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What motivates verbal agreement variation with collective-headed subjects? Evidence from synchrony and diachrony Yolanda Fernndez Pena yolanda.fernandez@uvigo.es University of Vigo (Spain) 5 May 2016 Outline 1. Introduction 2. Aims 3.

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What motivates verbal agreement variation with collective-headed subjects?

Evidence from synchrony and diachrony

Yolanda Fernández Pena

yolanda.fernandez@uvigo.es University of Vigo (Spain) 5 May 2016

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Outline

  • 1. Introduction
  • 2. Aims
  • 3. Corpus-based study
  • 1. Methodology
  • 2. Data analysis

1. Regional variation 2. Syntactic complexity 3. (C)overt morphology 4. Semantics 5. Idiomatisation

  • 4. Conclusions
  • 5. References

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3 AGREEMENT AND COLLECTIVE NOUNS

Collective noun:

“morphologically singular nouns designating a group of (in)animates” (Dekeyser 1975: 35fn.1) family, police, committee… number, group, majority… (1a) The crowdSG here isSG really thick despite the weather. (1b) the crowdSG arePL on their feet, roaring and waving their arms (1c) The crowdSG of cockneysPL werePL singing along [BNC: BPA 62]

  • 1. Introduction

Morphologically motivated overrides/mismatches

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  • 2. Aims

 Explore variation of verbal agreement in number with collective nouns taking of-PPs

(2) A large groupSG of people wasSG standing just beyond the wrought-iron gate. (3) a groupSG of parentsPL werePL standing in the corner

 Focus:

 Present-Day British and American English  syntactic/structural/formal explanation for subject-verb agreement variation

 Further issues:

 “Inner Englishes”  Semantic and lexical determining factors  Late Modern English

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  • 3. Corpus-based study
  • 3.1. Methodology
  • 3.2. Data analysis
  • 1. Regional variation
  • 2. Syntactic complexity
  • 3. (C)overt morphology
  • 4. Semantics
  • 5. Idiomatisation

5

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3.1. Methodology

6 DATA RETRIEVAL:

‘NCOLL-of-NPL’ subject + verb inflected for number

  • NCOLL

23 singular collective nouns band crowd majority series batch flock minority set bunch gang number shoal class group pack swarm clump herd party troop couple host rash

(Biber et al.’s 1999: 249 ‘quantifying collectives’ Huddleston and Pullum et al.’s 2002: 503 ‘number-transparent nouns’)

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3.1. Methodology

7 DATA RETRIEVAL:

‘NCOLL-of-NPL’ subject + verb inflected for number

  • NCOLL

23 singular collective nouns

  • NPL
  • blique noun

(i) NN2 = overtly-marked plural N (boys, things…) A group of boysNN2 / girlsNN2 A bunch of thingsNN2 / casesNN2 (ii) the non-overtly-marked plural N people A group of people

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CORPORA:

  • British National Corpus (BNC)

100 million words (1970s-1993)

  • Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA)
  • ver 450 million words (1990s-2012)
  • Global Web-based English Corpus (GloWbE)

1,9 billion words (2012-13) 20 varieties of English

  • Corpus of Historical American English (COHA)

400 million words 1810-2009

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3.1. Methodology

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  • Abs. Freq.

% SG Verb PL Verb TOTAL SG Verb PL Verb With of-PP 1,593 3,014 4,607 34.58 65.42 Without of-PP 51,892 13,383 65,275 79.50 20.50

PDE BrE & AmE (adapted from Fernández-Pena 2015)

Table 1 Verbal agreement with collective nouns with of-PPs and without of-PPs in the BNC and COCA

3.1. Methodology

(χ2(1)=4832.62, p<0.0001; Crammer’s V = 0.263)

 Without

  • f-DEP:

(4b) when a whole group is having a go [BNC: ATAW_non_ac_soc_science]  With of-DEP: (4a) a group of British skiers were horrified to see a man [BNC: CCK 737]

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3.2.1. Regional variation

Collective nouns with of-PPs

British English and American English show similar tendencies

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Figure 1. Verbal agreement with collective nouns with of-PPs in the BNC and COCA (χ2(1)=6.19, p=0.0128; Crammer's V = 0.0371)

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VARIETY SG Verb PL Verb Jamaica 33.15 66.85 Nigeria 35.98 64.02 Ireland 36.03 63.97 Tanzania 39.44 60.56 Great Britain 42.74 57.26 Sri Lanka 43.98 56.02 Kenya 44.59 55.41 Ghana 44.59 55.41 Pakistan 44.71 55.29 Canada 47.63 52.37 South Africa 48.10 51.90 Australia 48.63 51.37 New Zeland 49.16 50.84 Singapore 49.73 50.27 Malaysia 50.60 49.40 India 50.84 49.16 United States 52.18 47.82 Philippines 52.78 47.22 Bangladesh 53.29 46.71 Hong Kong 55.46 44.54 9/20 >55% PL Verbal forms 11/20 <53% PL Verbal forms

