"Nobody ever joined" vs "Nobody joined at all" [duplicate]

Possible Duplicate:
Usage of “ever” in a negative statement

Yesterday I read a discussion here and I still cannot figure it out. What is the difference between the following:

Nobody ever joined

and

Nobody joined at all

I assume both express that nobody joined, not a single person but I still tend to use "ever" only with present perfect and cannot feel the difference here.

Solution 1:

"Nobody ever joined" emphasises that nobody joined throughout some [extended] period of time. As John Lawler says, "ever" here is a temporal (time-related) Negative Polarity Item.

By contrast, "nobody joined at all" (or perhaps, "nobody at all joined") emphasises that not a single person joined. Time isn't relevant - it could be in the context of a one-off membership offer lasting only one day. Here, "at all" (also an NPI) just intensifies the negation already conveyed by "nobody".

Possibly just my personal opinion, but I think sometimes there's a shift in nuance if the verb comes between "nobody" and "at all". For example, to me,

"Nobody at all argues" emphasises that of all the people who might argue, none in fact do.

"Nobody argues at all" emphasises that of all the things people might be doing, they're definitely not doing anything that could be described as "arguing". That perspective doesn't mean anything (at all!) with a verb like "join", which is why I think putting the verb at the end is better for OP's context.

Solution 2:

Ever is a Negative Polarity Item ('NPI'; see this recent post for explanation and behavior).

At all is also an NPI, but it's not temporal like ever, it's not a variant of any (like ever), and it has quite a different function.

At all is an NPI intensifier, referring to -- and emphasizing -- total negation of whatever is being negated, rather than referring to the extent of time when something could have happened, but didn't, like ever.

Nobody joined at all.
Nobody at all showed up for the party.
Nobody ever showed up for the party.
*Somebody joined at all.
*Somebody ever showed up for the party.

There is no logical difference between a negative with and without at all: If he didn't show up for the party at all, then he didn't show up for the party; and vice versa.

I think (and here I'm guessing) that at all is a variant of the Minimal Direct Object NPI structure: eat a bite, drink a drop, give a damn, sleep a wink.

If you don't eat a bite, then you don't eat anything, you don't eat at all
If you don't even sleep a wink, then you don't sleep at all.

Etc. At all has some interesting syntactic properties; for one thing it can occur by itself, but it plays well with other NPIs (boldfaced) and frequently appears with them, as in this example: