Each is a Quantifier, a part of speech that wasn't discovered until the 19th century, too

late to get into the Top Eight list, which was canonized much earlier. Quantifiers are a
form of Determiner (another POS), and they "bind" noun phrases, which means they
modify and quantify them. Like most noun modifiers, quantifiers are naturally found
before the noun they modify.

Like many quantifiers, however, each is subject to a syntactic rule called "Quantifier
Shift" (aka "Quantifier-Float" or "Q-Float"), which moves a quantifier from a prenominal
position to an adverbial position:

 Each of the boys said they would go. == Q-Float ==> The boys each said they
would go.
Q-Float applies to the quantifier all as well as each, but not to the quantifier every:

 All the boys said they would go. == Q-Float ==> The boys all said they would go.
Every boy said he would go. == Q-Float ==> *The boy(s) every said he/they would go.

These pronouns, which seem

to behave the same way,
confound me. I'm always
scratching my head
whenever I come across
them in a diagram.

1) All the students can go.

2) All of the students can go.

3) They all can go.

4) The students can all go.

These sentences all have the same

semantic meaning, but what is
the function of "all/both/each" in
these examples?

That's because they're Quantifiers, not just

pronouns. One thing that all, both, and each can
do is appear in their normal position modifying a
noun phrase, or appear in an adverbial position
1
before the main verb or (after the first auxiliary verb
if there is one). This rule is called "Q-Float". Only
some quantifiers can float, however; each and all
float, but every and any don't.