2.1. The distribution of plural last names in Spanish

Like plural common nouns, plural last names in preverbal subject position obligatorily require overt determiners in Spanish, as shown by the contrast between (5)a and (5)b, without a determiner.¹ Furthermore, plural agreement between the DP and the verb in (5)a indicates that the DP is plural, as overt plural marking on the determiner (-s) suggests. Consequently, singular agreement with the verb is ungrammatical, as seen in (6).

Whereas the contrast between (5)a and (6) illustrates that verbal inflection must match the plural features of D, (5)a also shows that D and the last name need not agree in plural features, since the last name has the same morphological shape as the corresponding singular.

The mismatching pattern with a singular last name illustrated in (5)a is the preferred option for all speakers I have consulted. In the case of Sánchez, the absence of plural marking might follow from a phonological constraint that generally disfavors directly adding -s to a noun ending in a non-nasal consonant, although common nouns usually add an epenthetic vowel -e in such cases e.g. árbol-e-s ‘tree-epen-pl’. In the examples at hand, the epenthesis solution results in marginal to ungrammatical outputs for last names ending in /s/ (or /θ/ in Peninsular Spanish), as seen in (7).

Last names ending in a vowel, /r/, /l/ or a nasal consonant can alternate for some speakers between not adding overt plural marking and adding -s, as seen in (8)–(9).² In such cases, the preferred interpretation for Velasco in (8)a is that the name refers to a group, the Velasco family (the group reading), so that this sentence need not be true of any individual named Velasco, as long as it is true of the group as a whole. A secondary, less-salient interpretation allows for the last name to refer to the individuals of the Velasco family (the pseudo-additive reading). On the other hand, Velasco-s in (8)b can only refer to the individuals that either belong to the Velasco family, or who happen to share the same family name (the additive meaning). Consequently, this sentence is pragmatically odd because it is not likely that all people who share a common last name will be important. The essential difference between the singular and the plural is, therefore, whether the last name obligatorily refers to individuals (the additive meaning), or whether it refers to a group or indirectly to members of that group (the pseudo-additive meaning). The unavailability of the group interpretation with plural marking is particularly salient with a quantifier like todos ‘all’, as seen in (8)c.

The obligatorily additive reading with the plural explains why (10)b sounds marginal: on the one hand, we have a strong pragmatic preference to interpret the last name as referring to the famous movie-making Almodovar family and perhaps indirectly to its members, on the other hand, the plural requires an additive interpretation in which they are separate individuals who happen to share the same last name and make movies, an interpretation that is at odds with our real-word knowledge.

The most salient interpretation of the number-mismatched option is that of a group, but it is still possible to have a pseudo-additive reading that applies to individual members, an issue I will return to below.

These contrasts do not hold for first names, which seem to follow the patterns of common nouns when pluralized, as seen in (11). Specifically, first names must match the determiner in number, as seen in (11)b.

Prenominal adjectives that appear with a last name agree with the determiner, not with the last name, as shown in (12).

Regardless of whether the last name is singular or plural, these DPs can appear in stubbornly distributive contexts (Schwarzschild 2011), confirming that they are plural DPs. These contexts force a meaning that requires reference to individuals. Thus, mismatched los Velasco in (13)a can be the antecedent of a plural reflexive anaphor, and it is also compatible with the distributive quanifier cada ‘each’ in (13)b. In other words, the first example is interpreted as saying that each member of the Velasco group always thinks about him or herself, and in the second one, each Velasco member lifts 100 kilos, rather than doing it collectively. Since these environments require true semantic plurality to be grammatical, we may conclude that Los Velasco is a true plural.

Based on the data seen so far, these DPs somehow denote plurality without a plural lexical head, and that this plurality is partitioned differently depending on whether the last name is singular or plural: when the last name is plural, only the additive reading is possible, when the last name is singular, the DP can be interpreted as a group or as the pseudo-additive members of that group. To confirm this observation, a combination of a singular D and a plural last name is ungrammatical, regardless of whether the verb is singular or plural, as seen in (14).

Bare plural last names are possible in object position, and under those circumstances, they must be plural, as seen in in (15).

