Diachronic Change in Verbal Agreement Patterns with Majorité. (15th July 2013)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Tristram, Anna
• Is Part Of: Transactions of the Philological Society. Volume 112:Number 3(2014)
• Page Start: 344
• Page End: 366
• Publication Date: 2013-07-15
• Subjects: Philology -- Periodicals; 400
• DOI: 10.1111/1467-968X.12030
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0079-1636

Abstract

<abstract abstract-type="main" id="trps12028-abs-0001"> <title>Abstract</title> <p>This article is concerned with the description of data relating to a case of morphosyntactic variation and change in French: verbal agreement patterns with the noun <italic>majorité</italic> 'majority'. Quantitative analysis of apparent‐time data from cloze ('gap‐fill') tests suggests that plural agreement with this noun is increasing; data from a diachronic corpus study confirm that this is the case. A number of factors are found to constrain this variation and change, including most importantly the presence and number of a post‐modifying noun phrase (e.g. <italic>la majorité des hommes</italic>). The implications of these findings for the definition of collective nouns in French are discussed.</p> </abstract>