Yolanda Fernández-Pena

University of Vigo | UVIGO · Filología Inglesa Francesa e Alemá

This study undertakes a corpus-based analysis of why-fragments in contemporary English. Why-fragments (e.g. Why why-fragments?) are independent linguistic expressions that lack an orthodox clausal design but denote a propositional meaning equivalent to that of their corresponding complete sentences. Why-fragments can nonetheless express additional...

There is a wealth of studies on L2 English acquisition in CLIL contexts in Spain, but most have underexplored the potential impact of CLIL in the longer run on the morphosyntax of earlier starters from monolingual regions. This paper fills this gap by exploring agreement morphology errors and subject omission in the oral production of Primary Educa...

Complex collective subjects (e.g., a lot of, a heap of) have arisen great interest in recent investigations for their variable agreement patterns and potential quantifying usage. This investigation extends the scope of prior research by exploring the verb number variation and quantifying usage of five complex collective noun phrases (i.e., a bunch/...

Recently the interest in the diachronic evolution of binominal constructions such as a lot of, a bunch of or a load of has increased considerably (Traugott 2008a, 2008b; Brems 2011; Traugott and Trousdale 2013). Several studies have given evidence of their idiomatisation; that is, their progressive syntactic fixation and loss of lexical meaning, wh...

There has been an increasing interest in the diachronic evolution of constructions such as a lot of or a bunch of and, more generally, in the more schematic structure that they instantiate, as it has proved to be a productive source for periphrastic quantifiers in English (Traugott 2008; Brems 2011; Traugott and Trousdale 2013; Langacker 2016). Thi...

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 NCOL of NPL) y, en particular, sobre la influencia que el sintagma preposicional (of NPL) ejerce en ellos. Para ello, se han tenido en cuenta factores sintácticos, como la morfologí...

In this study, I investigate the patterns of verbal agreement of twenty-Three singular collective nouns in English which take plural of-dependents (e.g., a group of children or a bunch of people). The main aim is to explore the extent to which this constituent may influence the number of the main verb, by considering factors such as the role of ove...

This corpus-based study investigates the patterns of verbal agreement of twenty-three singular collective nouns which take of-dependents (e.g., a group of boys, a set of points). The main goal is to explore the influence exerted by the of-PP on verb number. To this end, syntactic factors, such as the plural morphology of the oblique noun (i.e., the...

This volume includes eleven papers pertaining to different areas of linguistics and organised into three sections. Part I contains diachronic studies which cover data from Middle English to Present-Day English and which explore phenomena such as the status of extender tags, the distribution of free adjuncts, post-auxiliary ellipsis, and the use of...

English collective noun-based subjects taking prepositional complements introduced by of (i.e. of-PPs) often trigger controversy regarding the grammatical feature number, as the plural nominal elements they contain within the of-PP may affect the number of the main verb (e.g. a group of British skiers were horrified; BNC: CCK 737). Since this plura...

This study explores verbal agreement variation with collective noun-headed subjects taking plural of-dependents in a set of data retrieved from a parsed version of the corpus of Global Web-based English (GloWbE). The results show how syntactic distance between the subject and the verb (and also the complexity of the modifier(s) of the of-PP) reduce...

This corpus-based study provides a diachronic account of three collective noun-based constructions: a number of NPL, a group of NPL and a majority of NPL, three structures that have evinced marked collocational agreement patterns in Present-Day English. The paper aims at tracing the historical evolution of these collective noun-headed constructions...

This paper presents a synchronic corpus-based study aimed at exploring verbal agreement patterns with collective noun-headed subjects taking of-PPs in a corpus of so-called World Englishes. The investigation extends prior research on the statistically significant influence of this prepositional constituent and its syntactic properties on the high r...

This corpus-based study analyses the number mismatches found in English collective noun-based subjects taking of-complementation (i.e. determiner + collective + of N). The plural of-PPs in these constructions have proved to be a determinant factor of verbal number, as evinced by the overrides of canonical (i.e. singular) agreement with the singular...

This study investigates the patterns of verbal agreement of 23 singular collective nouns which take of-dependents (i.e., determiner + collective + of n). Different syntactic factors like attraction or syntactic distance, along with semantic issues like the animacy of the oblique were explored. The data obtained provide us with statistical support f...