To complicate matters further, speakers have two different patterns for numerals: a larger group of speakers requires a plural last name with a numeral, as in (16)a, and disallows the singular, as in (16)b. Another group of speakers has the opposite pattern, allowing only a singular last name, in (16)b. This distinction is seemingly orthogonal to whether plural Velascos is accepted or not in general.

The unmarked singular pattern in (16)b is more widely acceptable with brand names or locations, as illustrated in (17), which could be used in the context of going to a wine store and asking for different types of wines.

In general, brand names have a similar distribution to last names, as pointed out by an anonymous reviewer, with a similar type of semantic difference: the plural requires an individual reading, the singular can be interpreted as a group or, less directly, a set of individuals, as illustrated in (18).

Unlike last names, brands typically do not refer to humans, hence the type of group they form is different. In both cases, overt plural marking sounds more natural with some brands than with others, which may be due to the relative pragmatic saliency of the brand and the last name, a fact that can be derived from the semantic analysis in section 3.1.

Bare brand names in object position that are interpreted as a group of individuals must be plural, as seen in (19)a-b, just like last names. A singular would be possible with a reading of “the X brand”, not interpreted as a group formed by distinct individuals, as shown in (20).

Common nouns, on the other hand, never show the feature mismatch described for last names and brands, and consequently, they do show different interpretations depending on feature mismatches. (21) illustrates that the only grammatical option is full agreement in singular between D, N and the verb, as in (21)a, or in plural as in (21)b. (21)c-d show the ungrammatical mismatching options. Notice that an elliptical structure such as (21)e does allow for a singular comité ‘committee’ with a plural D and a plural verb.

In sum, the properties of last names and brands are presented in Table 1.

These data present four puzzles: first, when the last name is singular, where does the plurality of the DP come from? Second, why can the last remain singular? Third, how can we account for the group and additive interpretations? Fourth, why is this pattern only possible with last names?

2.2. Names and morphological marking

According to the data seen in the previous section, plural-marked last names must be interpreted additively, whereas singular last names can be interpreted as a group or pseudo-additively. Turkish is similar to Spanish: the plural suffix -lAr appears to be optional on the last name, but when it appears, it is interpreted as additive (Görgülü 2011). Unlike Spanish, however, a singular last name in Turkish can only be interpreted as a group, not distributively. This systematic correlation between morphological marking and interpretation of the last name extends to other languages that use two plural morphemes, one of them a regular plural and the other an associative plural, a type of plural marking that certain languages use with select types of nominals based on the implicational scale in (22) (Moravcsik 2003; Daniel & Moravcsik 2013). This scale signals that marking of any element as an associative plural implies marking of elements to the left of that element. Yup’ik, for example, restricts associative plurals to proper names, Central Pomo, to proper names and definite kin nouns.

An associatively marked proper name denotes a focal individual and a group related to them in some salient way. For example, the focal individual in (23)a is Kovács and the group depends on some contextually salient relation that could include family ties or some other association. By contrast, the regular plural in (23)b refers to all the individuals who share the same property (“being a Kovács”, Dékány 2021).

Several other languages use the associative plural as special marking for proper names. Forbes (2018) observes that the regular plural in Gitksam is incompatible with proper names, which can appear with the associative plural.³ Japanese plural -ra only has the group reading, whereas the associative -tati has primarily a group, but also possibly an individual reading (Aoyagi, p.c. and Nakanishi & Tomioka 2004; Nakanishi & Ritter 2008). In Persian, Ghomeshi & Massam (2009) note that proper names are marked with an associative construction.

A third type of language expresses the same meaning differences through different morphological properties. For some varieties of Greek, the distinction is realized as an additional vowel, so that a regular plural -i directly attached to the root has the additive interpretation (cf. (24)a), whereas the addition of the -e suffix + the plural -i suffix gives the group reading, as in (24)b.

All these languages, but particularly the ones with overt associative marking, suggest a systematic correlation between the interpretation of the plural last name and the type of morphological marking, specifically, the associative plural always provides a group interpretation and the regular plural, where available, produces an additive reading. I will return to this issue in section 3.1.

