All there is to know about the alls-construction

Abstract

This paper pursues a minimalist analysis of the s-inflection that appears as an enclitic on the all in certain dialects of Midwestern American English; a construction called the alls-construction by Putnam & van Koppen (2009). Following Putnam & van Koppen, we demonstrate that the inter-clausal aspects of the alls-construction can be accounted for via Probe-Goal (Agree) relations similar in many respects to the generative treatment of C(omplementizer)-agreement in West Germanic languages and dialects. Regarding the intra-clausal dimension of this construction, based on the discussion of Den Dikken et al. (2000), we demonstrate that the alls-construction is most accurately described as a Type-A specificational pseudocleft. The analysis of the alls-construction developed here unites both the inter- and intra-clausal aspects of this construction in a parsimonious way.