Collective indefinite pronouns always refer to the whole group (everyone, everything) or to every member of a group (each, every)
The Dutch (or English) collective pronoun can behave in three different ways:
It can be an independent pronoun, which means it does not precede a noun:
Iedereen moet zijn tanden poetsen. | Everyone has to brush his teeth.
Alles staat in de bibliotheekscatalogus. | Everything is in the library catalogue.
It can also say something about a noun, by preceding it like an adjective.
Alle mensen moeten hun tanden poetsen. | All people have to brush their teeth.
Elk boek heeft een unieke code. | Each book has a unique code.
Collective indefinite pronouns can also occur somewhere after\* the noun they say something about, as a 'little extra' (a 'predicative adjective'). In the following examples, the information provided by the indefinite pronouns is not essential and could be omitted.
De mensen moeten allemaal hun tanden poetsen. | The people all have to brush their teeth.
De boeken hebben elk een unieke code. | The books each have a unique code.
The pronouns serve to stress that 'the people' concerns _all_ people and that by 'the books', we mean _each_ book. Without 'each', we could think that we only have one unique code for all books together.
On the following pages, we will discuss each collective pronoun separately.
(\*) For the exact position in a sentence, see [Place of the complement](#/lesson/WordOrder.31).