Finally, a group of languages that includes English and Dutch, among others, only has plural marking on the last name. In such cases, the group and individual interpretations do not correlate with any formal mechanism.⁴

3.1. Plurality with last names

The distribution presented in section 2 suggests that the plurality of the DP does not come from the last name, but rather from a different category. At the same time, the availability of last names marked as plural in (8)b and the required plural marking for bare last names in object position in (15) and (19) suggest that last names may also have a functional category related to plurality. The existence of two separate number-related heads for last names is further supported by the data from associative plural-marking languages like Persian, Hungarian or Gitksam presented in section 2.2, that show distinct morphology for regular and associative plurals. These two heads may co-appear in Gitksam (Forbes 2018: 224), forcing an additive interpretation in those cases.

As suggested, Borer (2005) has independently proposed encoding plurality in two separate functional heads independently of associativity: the structurally higher classifier that counts and the lower head that divides the mass referent into parts (#). In the case of last names in Spanish, I propose that the plural on the determiner encodes the higher-head plural, corresponding to the associative plural in associative-marking languages and the plural on the last name, when present, realizes the lower plural head, Borer’s #.

Nakanishi & Tomioka (2008) have explicitly made the connection between the two types of plural in Japanese and Borer’s structural partition for plurals in general, proposing that the lower head corresponds to the regular or additive plural (NUM), whereas the higher head GRP hosts the associative head. Dékány (2021) argues that the associative plural is higher in Hungarian, and Forbes (2018) proposes that the associative appears in the specifier of DP, whereas the regular plural appears lower, in the specifier of a nominal AspP in Gitksam. Görgülü (2011) extends this analysis to Turkish, arguing that a plural last name signals an associative plural. In sum, there seems to be a general agreement that the associative plural is structurally higher than the regular plural, and that the two plurals may correspond to Borer’s (2005) two types of plurals.

Let us first look at cases with a plural D and singular last name, as in (27)a. Assuming a Distributed Morphology framework (cf. Halle & Marantz 1993; Embick & Noyer 2007; Bobaljik 2017, among others), unmarked plural last names should include at a minimum the items in (27)b, with the structure in (28). In Distributed Morphology, roots are acategorial elements that merge with a categorial functional head, in this case n, to create a noun (nP). This phrase merges with the associative plural head (APL), which in turn merges with D to form a full Determiner Phrase. The associative head carries a plural feature that values the unvalued number feature on the determiner, which is spelled out as the morpheme -s.

I adopt the agreement theory proposed by Pesetsky & Torrego (2001; 2004; 2006; 2007), who assume that agreement-related features have two separate dimensions: whether they are valued or unvalued, and whether they are interpretable or uninterpretable. Interpretable features have a semantic correlate, whereas uninterpretable ones take part in grammatical relations but are not interpreted semantically. For example, plurality on a noun has semantic content, but plurality on an adjective simply reflects the fact that the adjective agrees with another plural. Following Pesetsky & Torrego’s proposal, I assume that feature valuation and interpretability are independent of each other.

Within this system, a probe is an unvalued element that seeks a value for a given feature from a goal, which can be structurally higher or lower within a certain domain; technically, the probe can c-command or be c-commanded by the goal (cf. Baker 2008). Assuming this framework, D is a probe seeking a number value, which it obtains from a plural APL. The morphological reflex of this value is the -s affix on the determiner.

For the cases where both D and the last name appear with plural morphology (see (29)a), I propose that plurality is instantiated in different functional heads, namely APL and NUM, as in (29)b. Once again, APL values the determiner’s number feature. The lower NUM head individuates the reference of the nP, converting it into a plural noun. In this sense, overtly marked plurality entails the presence of NUM.

The syntactic structure in (29)b is instantiated through different morphemes, which are realized following lexical insertion rules in the Distributed Morphology framework. The rule for plurality in (30)a inserts the affix -s for plural in the context where D is present, (30)b does so in the context of NUM and (30)c does so in the context of APL.

Consider the cases of singular last names with a plural D, in such instances, APL values D, and following (30)a and c, -s appears on D and APL. Since APL is a null head, these two affixes are fused into a single -s. An alternative possibility would be that APL does not have an overt morpheme associated with it, so in the absence of another category such as D or A, that plural feature will not be realized. Example (20), repeated as (31) could be analyzed that way: in the absence of D, the APL feature cannot be realized and surfaces as singular.

