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"This all happens in the middle of winter." What's the meaning of "all" in this sentence?

The above is a part of a synopsis of "Fargo" movie. And I've heard a lot "it all happened...", "this all happened..."

And I've searched some dictionaries about "all". Then I guessed that in here "all" is "adverb" and means "completely" That's because its location is before verb in the sentence.

But I still cannot fully understand the above sentence meaning. Could you help me understand the meaning of "all" in here please?

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    It may mean: All of these happen in the middle of winter. I think it's a good idea that you provide more context.
    – user60033
    Commented Dec 2, 2018 at 0:23
  • Thank @Arham 27 for your answer!! Here's the whole synopsis. ---------- that's the one(=DVD) where a car salesman hires two criminals to kidnap his wife so that he can get money from her rich farther. But everything goes wrong. *This all happens in the country town in the middle of winter. The police officer find the criminals in the end.
    – Young
    Commented Dec 2, 2018 at 0:59
  • Why is "this all happens in the middle of winter", not "these all happen in the middle of winter"?
    – Young
    Commented Dec 2, 2018 at 1:02
  • I thought "these" matches "all" because grammatically they are plural. So "whole of these" or "all of these" make sense but I didn't think "whole of this" or "all of this" doesn't make sense. Maybe I might be wrong....
    – Young
    Commented Dec 2, 2018 at 1:08
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    'all' is NOT always plural, e.g. in "All of the food has gone."
    – user60033
    Commented Dec 2, 2018 at 1:14

1 Answer 1

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'All' is a predeterminer used to refer to the whole quantity or thing. The sentence is no different from "all (of) this happens in the middle of winter".

This phenomenon is called quantifier float and addressed in Payne (2010).

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