Enumeration with "all"

Question

Consider this sentence:

Your self-confidence, resilience and adaptability , all will help you integrate in this new competitive environment.

My question is about the comma before all. I tried to find a rule about using a comma after an enumeration that is "repeated" by all at the end, but I could only find rules about all as a pronoun in different structures, not in an enumeration.

I personally feel that a comma should be used before all, to reinforce it as a replacer of all that precedes. I feel this is not the same as sentences of this type, They all agree.

Particularly, I am less interested in the use of the comma, that can be opinion-based. I want to know whether all is used in this sentence as an apposition. Or is the enumeration that precedes all, Your self-confidence, resilience and adaptability, a case of apposition at the beginning of a sentence?

I only gave this sentence as an example, I would be very interested in literary or formal style, too. Basically, the structure I am after is

X, Z and Y, all + Verb + etc.

Is "X, Y and Z" an apposition? Or is "all" an apposition? I am looking for grammatical explanations of this issue (didn't find any in the CAGEL).

Answer 1

There's lots of problems with this sentence, and they involve a lot more than punctuation.

• Your self-confidence, resilience and adaptability, all will help you integrate in this new competitive environment.

First, you need a comma after resilience; this is a list of three items, not two.

Second, no comma before all; it's not in the list. What to put there depends on what you mean to say.

Third, why in the world do you want to put all in front of the verb phrase? The obvious sequence is will all, if you're floating all from the list of three to to an adverb position in the verb phrase. Floated quantifiers typically go after the first auxiliary verb, not before.

On the other hand, are you intending all to be short for all of these? If so, you need something that doesn't produce a comma intonation before all, because that makes all a noun phrase, and therefore the subject of will help, instead of a floated quantifier in an adverb niche.

• Your self-confidence, resilience, and adaptability -- all (of these) will help you integrate in this new competitive environment.

Answer 2

Essentially you are attaching an argument to a list.

The goal of this is to apply an argument to a list of values

obj = the object with the list of values
list = set of values
a = hyper value (nul value returns a blank)
join = your joining word i.e. "all"
arg = your argument of the values (what they mean etc.)

a is optional, it acts merely acts as an addition which helps focus the next segment

This is why '-' would work in replacement of ',' or just nothing entirely.

This acts more like a caesura, to draw attention to the next word.

obj.[list].a.join.[arg]

So while in the first instance, the [arg] is emphasised

i.e. help you integrate in this new competitive environment.

Consequently you should also be able to write it in this format

[arg].join.a.obj.[list]

While in this instance, the obj.[list] is emphasised

i.e. Your self-confidence, resilience and adaptability

One more example:

join.a.obj.[list].[arg]

the [arg].obj.[list] are emphasised

i.e. Your self-confidence, resilience and adaptability help you integrate in this new competitive environment.

With those examples lets evaluate the .join

Say that there is string inputs on either side

'str' +.join'...'+'str'

Well the aposition is the 3rd section of the sentence (this is an exception)

'str' + '...'.join +'str'

Well the aposition is just before the 'all'

We can see that moving the .join emphasises the items that are after that.

tldr

The main exception is the 'All' at the beginning of the sentence. A better explaination is that 'all' acts as an amplifier to the following phrases.