All this is Kim’s. (CGEL,p.467)
There is a universal determinative (all) plus ‘this.’ So ‘this’ would be an equivalent to a subdivisible non-count or singular noun phrase, e.g. the whisky, the book (CGEL,p.375). But I can’t think well of some examples for the above sentence. What cases are there for the saying?
Answer
A list would be off-topic; but the principle may be illustrated using your own examples.
(gesturing towards the whisky†) ? All this is Kim’s.
This works just dandy if you are in Kim’s distillery or admiring a shelf of her bottles of whisky: all is proper here, because whisky is ordinarily non-count. But if you are speaking of a row of shot-glasses laid out for Kim’s consumption, or of her remarkably diverse collection of various sorts of whisky, you will have to say
All these are Kim’s.
(gesturing towards the book) ? All this is Kim’s.
Ordinarily this would be ungrammatical: all does not suit semantically with a singular instance of a count noun like book. And if you were speaking of many books you would have to say
All these are Kim’s.
However, circumstances can be imagined which would accommodate all this with reference to either a single book or several books. For instance, if Karl advanced a claim to ownership of the dust jacket of the (single) book in question, you might insist that
All this is Kim’s, meaning pages, binding and dust jacket and all.
And if you were drawing an invidious comparison between CGEL, the collaborative product of 15 authors, and Kim’s magisterial four-volume three-thousand-page monograph on The Oxford Comma in an Historical Perspective, you might well say (with a sneer)
All this is Kim’s, meaning she accomplished the entire work through her own unaided efforts.
† Or whiskey, if you are American or Irish.There is a useful discussion of this point here.
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