Sujetos colectivos y concordancia verbal: Un estudio de frecuencias, semántica y sintaxis

Yolanda Fernández-Pena

Authors

Yolanda Fernández-Pena Universidade de Vigo

Abstract

Resumen

En este artículo se presenta un estudio de corpus que pretende arrojar luz sobre los patrones de concordancia de los sujetos colectivos complejos (también llamados aquí N_col of N_pl) y, en particular, sobre la influencia que el sintagma preposicional (of N_pl) ejerce en ellos. Para ello, se han tenido en cuenta factores sintácticos, como la morfología del N_pl y la complejidad y distancia sintácticas, así como factores semánticos como el carácter animado del referente del N_pl. Los resultados de esta investigación ponen de relevancia la importancia de dichos factores. De este modo, se comprueba que la morfología plural del N_pl favorece un mayor porcentaje de formas verbales plurales si no está marcada morfológicamente, como también es el caso de los N_pl con referentes animados. La complejidad y la distancia sintácticas, por el contrario, muestran una tendencia diferente, con una menor incidencia de formas verbales plurales.

Palabras clave: concordancia; nombres colectivos; distancia sintáctica; animacidad; corpus

Abstract

This paper presents a corpus-based study which sheds light on the agreement patterns of complex collective subjects (also called here N_col of N_pl) and, in particular, on the influence that the prepositional phrase (of N_pl) exerts on those patterns. To this end, I have explored syntactic factors, such as the morphological realisation of the N_pl as well as syntactic complexity and syntactic distance, and semantic factors such as the animacy of the referent of N_pl. The results of this investigation demonstrate the relevance of these factors: the overtly-marked plurality of N_pl favours a higher rate of plural verbal forms in contrast to those instances where N_pl show non-overtly-marked plurality. The same trend is also found with animate versus inanimate referents of N_pl. Syntactic complexity and syntactic distance, by contrast, show a different tendency, as they tend to correlate with a lower incidence of plural verbal forms.

Keywords: agreement; collective nouns; syntactic distance; animacy; corpus

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