Turning to the interpretative aspects of associative plurals, Kratzer (2009) proposes a feature [group] whose semantic interpretation appears in (32). This meaning of this feature provides an individual x and a group of contextually determined associates of x.

Nakanishi & Ritter (2008) and Forbes (2018) extend this proposal to associative plurals in Japanese and Gitksam respectively. The meaning of the Japanese associative plural -tati is given in (33): when the associative function for -tati applies to a type <e> proper name like Mika, the nominal is interpreted as “a group that consists of Mika and her associates with respect to c (Nakanishi & Ritter 2008: 4),” where c is a given context. Since the proper name lacks descriptive content, no property is shared across the members of the group beyond being part of that group, resulting in the associative meaning “Mika and her associates”. When the associative function applies to a common noun like female that denotes a type <e,t>, the descriptive content determines membership in the group, namely “a female and a group of female associates,” giving rise to the so-called pseudo-additive interpretation.

Descriptions of associative plurals going back to Corbett & Mithun (1996) note that it involves two distinct components, namely reference to a group and a focal member within that group (non-homogeneous reference). The main difference between Kratzer, Nikanishi & Ritter and Forbes’s analyses and the one proposed by Dékány (2021) is whether the non-homogenous and group components are represented as separate features or are part of the lexical meaning of the associative morpheme. Dékány (2021: 234), following insights from Corbett & Mithun (1996), proposes that the associate plural head includes two separate features: one for non-atomicity (i.e. a group) and a second feature that indicates that this group is not homogeneous, to capture the fact that associative plurals generally involve a focal individual. Dékány suggests that these two features are overtly realized as different suffixes in Yup’ik, as seen in (34), where -nku conveys the non-homogeneous feature and -t/-k encode plurality (plural or dual respectively). She further argues that the non-homogeneity feature may be null in languages like Turkish.

Extending the analysis to Spanish last names, the meaning of (27)a will be “the group composed of Velasco and associates,” which could be either her family, or individuals who happen to share the same last name.⁵ This is precisely the ambiguity that we observe with non-matching last names. In the case of plural last names, such as (29)a, the additional Num head associated with the last name introduces a sum structure to the meaning of the name. The [group] feature then applies in a similar way as with common nouns, yielding “a group formed by a Velasco and other Velasco individuals”.⁶

The associative plural in Yup’ik, Gitksam and Hungarian have a clear focal referent and a group of associates, the non-homogeneity feature. Note, however, that this property derives from the contextual index in Kratzer’s analysis, so in principle one could conceive of a context where non-homogeneity does not apply. In Dékány’s feature separation, non-homogeneity is encoded in a separate feature, but again, one could conceive of languages in which that feature is absent and the group-reference remains. In fact, I believe this is the situation with Spanish last names that lack the non-homogeneity feature, yielding a group reading that does not require a focal reference.

3.2. First and last names

The analysis developed so far does not explain the differences between first and last names observed in section 2. Recall that last names show the singular/plural alternation that corresponds to a group-like or additive reading respectively, whereas first names do not show that alternation, and have to be plural, like common nouns. At first sight, there is no reason to believe that first and last names differ semantically, whether one believes they are type <e> or whether their meaning comes from a naming predicate (Matushansky 2006; 2008; Ghomeshi & Massam 2009). In this section, I will propose an important structural difference: last names include a null N, whereas first names do not.

Bernstein, Ordóñez & Roca (2019) note that the honorific don/doña ‘mister/miss’ can only appear in singular with first names (see (35)), an observation that Saab (2021) derives from the proposal that proper names lack a Num head.⁷

The interesting point about don/doña in the current context is that for many speakers, don/doña cannot appear with last names, as seen in (36). A search of several Spanish corpora (CREA, Corpus del español, Corpus del Español Mexicano Contemporáneo) found over 7,000 tokens of don/doña, all of them followed by first names, none by a last name, suggesting that for many speakers don/doña is only possible with first names. The name of the characters in the famous Mexican TV series, el chavo del 8, illustrates this point, all of the characters with don/doña are followed by a first name (don Ramón, doña Florinda, doña Clotilde), and the only last name with an honorific uses señor ‘mister’ (el señor Barriga).

