Subject-Verb Agreement Alternations in Spanish Pseudopartitive Constructions: A Corpus Study

Marina Cerebrinsky


Abstract
Pseudopartitive constructions, following the format N1-of-N2 (such as a group of students), are known to feature alternations in their subject-verb agreement patterns, either with the N1 or the N2. Through a corpus analysis, this study investigates the possibility of a correlation between the choice of N1/N2 as an agreement trigger and the semantic type of the N1, as well as the animacy status of the N2. Although a positive correlation was found for N1 semantic type, no statistically significant results emerged for N2 animacy.
Anthology ID:
2025.quasy-1.1
Volume:
Proceedings of the Third Workshop on Quantitative Syntax (QUASY, SyntaxFest 2025)
Month:
August
Year:
2025
Address:
Ljubljana, Slovenia
Editors:
Xinying Chen, Yaqin Wang
Venues:
Quasy | WS | SyntaxFest
SIG:
SIGPARSE
Publisher:
Association for Computational Linguistics
Note:
Pages:
1–8
Language:
URL:
https://preview.aclanthology.org/mtsummit-25-ingestion/2025.quasy-1.1/
DOI:
Bibkey:
Cite (ACL):
Marina Cerebrinsky. 2025. Subject-Verb Agreement Alternations in Spanish Pseudopartitive Constructions: A Corpus Study. In Proceedings of the Third Workshop on Quantitative Syntax (QUASY, SyntaxFest 2025), pages 1–8, Ljubljana, Slovenia. Association for Computational Linguistics.
Cite (Informal):
Subject-Verb Agreement Alternations in Spanish Pseudopartitive Constructions: A Corpus Study (Cerebrinsky, Quasy-SyntaxFest 2025)
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PDF:
https://preview.aclanthology.org/mtsummit-25-ingestion/2025.quasy-1.1.pdf