Table 2. Verbal agreement in the varieties of GloWbE

3.2.1. Regional variation

GloWbE

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Table 3. Verbal agreement in the inner varieties in GloWbE Variety SG Verb PL Verb TOTAL Ireland 178 (36.03%) 316 (63.97%) 494 Great Britain 795 (42.74%) 1,065 (57.26%) 1,860 Canada 291 (47.63%) 320 (52.37%) 611 Australia 228 (48.10%) 246 (51.90%) 474 New Zealand 206 (49.16%) 213 (50.84%) 419 United States 911 (52.18%) 835 (47.82%) 1,746 TOTAL 2,609 (46.56%) 2,995 (53.44%) 5,604

3.2.1. Regional variation

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Figure 2. Pearson residuals in the inner varieties in GloWbE

3.2.1. Regional variation

SG Verb PL Verb

Ireland Great Britain Canada United States Australia New Zealand

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Table 3. Verbal agreement in British and American English in GloWbE Variety SG Verb PL Verb TOTAL Great Britain 795 (42.74%) 1,065 (57.26%) 1,860 United States 911 (52.18%) 835 (47.82%) 1,746

3.2.1. Regional variation

(χ2(1)=31.78, p<.0001; Crammer’s V = 0.0944)

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3.2.2. Syntactic complexity

  • Syntactic distance (Corbett 1979; Levin 2001)

Distance increases the likelihood of finding plural agreement Meaning (not form) is kept activated

Collective NSG + ………………..………….…………………VPL

  • Morphologically SG
  • Conceptually PL

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  • f (…) NPL (…)
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Structure of the of-PP

  • 1. (of) BARE NP

[a group of boys/people] + V

  • 2. (of) PREMOD + NP

[a group of young boys/people] + V

  • 3. (of) BARE NP + POSTMOD

[a group of boys/people] from the UK + V

  • 4. (of) PREMOD + NP + POSTMOD

[a group of young boys/people] from the UK + V

3.2.2. Syntactic complexity

Table 4. Syntactic configurations of of-dependents in the BNC and COCA

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Table 5. Verbal agreement in bare, preMod and postMod of-dependents in the BNC and COCA

Structure of the of-PP SG Verb PL Verb Abs.freq. % Abs.freq. %

  • 1. (of) BARE NP

478 31.95 1,018 68.05

  • 2. (of) PREMOD + NP

605 34.99 1,124 65.01

  • 3. (of) BARE NP + POSTMOD

265 33.46 527 66.54

  • 4. (of) PREMOD + NP + POSTMOD

245 41.53 345 58.47

3.2.2. Syntactic complexity

Bare NP vs PREMOD + NP + POSTMOD (χ2(1)=16.7, p<0.0001); Crammer’s V = 0.0906

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Figure 3. Pearson residuals in the structure of of-PP in the BNC and COCA

3.2.2. Syntactic complexity

SG Verb PL Verb

Bare NP PreMOD + NP NP + PostMOD PreMOD + NP + PostMOD

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Type of NPL

Overtly-marked (-s) a group of boys Non-overtly-marked (-ø) a group of people

3.2.3. (C (C)overt morphology

Table 6. Type of NPL in the BNC and COCA

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Structure of the of-PP NN2 (-s) people

SG Verb PL Verb SG Verb PL Verb

  • 1. (of) BARE NP

38.61 61.39 9.38 90.62

  • 2. (of) PREMOD + NP

36.60 63.40 21.81 78.19

  • 3. (of) BARE NP + POSTMOD

35.48 64.52 30.07 69.93

  • 4. (of) PREMOD + NP + POSTMOD

40.66 59.34 47.37 52.63

(χ2(3), p<0.0001); Crammer’s V = 0.2815 Table 7. Verbal agreement (%) with NN2 and people in bare, preMod and postMod of-dependents in the BNC and COCA

3.2.3. (C (C)overt morphology

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COLLECTIVE NOUN

ANIMACY (Dekeyser 1975, Levin 2001) (5) And to be a fair traded product, the charter says that erm the company who are selling the products should have an input at that level . (Levin 2001: 56) HUMANNESS (Levin 2001) (6) We have a tremendous population here that have not discovered what’s on their doorstep. (Levin 2001: 56)  Influence of semantics of the oblique noun on verbal agreement

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3.2.4. Semantics

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Figure 4. Frequency (%) of (in)animate and (non)human oblique nouns in the BNC and COCA

3.2.4. Semantics

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Figure 5. Verbal agreement in relation to the animacy/humanness of the oblique noun in the BNC and COCA χ2 (1)=368.5, p<0.0001; Crammer’s V = 0.2672

