuck with me and I'm now wondering if it's a similar construction to that being discussed?
David Denison said,
February 7, 2011 @ 11:13 am
What interests me is the slight stylistic mismatch between _gonna_ (colloquial) and the floated _each of us_ (which is rather formal and perhaps recessive). In my Cambridge History chapter I called it 'old-fashioned' (Denison 1998: 117), with examples like Mrs Gaskell's (?1846) 'I don't think we should any of us like it'.
I'm not an expert on prescriptivism, but I thought the alleged crime of splitting an infinitive was to put something between _to_ and the verb. There is no _to_-infinitive here, however. But no doubt Arnold Zwicky will show that this too is a sin for some peevologists, and I trust Geoff Pullum will then unleash a counterblast.
[(myl) But if you render gonna VERB as going to INF, and float "each (of us)" in between to and the verb, doesn't that count as "splitting"?
And certainly in the examples like "the company asked the four experts to each write separate opinions", the infinitive is "split"?
Anyhow, thanks for the pointer to the right place in the Cambridge History.]
David Denison said,
February 7, 2011 @ 11:36 am
Duh! Too hasty. Of course it's split.
Kylopod said,
February 7, 2011 @ 11:47 am
It seems that not all split infinitives are created equal. Most of us today don't blink an eye at constructions like "to sharply contrast" or "to strongly suggest" in formal and semi-formal writing. There may be pedants out there who do, but these constructions do not suggest either a lack of education of an intrusion of informality into formal communication.
Yet there are split infinitives that do stand out, such as the "to not" formulation. (The one I always remember is the Daily Show episode where they interviewed a Prohibition Party activist, and they told him that he is "fighting for the right to not party.") This formulation is quite common, but it still seems pretty informal and would look tremendously awkward in, say, a college paper.
What occurred to me as I saw this post is that few people notice ordinary split infinitives of the -ly kind following a gonna. If someone says, "I'm gonna really be late," nobody bats an eye. But "We're gonna each of us be responsible" does sound awkward. "Each of us" is a phrase that I would probably not expect to ever see after the infinitive to.
I agree with David Denison that there's a clash between the informality of gonna and the relative formality of "each of us," but still, even in purely formal communication, a phrase like "We want to each of us be responsible" sounds somehow wrong. Actually, it's hard to think where you'd place the phrase "each of us" to make a sentence like this sound natural and not awkward. None of the following alternatives sound quite right, and at least a few of them are flat-out wrong:
*We, each of us, are going to be responsible.
*We are each of us going to be responsible.
*We're going, each of us, to be responsible.
*We're going to be, each of us, responsible.
*We're going to be responsible, each of us.
That last one sounds the best, if we had to choose, but it still has a ring of informality. A grammar teacher would probably tell a student to say "Each of us is going to be responsible." One problem is that "we" and "each of us" don't match grammatically–one is plural, the other singular. That may be at least part of what's generating the awkward feel of all these sentences.
Ray Dillinger said,
February 7, 2011 @ 12:21 pm
I've recently been hearing negated infinitives formed with "to not V-INF" rather than "not to V-INF". It splits a preposition, but I think it's becoming accepted, at least among a certain subset of American West-coast speakers, as normal colloquial speech.
[(myl) "Splits a preposition"? I don't see any prepositions in these schematic examples, unless I'm misunderstanding something. Can you give a specific example of what you mean?
In any case, the pattern "to not INF"provides many normal examples of obligatorily split infinitives, and not just for American West-coast speakers. ]
But isn't this instance confusion over different senses of the word "to"? I don't really consider it to be a preposition when it's serving as an infinitive marker, and vice versa.
[(myl) You're right to take this position, but I'm puzzled as to why it's relevant to this discussion, or to your schematic "to not INF" example.]
Alvin said,
February 7, 2011 @ 1:41 pm
I'm going to have to disagree with Kylopod's judgments. I think that these asterisks are indicative of a certain preferred style of expression, but none of those sentences sound especially awkward to me, especially given the right context.
I believe this to be an issue of emphasis. A less emphatic version of this sentence might be something like this:
(1) We're going to be responsible.
