Discussion Forum—A Way with Words, a fun radio show and podcast about language

I was going to start a thread about this very topic, the "all ... not" construction, to find out just what the audience thinks of it.

I studied History of the English language and Linguistics in grad school, which makes me qualified to serve fries and to respond in forums such as this. One of the more controversial discussions we had in our Modern English Grammar class had to do with the test phrase, "All the cars don't have tags on them."

Presumably, looking across a field of dead cars, such as a used car lot or even a junkyard, one could make this statement straight-faced.

Does it mean:
(a) None of the cars have tags on them?
OR
(b) Some of the cars have tags on them?

The class was divided. But it did seem that there are two kinds of people in the world.

I'm interested in what others think. I don't think one can go by a "feeling" as to whether the language is changing. Gray exists everywhere in this black/white world. But one can certainly conduct unofficial polls for a lifetime.

Cheers. Or... Woot!

To me, “all… not…” means “all Xs do not have the feature of Y”, etc.
I wouldn't suggest using it to mean “not all…” since the operatives are switched; word order in English being tantamount to case endings in Latin, etc. “All that glitters is not gold” is a set expression generally conceded to mean that not all that glitters is gold. But I don't hear that expression much nowadays. Moreover, one might infer from such a construction that not all gold glitters, or even (Heaven forbid) that no gold glitters.