An anonymous reviewer finds (36) grammatical, suggesting the dialectal variation. It is possible that don/doña has different properties for this group of speakers. In this sense, don appeared in examples without a complement in the corpus, for example dígame, don ‘tell me, sir’. In this example, it looks like don has properties closer to señor/señora ‘sir/madam’, which can appear with last names across dialects (see also Berstein, Ordóñez & Roca 2019 on the historical evolution of honorifics in Romance).

For varieties that show the pattern in (36), restricting don/doña to first names, if the honorific requires a numberless nominal head, as Saab (2021) proposes, the ungrammaticality of (36) suggests that the complement of don/doña does not have those properties. I suggest that the last name appears with a null category, such as the one in (37).⁸

What is the nature of this null category? Spanish has a productive type of nominal ellipsis, illustrated in in (38), where the null element is interpreted as análisis ‘analysis’ in (38)a and as libro ‘book’ in (38)b. Importantly, the determiner does not require the same number feature as the antecedent, as illustrated in (38)b, where the determiner los is plural but the antecedent libro ‘book’ is singular. In this sense, the relationship between the determiner and the antecedent shows the same kind of mismatch as the determiner and the last name.

While last names and nominal ellipsis share the possibility of a mismatch in number, the nature of the null categories in (37) and (38) must be different, because of the distribution of word markers with indefinite determiners. When the elided DP is headed by an indefinite determiner, as in (39), the determiner must include a gender or word-marker vowel (un-o ‘a-m’ / un-a ‘a-F’), as seen in (39)a vs. (39)b (Bernstein 1993a). With last names, the pattern is the opposite: the only possibility is un and not un-o, as seen in (40).

This difference suggests that the null category associated with last names includes the word-marker head, whereas the nominal ellipsis null category does not. The presence of this null category may explain another interesting difference between first and last names. A few first names can alternate between masculine and feminine, as shown in (41). The masculine can be unmarked for the masculine as Juan in (41)a, optionally unmarked as Jesús in (41)b, or marked with an -o as Alejandr-o in (41)c. In all three cases, the feminine appears with -a. Last names never alternate in this way, as seen in (42)–(43). Thus, although last names can end in -a (Moya) or in -o (Velasco), they do not ever alternate between the two, as shown in (42)b–(43)b. In this sense, the last names Moya and Velasco can refer to masculine or feminine referents, as signaled by the determiner. If gender is associated with a null category in first names, as Saab & Lo Guercio (2020) propose, these data would suggest that the null category I have proposed for last names is minimally different in lacking gender.

In terms of its content, the last name null head has the meaning of Kratzer’s (2009) [group] in (44), which in turn allows it to be selected by the APL head. In this sense, the null head is similar to the pronominal head postulated for pluringulars like committee in British English (cf. den Dikken 2001), but surprisingly, that null plural head is absent from the Spanish counterparts grupo ‘group’ or comité ‘committee’, which do not have any overt plural properties.

Putting these observations together, the resulting structure for last names is presented in (45), where the null element is represented with a crossed-out root. I will return to the relationship between the null nominal and NUMP in section 3.4.

3.3. Obligatory plural last names

I now turn to the two contexts that require obligatory plurals for all speakers, namely bare last names in complement position and bare last names with numerals. The first context was illustrated for last names in (15), repeated as (46), in the context of a differentially marked object. Notice that (46)b is grammatical if the last name is interpreted as singular, but not in the relevant plural reading.

These examples are interpreted with an additive reading, specifically, they cannot mean that the family Velasco was elected as a group, but rather that individuals named Velasco were elected. This suggests that the last name appears with lower NUM head, and the plural -s instantiates NUM and possibly APL as well, since D is absent. This would be consistent with the impossibility of interpreting (46)b as a plural, since in that case the plural would not be recoverable from the surface form in any way, given the absence of an overt determiner.

The second environment in which last names and brand names are obligatorily plural involves numerals. Recall from the presentation of the examples in (16) that when a numeral appears, some speakers require singular marking and others require plural marking on the last name. This second group of speakers is illustrated in (47).

