Subject-Verb Agreement Alternations in S panish Pseudopartitive Constructions: A Corpus Study (2025)

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.

## introduction the present paper deals with subject-verb agreement alternations in pseudopartitive constructions in spanish. pseudopartitive constructions-such as a group of students-are structures of the form n1-of-n2, where a bare noun phrase (n2; students) is quantified or measured by a noun functioning as n1 (group), typically denoting quantity, collectivity, or containment @xcite . although this description is based on english, analogous structures exist crosslinguistically, including in german @xcite , romanian @xcite , finnish @xcite , hebrew @xcite , and spanish @xcite . these constructions contrast with partitive structures, where the n1 selects a subset out of a specific set, which is preceded by a determiner @xcite . at a first glance, pseudopartitive constructions may seem indistinguishable from other (det)-n1of-n2 genitive structures-such as a portrait of children-since both follow the same sequence of word classes. however, one key distinction is that pseudopartitive constructions are known to feature two different verb agreement patterns: 1. with the n1; or 2. with the embedded n2 @xcite . see (1) for an example in which subject-verb agreement is possible either with the n1 (group) or the n2 (researchers). the present study investigates the possibility of a correlation between the choice for either n1 or n2 subject-verb agreement and the semantic type of the n1; and between the choice for either n1 or n2 subject-verb agreement and n2 animacy. it does so through the analysis of 1,200 occurrences of pseudopartitive subject-verb agreement in subject position, present in the spanish-language estenten18 corpus @xcite , available on sketch engine @xcite . even though previous studies have been conducted to test for a correlation between n1/n2 choice for agreement and the semantic type of the n1 @xcite , no studies have analyzed the role of n2 features in pseudopartitive agreement. as stated previously, the possibility of dual agreement sets pseudopartitive constructions apart from other superficially similar n1-of-n2 sequences. an example showing the impossibility of dual agreement in other seemingly equivalent english n1-of-n2 constructions is provided in (2) below. even though native speakers might produce a sentence like that of (2b), these ## results and implications n1 semantic type was associated with clear differences in agreement patterns. the majority of constructions with collective and container n1s strongly favored agreement with the n1 (84.2% and 87%, respectively), while constructions with quantifier n1s displayed a more balanced distribution, with 54.5% n1 agreement and 45.5% n2 agreement. these results are summarized in with respect to n2 animacy, inanimate n2s showed the strongest tendency toward n1 agreement, with only 20.3% of cases exhibiting n2 agreement. human and animal n2s behaved similarly to each other, showing n2 agreement in roughly 30% of cases (30.4% and 35.0%, respectively). the strongest tendency toward n2 agreement was observed with collective n2s, which displayed an almost even split between n1 and n2 agreement (48.7% vs. 51.3%). full descriptive counts and percentages are presented in two chi-square tests of independence were conducted to examine whether n1 semantic type and n2 animacy were associated with subjectverb agreement choice. a chi-square test of independence assesses whether two categorical variables are associated by comparing the actual frequencies observed in the data to the frequencies that would be expected if the variables were statistically independent. in the present study's case, it tests whether the distribution of subjectverb agreement (n1 vs n2) depends on the semantic type of the n1 or the animacy of the n2. if the observed frequencies differ substantially from what would be expected under the n1 semantic type n1 agr n2 agr total n1 agr (percentage) n2 agr (percentage) collective 337 63 400 84.2 15.8 container 348 52 400 87.0 13.0 quantifier 218 182 400 54.5 45.5 the first test revealed a strong and statistically significant association between the n1 semantic type variable and agreement, χ² (2, @xmath0.52, @xmath1.001. this indicates that the semantic type of n1 used in the pseudopartitive construction significantly influenced whether the verb agreed with the n1 or n2. this effect appears to be largely driven by the higher rate of n2 agreement observed with quantifier n1s, compared to container and collective n1s (see to investigate which specific conditions influenced agreement patterns, a post-hoc binary logistic regression was conducted. while the earlier chi-square tests showed that both n1 semantic type and n2 animacy were associated with agreement, they could not identify which conditions within each variable were driving the effect. logistic regression addresses this limitation by estimating the contribution of each condition to the likelihood of n2 agreement, while controlling for the other variable. this allows for testing whether particular conditionsquantifier, container, or collective n1s, and human, animal, collective, or inanimate n2ssignificantly increase the probability of n2 agreement when other factors are held constant. in this study, the model predicted whether agreement occurred with the embedded noun (n2) or the head noun (n1), based on the values of the two variables. the overall model was statistically significant, χ²(5, @xmath4.4, @xmath5.001, indicating that the variables helped explain variation in agreement patterns. among the individual conditions, only quantifier n1s had a statistically significant effect. compared to constructions with