3.2.4. Semantics

(7) a small crowd of people have gathered by the door [COCA: FIC MovElf] (8) A flock of seabirds lands in our garden [BNC: CA5 1757] (9) This batch of cars was transferred onto South Metropolitan tracks [BNC: CBK 1744]

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VERB MEANING

(Biber et al. 1999: 189; Levin 2001: 148–158; Dodge and Wright 2002: 84– 85; Depraetere 2003: 102–103) (10) The committee comprises/consists of /has eight members. *comprise/consist of/have (Biber et al. 1999: 189)  Influence of semantics of the verb on verbal agreement

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3.2.4. Semantics

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VERB MEANING (only BNC) (Levin 1993) PL AGR ≥ 60%

  • prototypical human reference
  • most frequent semantic types:

possession (get, give) send/carry existence (live, gather) communication (say, ask) PL AGR ≤ 59%

  • less straightforward connection with human reference
  • most frequent semantic types:

change of state (increase, rise) appearance(come, appear) motion (run, follow)

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3.2.4. Semantics

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MEANING:

(11a) [A number of] these papersPL appearPL to have been a correspondence between this gentleman and his more zealous brethren. [1827 FIC TennesseanANovel] (11b) From this, [a number of] important consequencesPL followPL [1990 N ThinkingSociologically] (11c) [a number of] his poemsPL havePL been sold during those same years [1962 NF EnglishLiterature]

26 Quantificational meaning

Figure 6. Verbal agreement with a number of + plural oblique in COHA

3.2.5. Id Idiomatisation

A number of VERBAL AGREEMENT: plural agreement 

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MEANING:

(12a) [a group of] childrenPL werePL joyfully embracing the knees [1843 FIC LettersFromNew-] (12b) [A group of] developersPL havePL sued CBS in federal court [1996 NEWS AP] (12c) [A group of] old hagsPL beginPL beating a poor child [1872 NF Saunterings]

? Quantificational meaning

Figure 7. Verbal agreement with a group of + plural oblique in COHA

3.2.5. Id Idiomatisation

A group of VERBAL AGREEMENT: plural agreement BUT singular AGR has increased 

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MEANING:

(13a) [A majority of] casesPL arePL affected in that way [1887 MAG Century] (13b) [a majority of] CongressmenPL don'tPL want to get involved [1971 NEWS WallStJrnl] (13c) [A majority of] failing thriftsPL havePL no directors and officers liability insurance [1990 NEWS NYT]

Quantificational meaning

Figure 8. Verbal agreement with a majority of + plural oblique in COHA

3.2.5. Id Idiomatisation

A majority of VERBAL AGREEMENT: plural agreement 

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Figure 9. Verbal agreement with the majority of + plural oblique in COHA

MEANING:

(14a) the majority of menPL arePLimperfectly educated [1877 NF HistoryConflict] (14b) the majority of personsPL doPL not believe in their existence [1913 FIC TTembarom] (14c) the majority of savagesPL possesPLs this instinct in a much more perfect form [1897 MAG NorthAmRev]

? Berg (1998: 54); “function of a quantifier such as most”

3.2.5. Id Idiomatisation

The majority of VERBAL AGREEMENT: plural agreement 

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  • 4. CONCLUSIONS
  • Significance of of-dependency (with of-PP vs. without of-PP)
  • Main observations:

– Regional variation: significant variability, discrepancies with literature – Distance/complexity: no significant trigger of plural agreement  decreasing tendencies – Morphology: overt vs. covert morphology  differences with increasing distance – Semantics: influence of animacy and humanness – Idiomatisation: fixation of syntactic patterns across time

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Department of Linguistics and English Language (University of Lancaster) UCREL: University Centre for Computer Corpus Research on Language (Lancaster) Englisches Seminar (University of Zurich) David Tizón-Couto (University of Vigo) Financial support:

  • Spanish Ministry of Education (FPU, research grant FPU13/01509)
  • the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation and the European Regional

Development Fund (grants no. FFI2013-44065-P, FFI2014-51873-REDT)

  • LVTC research group (University of Vigo)
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REFERENCES

Primary sources

  • BNC = British National Corpus: http://bncweb.lancs.ac.uk/bncwebSignup/user/login.php
  • COCA = Corpus of Contemporary American English: http://corpus.byu.edu/coca
  • COHA = Corpus of Historical American English: http://corpus.byu.edu/coha
  • GloWbE (Interface University of Zurich) : http://www.es.uzh.ch/en/corpling.html

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What motivates verbal agreement variation with collective-headed subjects?

Evidence from synchrony and diachrony

Yolanda Fernández Pena

yolanda.fernandez@uvigo.es University of Vigo (Spain) 5 May 2016