(2) Each of us are/is going to be responsible.
"Each," here, is expressing something like this:
Given sets of people, P, and sets of salient responsibilities, R, we have an injective function f: P -> R.
This is in contrast to (1), which is ambiguous in this regard, but, in my opinion, has the flavor of collective responsibility. So, instead of an injective function, it's expressing something like this:
There exists an r in R : for all p in P, f(p) = r.
It also contrasts and (2), which seems to have the same truth conditions, but without the same emphasis.
He began the sentence with "we"; so, to emphasize, he inserted a subsequent parenthetical.
That's my initial take, in any case.
Xmun said,
February 7, 2011 @ 1:48 pm
Re Kylopod's examples:
*We, each of us, are going to be responsible.
*We are each of us going to be responsible.
*We're going, each of us, to be responsible.
*We're going to be, each of us, responsible.
*We're going to be responsible, each of us.
I disagree. They are all perfectly good standard English, though I think the second is far and away the most likely to be said or heard, and the third the least likely. What Obama actually said — "we're gonna each of us be responsible" — seems to me totally unremarkable.
Haamu said,
February 7, 2011 @ 1:58 pm
For me, in the sequence "going to be," the "to" binds more strongly to "going" than to "be," making a division in the latter position feel more natural.
I assume this derives from the parallelism between "We will X" and "We are going to X" — X just doesn't feel like an infinitive, and for me the don't-split rule (whether or not I think it's valid) isn't even triggered.
In Kylopod's 5 examples, there are varying degrees of awkwardness, but the only one I would reject outright is "*We're going, each of us, to be responsible."
Boris said,
February 7, 2011 @ 2:14 pm
I agree with Xmun that the last example is the most acceptable to me and agree with Haamu that #3 would never be correct.
My thinking is that the other 4 examples can be made to sound correct in speech, even formal speech, if "each of us" is emphasized correctly, but in writing I would only accept the last one because of the subject verb agreement thing, and even then, I would put a period before the "each of us" and not a comma. Of course, in the original sentence, the each of us at the end would be too far away to work correctly, so I would avoid using "We" and "each of us" in the same sentence like this in written prose.
As far as the gonna, I see nothing informal about it in speech. In writing "going to" is also unremarkable to me.
J. W. Brewer said,
February 7, 2011 @ 2:30 pm
Does "We're gonna each be responsible" sound less odd? It does to me. And "Each of us is gonna be responsible" seems likewise unobjectionable. Having the "we" and the "us" positioned close together with the same referent I guess can give a certain poetic/dramatic effect (perhaps redundancy as emphasis? – like the "we will both of us burn" line quoted above) but also I think increases the odds of the result sounding a bit weird or off, even if one is not (consciously or unconsciously) analyzing "gonna . . . be responsible" as an infinitive capable of being split. Each of the kylopod suggestions has (by design) this same redundancy, and if none of them sound completely natural, perhaps that's why.
Spell Me Jeff said,
February 7, 2011 @ 3:39 pm
I have no quarrel with the construction, as I also tend to analyze gonna as a modal. (I wouldn't care about a split infinitive anyway.)
I wonder if the striking thing abut this sentence is the mixture of registers. Gonna sounds very casual, where each of us sounds more formal, at least to my ears.
All of us probably mix multiple registers when we speak, so I wouldn't say the phenomenon is unusual. I'm just wondering if it may have caused this particular utterance to stand out enough to be noticed.
Ray Girvan said,
February 7, 2011 @ 3:50 pm
It doesn't strike me as an unusual construct at all.
Google Books finds a few similar examples:
* "I rather want you to get the idea that by our uniting here in a meeting, we are going to all of us receive education" – 1907
* ""We are going to – all of us – start thinking in terms of life cycle cost …" – 1976
* " I think we have to be partners and not competitors if we are going to each of us render the maximum service." – 1974
* "… we are going to, each of us, I think, I have to admit we are going to do everything we possibly can …" – 1974
1976
* "There was an agreement made in Japan that we were going to, all of us, look into this problem and see if we couldn't find a solution" – 1986
[(myl) I agree that seeing a quantifier floated between infinitival to and a following verb is not especially unusual. But I also agree with Daniel Mahaffey that discussions of "splitting infinitives" generally don't involve these cases, for whatever reason.]
