English Language and Linguistics 10.2: 345–370. C  Cambridge University Press 2006 doi:10.1017/S136067430600195X Printed in the United Kingdom The lady was al demonyak: historical aspects of Adverb all 1 ISABELLE BUCHSTALLER University of Newcastle upon Tyne and ELIZABETH CLOSS TRAUGOTT Stanford University (Received 9 January 2006; revised 23 March 2006) In this diachronic study, we shed light on the development of the functions and structural properties of Adverb all, and suggest that degree modifiers in general should be analyzed in similar terms. We show that the harmonic relationship between Adverb all and its head is best accounted for in terms of boundedness rather than gradability (see Kennedy & McNally, 2005; Paradis, 2001). The stability over a millennium of indeterminacy between bounded and unbounded readings of Adverb all + head sequences, and of the ambiguity in many contexts between Adverb and Quantifier-floated all, shows that a division of labor over time between ambiguous meanings is not necessary (Geeraerts, 1997). Despite its long history, Adverb all has been treated as conversational or an innovation (B¨ acklund, 1973; Waksler, 2001). We address the question why certain items like all come to be stereotyped as ‘new’ when in fact they are not. 1 Introduction In its quantifier, determiner, and predeterminer functions, all has received considerable attention. By contrast, it is rarely discussed in its adverbial function, and if it is, it is classified in a number of different ways. In the semantic tradition, where issues of quantifiers and quantifier-float are of focal concern, distinctions are made between the quantifier as in (1a), the floated quantifier in (1b) and a ‘completive’ adverb as in (1c) (e.g. Bobaljik, 1995; Gouro, 2000): (1) (a) All whales are mammals. (b) Whales are all mammals. (c) John is all wet. In the grammatical tradition, Huddleston & Pullum (2002: 548–9) also mention Adverb all as a ‘modifier in an AdvP’ that means ‘completely’, but do not subclassify it in their discussion of types of adverbs. Others subclassify Adverb all in a number of different ways. For example, Quirk, Greenbaum, Leech & Svartvik (1985: 447) include it among 1 A shorter version of this paper was presented at the SHEL 4 conference in Flagstaff, Arizona (30 September – 1 October 2005). We would like to thank the members of the audience as well as the other members of the Stanford ALL project (John Rickford, Zoe Bogart, Tracy Connor, Kelly Drinkwater, Rowyn McDonald, Thomas Wasow, Laura Whitton, and Arnold Zwicky) for many fruitful discussions from which this paper has greatly benefited. Thanks also to David Beaver, Kristin Davidse, and Florian Jaeger for comments and references. Two anonymous reviewers also provided helpful suggestions.