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I'd be pleased to find out about more sentences with this property.

Here's a sentence I found which I have an inkling might be an example of such a sentence:

"I will give you all A's"

Is the teacher/professor speaking to one student or multiple students?

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7
  • Even if the sentence containing "y'all" is unambiguous, "y'all" is not necessary to fix any ambiguity; the meaning can be expressed unambiguously in a different way. I'm not sure exactly what the OP wants.
    – Rosie F
    Commented Apr 30 at 8:08
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    Disambiguating without the usual contextual aids: << [I will give] [every one of you] [an A] vs << [I will give] [every one of you] [one or more A's] >> vs [I will give] [you, my dear pupil] [nothing but A's]. Using 'y'all' is non-standard, and better avoided in writing and, certainly in the UK, speech.
    – Edwin Ashworth
    Commented Apr 30 at 11:31
  • I would like to offer a frame challenge here, I don't see that substituting "y'all" for "you all" does disambiguate whether the teacher is speaking to one or multiple students. Surely a teacher who contracts "you all" to "y'all" in front of a group of students would be just as likely to use the same contraction if a single student asked for their individual results.
    – Mark Booth
    Commented Apr 30 at 12:13
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    @MarkBooth I live in Texas and have never witnessed someone use "y'all" when speaking to only one person. Can you point to such an example?
    – Simon M
    Commented Apr 30 at 19:34
  • While y'all is on the face of it just an abbreviation of you all, it is so strongly associated with the dialects of the American South, that anybody who hears will inevitably perceive the speaker as using or imitating such a dialect. On should thus use such a formulation only if that's what one intends.
    – jsw29
    Commented Apr 30 at 22:35

2 Answers 2

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4

The contracted, and very informal, American English expression “y'all” is indeed plural, just as “you all” is. Both have the same meaning: “every one of you”.

Compare: Have you passed? (the subject could be singular or plural) and Have you all passed? (the subject is plural).

The OP's example is marginally ambiguous, (see comments below) the teacher could be telling the individual student that they will be awarded two or more As for their assignments but this situation is highly unlikely. To avoid any possible misinterpretation, we can use the expression I mentioned earlier "every one of you"

I will give every one of you [straight] A's"

I will give you, [student's name], all A's

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15
  • Although it could be addressed to one or all, you can resolve any ambiguity by looking at the teacher. Are they speaking to a single student, or to the entire class at large? If you can't tell the difference, you'll have a hard time in any classroom where teachers provide both individual feedback and group instruction.
    – Stuart F
    Commented Apr 30 at 9:21
  • OP is asking about the inherent ambiguity and fixes addressed other than by context.
    – Edwin Ashworth
    Commented Apr 30 at 11:27
  • @EdwinAshworth Where's the ambiguity in "you all"? The OP is arguing that "y'all" resolves the ambiguity, it means the same thing, doesn't it? I would like to improve the answer but I don't see how I can. Could you please explain, in slightly more detail, why this answer has been downvoted? Thanks.
    – Mari-Lou A
    Commented Apr 30 at 11:31
  • @EdwinAshworth Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, to be sure, you-all indicates a plural, implicit if not explicit, and thus means, when addressed to a single person, 'you and your folks' or the like, but the hundredth time it is impossible to discover any such extension of meaning.
    – Mari-Lou A
    Commented Apr 30 at 11:34
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    @SimonM Thanks, you're right. I'll fix it tomorrow :)
    – Mari-Lou A
    Commented Apr 30 at 23:44
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Well first I'd say the sentence is not ambiguous and might even be redundant. If the professor is speaking to the class, then he is speaking to a singular noun, like a team or a flock. So the word "you" would suffice without the use of "all" because it is understood that he is speaking to ever member of the group. If I'm a boss and I have a meeting with my employees and I say "You need to be here on time", it's the same as saying "You all need to be here on time"

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  • 3
    As OP takes care to express this sentence, it is unclear whether the professor is addressing one, or more, students. That is the point of the question. Yes, context would almost certainly disambiguate, but there is an inherent ambiguity ... [every one of you] [A's] (and this itself remains ambiguous) vs [you, my dear pupil] [nothing but A's].
    – Edwin Ashworth
    Commented Apr 30 at 11:25

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