GeorgeW said,
February 7, 2011 @ 4:08 pm
It sounds unremarkable to me (Southern, AmE). In fact, the more I add to the spit, the better it sounds to me:
'We're gonna each of us, if the Supreme Court rejects the legislation because of the mandate, be responsible for our own health care.'
Kylopod said,
February 7, 2011 @ 4:12 pm
It sure does. But I think "each" by itself serves a different function than the phrase "each of us."
Prescriptive schoolroom grammar has often taught us that the word "each" is always singular, so that a sentence like "Each of us are going on our way" is in error, even though it is very common. Yet "each" can also be used by itself to clarify or emphasize a plural pronoun: "We each are responsible for our belongings." "They each went their separate ways." The word "each" in these sentences tries to emphasize the individuality of the people the pronoun refers to, but the subject of the sentence still remains plural. And you can relocate the "each" to some degree without affecting the meaning of the sentence, so that "We're gonna each be responsible" sounds perfectly natural, and aside from the split infinitive and the word gonna, I doubt any old-fashioned grammar teacher would object.
But a phrase like "each of us" more explicitly suggests singularity, and so pairing it with a plural pronoun like "we" comes off as a tad awkward. Whether it is, in fact, an error, I'm not sure, but it somehow sounds less than ideal to me. And it could be at least partly a regional thing.
[(myl) William Congreve, The Double-Dealer:
George Eliot, Daniel Deronda:
Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Celestial Railroad:
Samuel Richardson, Clarissa:
Harriet Beecher Stowe, Oldtown Folks:
Anthony Trollope, The Way We Live Now:
Edward Robert Bulwer Lytton, Lucile:
And just for you, found via the Google News Archive, "Text of Hoover's Neighborly Talks", NYT, 11/27/1928:
So indeed, it's clearly "a regional thing", if by "region" we refer to that special area that nurtured Congreve, Eliot, Hawthorne, Richardson, Stowe, Trollope, Bulwer Lytton, and Hoover, namely the English-speaking world.]
Boris said,
February 7, 2011 @ 4:32 pm
We each (and friends) sound much worse to me than the original and I want to correct it to "each of us". Is it like "We are two" which sounds like British for "there are two of us" or "we are both united"?
J. W. Brewer said,
February 7, 2011 @ 5:47 pm
To test the "each of us isn't used inside VP's in informal register" hypothesis, I theorized that phrases with "get" (get high, get loose, get comfortable, get fired, get laid etc etc etc) trend decidely informal, albeit no doubt with exceptions. There are no google hits for "we're each of us getting" (and only three for "we are each of us getting"), one for "we'll each of get" (none for "we will each of us get"), and no results for either "we've each of us gotten" or "we have each of us gotten."
Pflaumbaum said,
February 7, 2011 @ 7:07 pm
@ Boris
"We are two" certainly isn't contemporary BrE as far as I'm aware. To me it sounds either like an overcorrection from someone who knows French or Italian, or like English circa Wordsworth.
You do hear We all of us and We none of us, though, especially in the North.
Charly said,
February 7, 2011 @ 7:26 pm
Obama seems to use both "all of us" and "each of us" somewhat interchangably.
"As we discuss these issues, let each of us do so with a good dose of humility."
"Obviously, all of us are still grieving."
"Whatever differences we may have, I know that all of us share a deep, abiding belief in this country, a belief in our people, a belief in the principles that have made America's economy the envy of the world. . . . And this is a job for all of us."
"But there's a reason the tragedy in Tucson gave us pause. Amid all the noise and passion and rancor of our public debate, Tucson reminded us that no matter who we are or where we come from, each of us is a part of something greater, something more consequential than party or political preference."
(All quotations found via google search.)
Beyond one being plural and the other being singular, I don't see any particular pattern, but someone else might. President Obama seems to usually use the phrase without the reinforcing pronoun. I found the "let each of us do" (subjunctive) phrasing to be interesting, and even quite grand.
http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=let+each+of+us+do&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=0&smoothing=3
There seem to be quite a few religious, scientific, or otherwise exhortative examples here.
