The Collective Singular in Spanish
Authors: Lang Henry R. 
Published: April 2006

The part of grammar which, with the exception of French and to a certain
degree of Italian, has been almost entirely neglected in the study of the
Neo-Latin idioms, is, we need not hesitate to say, syntax; for the more or
less extensive treatises which we find devoted to it in the available
grammars, intended mostly to serve practical purposes, cannot meet the
expectations of the scholar nor yet always those of the practical learner. A
scientific statement of the syntactical forms of the Spanish language, for
instance, has as yet not been attempted, unless the Diccionario de
construccion y régimen de la lengua castellana, por D. Rufius José. Cuervo,
the first number of which, recently published at Paris, we have not been
able as yet to obtoin, prove to be such an one. The numerous practical
grammars intended to teach modern Spanish almost uniformly base their rules
of syntax on the language of Cervantes, thus confusing two widely different
epochs and presenting constructions and terms which are now obsolete. Even
Paul Foerster's excellent “Spanische Sprachlehre” is not always reliable in
stating the age or the extent of use of a construction. Thus, to give only
one instance, in treating the uses of the preposition
de with the infinitive, § 486, 27, he
represents the construction: ‘hacerse de rogar’
as unusual, and leaves one to infer that it occurs only in Don Quijote,
whereas it is the usual construction, found again ‘Galatea,‘ 1. vi : La mal
camarera tan comedida como hermosa, sin hacerse de rogar, cantó de esta
suerte; used two centuries and a half before Cervantes by Don Juan Manuel in
the Conde Lucanor, cx. xvii:

En lo que tu pro pudieres fallar,

Nunca te fagas mucho de rogar;

again by Luna in the Lazarillo de Tormes, p. ii, c. 11: Hícelo, sin
hacerme de rogar; and so on, up to the present time, where we find it, for
instance, in the ‘Escenas Matritenses’ by Mesonero Romanos: La vieja se
hacia de rogar; in Fernan Caballero: El no se hizo de rogar (Familia de
Alvareda, p. 21, Brockhaus ed.). Considering this neglected state of Spanish
syntax and the vast material waiting for a systematic arrangement, we need
not be surprised that many of its peculiarities should have been
insufficiently treated, while others have been entirely overlooked even by
the master of Romance Philology, Friedrich Diez, and those following in his
wake. One of the constructions not mentioned in Diez' Comparative Romance
Grammar, nor in any of the special grammars of the several Neo-Latin idioms,
though in Spanish at least it is frequent enough to thrust inself upon one's
notice, is the use of the singular of concrete nouns for the plural in a
collective sense, commonly termed the collective singular. It is the purpose
of this paper to call attention to the existence of this construction in the
Romance languages, and particularly in Spanish. As neither the time nor the
material at hand permitted us to extend our researches over the whole of
Spanish literature, ancient and modern, we had to content ourselves for the
present with the study of the most important works of the former, inclusive
of the time of Cervantes, using for the modern language some of the better
novelists. We regret especially not having been able to adduce late and
mediæval Latin for our present presentation of the subject, but hope to do
so in the near future.