The proposal for the group of speakers that only accept a plural last name with a numeral is that a numeral must merge with a plurally specified NUM head for semantic reasons. This same pattern can be observed with common nouns in (48).

As seen in (49)–(50), the numeral can only appear to the right of an overt determiner with common nouns and with last names. This order indicates that the determiner is structurally higher than the numeral. I suggest that the numeral merges with a plural NUM as shown for last names in the structure in the structure in (51). Since NUM overtly realizes plurality, the pattern in (48) follows.

This structure correctly predicts that it should still be possible to get a plural D in those cases, as seen in (52).

For the subset of speakers who have a preference for a singular last name (i.e. the opposite pattern to the one in (47)), one possible account would be that the numeral merges higher than NUM, namely with APL, as seen in (53). In that case, the difference between both dialects is the type of plural that the numeral requires. For the speakers that require a plural last name, the numeral requires a head that denotes an additive plural, whereas for the speakers that allow for a singular last name, the numeral only requires a head that denotes a pseudo-additive plural, as in the structure in (53). In those cases, following the analysis proposed, NUM is not present and the last name therefore appears as singular (cf. Dékány 2011: Chapt. 9.5 for a proposal to derive plurality in two different ways).⁹

This analysis also predicts that the DP should be plural, as we see in (54), because APL has a group interpretation with a pseudo-partitive reading, as described earlier.

3.4. Last names and N-N compounds

The agreement patterns observed for last name DPs resemble those of N-N compounds such as mujer-araña ‘spider-woman’ (cf. Kornfeld 2009, Liceras, Klassen & Contro Castaldo 2020, Moyna 2011, Piera 1995, Toquero-Pérez 2020). In Liceras et al.’s (2020) study, monolingual speakers of Spanish strongly preferred marking plurality on the first noun, followed by marking it on both, while the least preferred option was marking it only the right-hand N, as the numbers in parenthesis in (55) indicate on a scale of 1–5.

The plural marking pattern in (55) mirrors the distribution of plural marking in last names, as schematized in (56): in both cases, plural marking is obligatory on the left-hand N in the compound or the null N in last name structure; marking of both Ns or the determiner and last name is slightly less preferred, and marking of the right-hand N or the last name only is the least preferred option.

The parallelism between last names and N-N compounds further extends to cases such as (57), which illustrates the possibility of intensifying the meaning of a name by repeating it and stressing the first token. These reduplicated sequences show an identical pattern to the preceding ones: the first N can be singular or plural, as in (57)a-b, but pluralizing the second one is dispreferred, as in (57)c. This pattern suggests that the first iteration of the last name is the head, as with compounds.¹⁰

The traditional explanation for the left-headed N-N plural-marking pattern is that the plural morpheme is attached to the N-head, which, as suggested, is on the left (cf. Piera 1995). Because of this directionality, an analysis of N-N compounds as incorporation of one root to the other, along the lines of Harley (2009) cannot be extended to these cases. In this analysis, the second N, araña adjoins to the first one, forming a compound root as in (58). This complex would raise to the number head, which would be realized as the -s affix attached to the right-edge of mujer-araña, as shown in (58)). This result is not what speakers consider most acceptable. Furthermore, to derive mujeres-araña, the preferred option, the head mujer would have to raise to the number head before araña adjoins to it.

By contrast, number location on the first N fits well with the structure proposed for last names, with a few important differences: N-N compounds have an overt N instead of a null group, consequently, the higher number head cannot be an associative plural but a regular plural, because the associative plural is linked to a null group and restricted to last names, following the scale in (22). Mujeres araña would involve compounding of a single NUM + nP with another nP, as in (59). NUM values D’s number feature (realized as -s), and is also realized on the nP mujer. Following the syllabic constraints of Spanish, an epenthetic vowel -e is inserted, resulting in mujeres-araña. In the case of mujeres-arañas, the second nP is also dominated by an additional Num head, which then is realized as -s.¹¹

In the case of the reduplicated N examples of (57), the structure in (60) combines the last name, which includes the null nominal, with the N-N compound structure. The head of the compound kennedy-Kennedy is the first Kennedy, dominated by NUM. As above, this predicts that the plural morpheme will be affixed to that first N. Above NUM is the structure corresponding to the last name, headed by the null group nominal and its corresponding APL head, which will be realized as a plural morpheme on the determiner. This example corresponds to (57)b.