Rick Sprague said,
February 7, 2011 @ 9:07 pm
Semantically, I'd have to say that "each of us" in Obama's utterance has the same meaning as "individually". Maybe floating-quantifier "each [of us/you/them]" is on the path to becoming reanalyzed as a set phrase with adverbial function, in which case this is a standard split infinitive (of the "gonna" variety in this case).
In support of this hypothesis, I'd point out that this "each of us" is not in free variation with such constructions as "each American" or "each of us citizens"–at least, not in my idiolect:
??We're gonna each American be responsible…
??We're gonna each of us citizens be responsible…
However, these variations are not simply quantifiers either, so that argument might not hold water.
Nathan Myers said,
February 7, 2011 @ 11:41 pm
I wonder to what degree the "gonna" (like "goin' ", or "lookin' ") is a studied attempt at plain-folks-ism. Did Obama really talk that way teaching class? It makes it hard for me to listen to what he's trying to say, or trying not to.
John F said,
February 8, 2011 @ 4:57 am
"That's saying to Americans, we're gonna each of us be responsible for our own health care."
I might put a couple more commas in*, but I think it's perfectly comprehensible and captures the vernacular. It's almost poetic. And I've never been impressed by Obama's oratory. Maybe this is a Reagan moment.
* "That's saying to Americans, we're gonna, each of us, be responsible for our own health care."
Pflaumbaum said,
February 8, 2011 @ 6:28 am
@Charly
'I found the "let each of us do" (subjunctive) phrasing to be interesting, and even quite grand.'
I don't think let each of us do is subjunctive. I might be wrong but I think it's what CGEL calls an 'open let-imperative'. There's a discussion on pp936-7 about whether it qualifies as a construction in its own right or is just a special use of an ordinary imperative, with the authors leaning towards the latter. Maybe you're thinking of Latin jussive subjunctives which are often translated into English with let?
There is also the 'first person inclusive imperative' with let's. In some dialects (like mine) it's possible to have let's each of us, let's all of us, let's you and me. (CGEL allows let's you and I as well as let's you and me, though for me that's a very unnatural nesting of formal within informal constructions.)
chris said,
February 8, 2011 @ 9:42 am
I wonder to what degree the "gonna" (like "goin' ", or "lookin' ") is a studied attempt at plain-folks-ism.
You gotta be kidding. It's completely unremarkable for American spoken usage; it just looks a little strange in writing because it's not usually used in writing.
Boris said,
February 8, 2011 @ 10:24 am
@Pflaumbaum,
I guess my sources for "we are two" that are not adequate. There's "And that she will cry When she learns we are two" by the Beatles, and a parody by the (American trying to sound British or maybe just sound like the Beatles) Rutles "Now that we are two It all adds up to love".
And there was my father (a non-native speaker at the time, but learning a lot of British English in Russia) who used to use the construction.
Boris said,
February 8, 2011 @ 10:30 am
@chris,
Of course it's not used in writing. It's eye dialect for "going to" which is completely unremarkable in writing and how I would transcribe anyone saying what sounds like "gonna" unless there is a good reason to emphasize it (say rhymes in song lyrics)
Pflaumbaum said,
February 8, 2011 @ 11:09 am
@ Boris
Ha, I'd always heard that line as "When she learns we are too," without noticing that that makes no sense. It may have been a slightly archaizing touch even then, though the same song has That you would love me more than her, where you'd expect she if the song was meant to have a formal or old-fashioned feel. Maybe you're right. A google search gives way too many false positives of the sort, "We are two short for Monday", does anyone know how to get round this?
Re your father though it could be the Russian factor. Funnily enough over Christmas I was with English friends in France and when one of their kids, who speaks fluent French, said, "Now we're twelve" she was corrected to "now there are twelve of us". So some people at least seem to hear it as ungrammatical.
anonym said,
September 7, 2012 @ 1:32 am
Like Graham I was struck by the "We will burn for this. We will both of us burn" line in the Bourne Identity. So I googled it to see if there was any internet commentary on it and — wahey! — I find it in a comment thread on Language Log. How apt.