Can I say "Not each of the children has a toy car." ?

Your sentence is fine.

Do you know what it means?

Viceidolcan I say "Not each of the children has a toy car." ?

You should say "Not one of the children...". Or "Not a single one of those children has a toy car".

Edit: At first I thought Amy had made a mistake but she's right. "Not each of the children has a toy c

You'll sound more natural saying "Not all the children..." however.

Or:

"not every child"

I agree that "not all of the children" would be much more common, but I certainly wouldn't categorize "not each of the children" as a bizarre construction. And of course, if you say "not all of the children", you also have to change the verb to "have".

However, saying "not each of the children" cannot be viewed as incorrect.

Saying "not every child" is less specific tha

I completely agree with Yankee.

It's hard sometimes to know what people want us to anwer.

Do they want to know the most natural way to ask a question?

Or do they want to know if a specific thing is WRONG as written, and thats all they want to know?

If someone says "Is this grammatical" and it IS grammatical, but awkward, or not likely to be used, are we doing pe

I agree, Barb.

In this case, however, my initial thought was that Viceidol's grammar book probably wanted to indicate that constructions such as this one are incorrect:

"Each child does not have a toy gun."

Now, thatis a sentence that I would be willing to call incorrect.

YankeeSaying "not every child" is less specific than saying "not all of the children" or "not each of the children".

I agree.

The voice of dissent.

I certainly wouldn't categorize "not each of the children" as a bizarre constru

Thanks, everyone! Now I know more about this usage. My doubt is totally cleared.