Agreement and interpretation of partitive constructions in Spanish: The dual nature of nominal features

Abstract This paper analyzes the role of the interaction between syntax and semantics in determining the mixed agreement patterns shown by Spanish partitive constructions when they appear as subjects. These patterns follow straightforwardly from the dual nature of nominal features (concord and index features organized in bundles) and from the assumption that Agree is a feature-valuation process in which the unvalued features of a Probe seek matching parallel valued features of a Goal under locality constraints and a maximization principle. After discussing previous approaches and justifying our syntactic analysis, we demonstrate that interaction for agreement between syntax and semantics is articulated via the nominal index features of the head nouns in the partitive structure, so singular and plural agreement, linked to the valuation/non-valuation of the number index feature, correlates with a group/atomic entity vs. a plurality/distributive reading, respectively, the meaning of the verbal predicate also being relevant. The empirical basis for this analysis is provided by a corpus search whose results are carefully described in the paper.