Algunas 'anomalías' en la concordancia de género en el español

Abstract

When nominal's gender in Spanish refers to un animate ; besides his main function as a class marker; it aíro maría the referent's sex. Based on samples obtained from the speech of cultured people in six Hispanoamerican and Spanish cities; in this paper I analyze some cases where a nominal gencler doesn't match with its referent's ser (v.g. in words like gente or persona referred to male individuals or people of both seres). Under such conditions; I examine the agreement elements; we have two possibilities: formal agreement and then elements in masculine gender. The detenninant factor for one or another forrn of agreement is syntactic distance; related wah (he syntactic position of the elernent that agrees with (he controller: it may function as attributive; predicate; relative or personal pronoun. Possibilities of semantic agreement are increased if syntactic distance increases. Another important factors are real distan ce and .stacking of agreement elements.