collective n1s, those with quantifier n1s were substantially more likely to show n2 agreement. the coefficient for quantifier n1s was 1.513 (@xmath6.001), corresponding to an odds ratio of 4.54, calculated by exponentiating the coefficient. this means that, all else being equal, constructions headed by quantifier n1s were more than four times as likely to display n2 agreement. container n1s did not differ significantly from collectives. with respect to n2 animacy, none of the categories reached statistical significance in this model. however, the effect for collective n2s approached significance, showing a somewhat higher likelihood of n2 agreement than inanimate n2s, though this difference did not meet the conventional threshold for significance. an additional model including the interaction between n1 semantic type and n2 animacy failed to converge meaningfully due to quasi-complete separation. several n1-n2 combinations (e.g., container n1s paired with animal n2s) had zero or near-zero cases of n2 agreement, resulting in inflated standard errors and uninterpretable coefficients. as such, only the main effects model is reported. the descriptive and inferential statistics replicated what was found by foppolo et al. (2023), in the sense that quantifier n1s facilitated a more balanced distribution of n1/n2 agreement. predictor estimate (β) std. error z value p value significance (intercept) -1.606 0.5152 -3.117 0.00183 ** semantic type: container -0.1464 0.2134 -0.686 0.49256 semantic type: quantifier 1.513 0.1739 8.699 <2e-16 *** n2 animacy: collective 1.0466 0.6099 1.716 0.08617 † n2 animacy: human 0.1474 0.5116 0.288 0.77332 n2 animacy: inanimate -0.3194 0.5064 -0.631 0.52821 therefore, the present study's results provide more evidence that semantic characteristics can accurately predict agreement patterns. @xcite predicted and confirmed a gradient in agreement preferences based on the semantic type of the n1, with n2 (plural) agreement becoming increasingly acceptable from containers to collectives to quantifiers, reflecting the increasing accessibility of a measure construal. the present study replicated this gradient in spanish to some extent: both descriptive statistics and logistic regression results show that quantifier n1s favored n2 agreement the most, followed by collectives, while containers showed the strongest preference for n1 agreement. however, collective n1s and container n1s feature only a three percent difference in descriptive statistics, and this small difference was not statistically significant in the inferential model. hence, caution should be taken in this regard. although the descriptive statistics suggested a potential correlation between n2 animacy and subject-verb agreement patterns, the inferential analyses did not support this relationship. no statistically significant link was found between n2 animacy and the choice of n1 or n2 agreement. the present findings do not show a direct effect of animacy in the n2 and choice of n1/n2 subject-verb agreement in spanish pseudopartitives. however, the role of animacy in this domain should not be ruled out at this point, with further studies needed to fully explore its potential influence. ## conclusion in sum, this study contributes to the understanding of subject-verb agreement variation in spanish pseudopartitive constructions by applying a corpus-based methodology informed by a replicable three-way categorization of n1s proposed by @xcite . this approach facilitated cross-linguistic comparison and revealed that quantifier n1s significantly increased the likelihood of n2 agreement, a result supported by both descriptive statistics and logistic regression. while the overall order of agreement preferences-containers showing the least n2 agreement, collectives in the middle, and quantifiers the most-mirrored the gradient observed in @xcite , the minimal difference between container and collective n1s (just three percent) and the lack of a statistically significant difference between them suggest that the gradient is only partially replicated. the study also explored n2 animacy as a novel predictor, but found no statistically significant correlation with agreement patterns. however, the question of whether certain characteristics of the n2 can predict n1/n2 agreement in spanish pseudopartitve structures is not exhausted. further studies should be conducted, analyzing other possible characteristics of the n2 that might facilitate one type of agreement over the other. these findings reinforce the importance of n1 semantics in agreement variation and highlight the value of combining psycholinguistically informed frameworks with corpus-based methods. at the same time, they point to several directions for future research. as an exploratory study, this analysis focused on a limited set of twelve n1 nouns selected to represent three broad semantic categories. while this approach enabled clear comparisons across n1 types, it does not capture the full range of variation found in spanish pseudopartitive constructions. expanding the dataset and incorporating more ambiguous or marginal cases would allow for a more comprehensive understanding of the phenomenon. to support this broader coverage, future work will adopt a more systematic approach to n1 selection, potentially drawing on corpus-based frequency data or cross-linguistic comparability measures. in parallel, greater attention should be given to the role of embedded noun features. while n1 semantics were categorized with reference to psycholinguistic literature, no equivalent framework was applied to n2 animacy. adopting psycholinguistically grounded categories for n2s may help clarify their contribution to agreement patterns and support more robust cross-linguistic comparisons.