A picture was shown to the student. In the picture a girl was missing her shoes, another girl was missing her mittens, and a boy was missing his hat. This is the student's description of the picture:
The children either forgot their shoes, mittens, or hats.
Is either correctly placed, and is it properly used with more than two alternatives?
This sentence is not, as it stands, grammatical. It's possible to guess what it means, but the position of either creates ambiguity.
Either should come immediately before the list of alternatives it marks: “Either A or B” or “Either A, B, or C”. (Strictly, a parenthetical phrase may intervene, but it's better to avoid that; in any case, it's not in play here.)
In this case, putting Either before forgot leads the reader to expect an alternative which is headed by a verb (I've interpolated [A], [B], &c solely to clarify the structure):
The children either [A] forgot their shoes, mittens or hats or [B] took them off when they came to school.
What the sentence probably means is:
The children forgot either [A] their shoes, [B] their mittens, or [C] their hats.
EDIT:
If the point at issue here is not the position of either but its use to head a list of more than two alternatives, the question is an Exact Duplicate of this question. My own opinion is that the word serves to announce the beginning of a list of alternatives, and that since the word has been used to introduce lists of more than two alternatives since the 12th century, with no more or less misunderstanding or ambiguity than is inherent in the use of or alone, there is no reason to restrict its use to binary choices.
As an alternative to being so compact you could use something like the following to make it clearer. "Each of the three children didn't to wear to school an essential item of clothing. One child didn't have shoes, another forgot the hat and another didn't have mittens. Whilst we can sometimes manage to loan an item from the lost & found when someone accidentally rips their shirt at playtime, it is the parents and their childrens responsibility to arrive at school appropriately dressed. We were unable to assist in this instance and the children were sent home.
P.S. This should have been a comment but there's no comment links appearing for my iphone.
Let us look at the syntax tree of
The children either forgot their shoes, mittens, or hats.
{Entity} either {
list-of-choices
)
Where list-of-choices is exemplified by
{Entity} either {
{choice 1},
{choice 2},
{choice 3}, ...
or {choice m},
)
The principle is that each choice should be able to form a well-formed statement with the entity:
Either {
{entity}{choice 1},
{entity}{choice 2},
{entity}{choice 3}, ...
or {entity}{choice m}
}
i.e.,
{The children} either {
forgot their shoes,
mittens,
or hats
)
should be transformable into
Either {
{the children}{forgot their shoes},
{the children}{mittens},
or {the children}{hats},
}
Therefore, a more precise way to say it would be
{The children} forgot either {
their shoes,
their mittens,
or their hat
)
because the following transform would comprise well-formed statements:
Either {
{the children}{forgot their shoes},
{the children}{forgot their mittens},
or {the children}{forgot their hat}
}
Which is still not precise enough because there are only three children and only three choices where each choice is exclusive to a child. i.e. there is a one-to-one relationship between the deficiency and a child.
The following is more precise
{Each child} forgot either {
his or her shoes,
his or her mittens,
or his or her hat
)
However, the English language is very forgiving where clarity takes precedence over syntax.
{Each child} forgot either {
their shoes,
mittens,
or hat
)
If the pronoun "their" is allowed to elide into the choice list, then why not the the adv/adj "either"?
Therefore, the sentence
The children either forgot their shoes, mittens, or hats.
is not as syntactically logical but it does present a measure of clarity and brevity, as well as a provocatively annoying variance of style.
I would say, go for it. Let the language evolve.
