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This paper explores the phenomena we dub «hyper-agreement»: number agreement between the main verb and an argument of the subordinate clause in biclausal structures (me gustan que los planes salgan bien, lit. ‘me like3pl that plans work out’). At an empirical level, it focuses on structures with dative experiencers required by a psych-verb and shows that hyper-agreement is possible with both finite and non-finite subordinate clauses. In light of these data, it is argued that Agree (Chomsky, 2000, 2001) must not violate the Single Case Constraint (Nevins, 2004). The analysis put forward combines this constraint with the hypothesis that person and number are independent Probes (Rigau, 1991, among others). This proposal accounts both for the unlocking effect on the subordinate clause and for the fact that the long-distance agreement is restricted to partial agreement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the singular or plural agreement between Spanish verb haber with existential meaning and its plural argument, in 108 interviews collected in Mexico City as a part of a sociolinguistic corpus structured by age, gender and educational level. All relevant data (633) are considered. For the analysis, the proposed methodology in the "Project for the sociolinguistic study of Spanish from Spain and from America (PrESEEa)" is followed, using a wide range of linguistic and social variables. The results are subjected to rigorous statistical analysis and compared with those obtained in other studies. The singular/plural alternative has received considerable attention in the field of study of linguistic variation in Spanish. Mexico City Spanish is grouped with other conservative areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]