all of your help

[jutfrank]

The signature line of one of our regular members, which has been bugging me for a long time, reads like this:

I appreciate all of your help.

It's clear enough that the idea is to form a possessive of all of you but my mind finds it problematic to parse it that way. I can't help parsing all to relate to the entirety of 'your help' rather than to the entirety of 'you'.

From this, I have two questions I'd like to ask all of you:

1) Does this also seem problematic to you? If so, how much?

2) Can you think of an alternative way of rephrasing, whether in standard form or otherwise?

In non-standard English, all of y'all's seems to do the job very well, but as well as being non-standard, is heavily regional and hence highly inappropriate to teach to a learner. Other options, such as all of you guys's, are perhaps a little more universal, but certainly no less non-standard, and rather awkward, to my ear.

Any thoughts on this matter will be very much valued. Thanks.

 

[GoesStation]

I hadn't thought of your reading of the phrase. I read it as I appreciate all of the help I get from you (plural). English really suffers for the lack of a standard and distinctive second-person plural.

My reading might be phrased as I appreciate all of the help I receive here. That makes the givers of the help implicit: they are other forum members.

 

[jutfrank]

I read it as I appreciate all of the help I get from you (plural).

I can barely believe I didn't even think of it that way. It seems so obvious now you've pointed it out.

Perhaps this is a case where my mind has become stuck on a certain parsing and is unable to escape. Hopefully, other members, especially the member whose signature line it's a part of, will confirm that this is just me being 'linguistically blind', if I can put it that way, and that all does indeed relate to help and not you.

 

[probus]

It happens to all of us, jutfrank. I've always loved the story of Darwin's contemporary who, on hearing of evolution, exclaimed "How stupid of me not to have thought of that!"

 

[jutfrank]

Thanks for the encouragement, probus.

I'm now almost completely convinced that I am the only one reading the line in the way I mentioned (interpretation 2 below), but I can't quite let it rest until diamondcutter confirms what he actually meant.

1) all of your help = the entirety of your help
2) all of your help = the help of each and every one of you

 

[probus]

You're not the only one, jutfrank. I too thought of 1 first, and added 2 only later.

 

[diamondcutter]

Thanks for the encouragement, probus.

I'm now almost completely convinced that I am the only one reading the line in the way I mentioned (interpretation 2 below), but I can't quite let it rest until diamondcutter confirms what he actually meant.

1) all of your help = the entirety of your help
2) all of your help = the help of each and every one of you

Hi jutfrank,

By saying I appreciate all of your help, I mean I appreciate all the help from all the members on this forum.

 

[emsr2d2]

Hi jutfrank,

By saying I appreciate all of your help, I mean I appreciate all the help from all the members on this forum.

If you want to concentrate on the members rather than the help, you'll need to expand.

I appreciate the help I get from all of you.
I appreciate the help I get from each and every one of you.

For me, "I appreciate all your help" would be read only as "all" (the entirety of) + "your help".

 

[jutfrank]

By saying I appreciate all of your help, I mean I appreciate all the help from all the members on this forum.

Thanks for answering, diamondcutter. I'm not sure that answers my question perfectly clearly, but I think what you mean is close to interpretation 1.


Okay, thank you, everybody. I appreciate all of y'all's help. I'm satisfied with the answers and I can finally sleep.

 

[Charlie Bernstein]

It's never seemed odd. I've always read it to mean, Thank you for all of your help.

 

[jutfrank]

It's never seemed odd. I've always read it to mean, Thank you for all of your help.

But that would normally be said to a single person, right? I mean, it could be directed at a group of people, but to make it clear that you're talking to everyone, you might say Thank you all for your help, where all means 'everybody'.

Anyway, never mind. Like I said, my question has been answered and I see now that I was misreading the sentence for some reason.