The problem is too difficult for ___ to work out
Could someone explain what the differences are between filling in the blank with the following options? Do the meanings perhaps overlap?
- everybody
- anybody
- somebody
- nobody
The problem is too difficult for ___ to work out
Could someone explain what the differences are between filling in the blank with the following options? Do the meanings perhaps overlap?
As FF has pointed out, only everybody and anybody are acceptable
(everyone and anyone also work). They work, and the others don't, for the same reasons:
Too is a Negative -- too Adj to VP means 'so Adj that Not VP';
therefore NPIs like anyone work within its scope,
and so anybody is used here, instead of somebody.
That's also why nobody is ungrammatical here, because that would mean
*The math problem is so difficult that nobody can't work it out.
which is ungrammatical (that's what the "*" means).
Everybody, somebody, and anybody are all Quantifiers -- logically, ∀ and ∃.
By DeMorgan's Laws, propositions with both a negative and a quantifier are ambiguous.
Note the opposite orders of not (logically ¬),
compared to some/any (∃) and every (∀) below.
I.e, Everybody doesn't like it
can mean
either
It is true that there is somebody who does not like it.
¬(∀x) φ(x) ≡ (∃x) ¬φ(x)
or
It's not true that there is somebody who likes it.
¬(∃x) φ(x) ≡ ∀(x) ¬φ(x)
So the two choices that are grammatical do not mean the same thing.