A slightly different pattern arises with cases where the father and the mother’s last names are used simultaneously, as is frequent in many Spanish-speaking countries. Once again, the preferred pattern is to mark the plural on the determiner only, as in (61)a, the title of a book about a Mexican political dynasty. The alternatives in (61)b-c are much less frequent, I only found one instance of each in a google search. Marking on both last names, as in (61)d had a few google hits, suggesting it is also possible.

The structure of (61)a would be similar to that of los Velasco, with an APLP but without NUM, as seen in (62). (61)b, on the other hand, would be an instance in which Ávilas Camacho has the same structure as mujeres araña, with the difference that it has the additional null APLP component above, as seen in (63). (61)c, on the other hand, corresponds to a compound that joins constituents at the n-level, where the plural is attached to the full compound, as in (64). This alternative does not seem to be productively available for regular N-N compounds. Finally, (61)d corresponds to the merger of two Num levels, dominated by APLP, as in (65).

Appositive examples involving kinship terms such as the ones in (66) include a last name and exemplify the connection between N-N compounds and last name. These cases share some properties of N-N compounds in the sense that the preferred pattern is to have plural morphology expressed on the first N only, as shown in (66)a, or on both, as in (66)b, which are attested examples referring to two famous sisters in Dominican history. The common noun cannot be singular in these cases, as seen in (66)c-d, unlike with single last names, as seen in (67).

This unavailability of (66)c-d follows from the independently proposed structural difference between N-N compounds and last names: compounds have NUM which values D and is attached to the closest nP, so if NUM is plural, it must appear on the common noun. Plural last names, on the other hand, have the additional null category related to the associative plural, so the associative plural appears on D.

3.5. Crosslinguistic patterns

In this section, I briefly survey crosslinguistic patterns of last name pluralization. Given the analysis proposed, we expect variation along at least two different dimensions: first, is there a formal distinction between group and additive readings? Second, is that distinction formalized through a specialized associative morpheme? Based on these two dimensions, we can establish the preliminary crosslinguistic classification in Table 2.

The proposed analysis for Spanish can be extended to different languages that mark last-name plurality through a morpheme, particularly if they show the associative and pseudo-additive interpretations. If that is the case, last names would generally have an associative-related functional head that establishes the semantic interpretations discussed earlier. Morphological expression of this high plural head will vary: Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese and Turkish express it through regular plural morphology, whereas Basque, Gitksam, Hungarian, perhaps Hindi, Japanese and Persian have distinct associative morphemes. In languages like Dutch, English, Italian and Catalan, plural morphology presumably also realizes the high plural head, but lower NUM is not realized.¹⁵ As presented earlier, Dékány (2021) argues that the reason why associativity is realized with regular plural morphology may be that the non-homogeneity feature is null.

Languages also vary depending on whether the associative plural only has a group reading or whether it can be distributive. As mentioned, Turkish only allows collective readings for associative plurals (Görgülü 2011). When -lAr is interpreted as associative, it can only be interpreted collectively, as shown in (69).

Spanish, on the other hand, allows for a distributive interpretation in either case (cf. (13)). One important difference between both languages is that Spanish shows independent plural marking on both the determiner and the last name, which I have suggested, signals independently available NUM for the last name. It is therefore possible that the relevant difference between both languages is the availability of the lower-level NUM head. If so, this would mean that the cases of D_pl-N_sg also involve NUM for the last name, but that it is spelled out as singular.

Another possible difference relates to the relative position of APL in Turkish and Spanish. In Turkish, Görgülü shows that -lAr is higher than the genitive/possessive marker with proper names and lower with common nouns. Dékány (2021: 224) argues that the same structural difference holds for Hungarian.¹⁶ In fact, Görgülü (2011) and Dékány (2021: 224) argue that APL is higher than D. If that is the case, the group denotation takes scope over any possible distributive operator in Turkish and Hungarian, but not in Spanish.

Finally, languages seem to vary with respect to whether a null nominal appears with first names. In the proposed analysis, first and last names in Spanish are distinguished by the presence of the null nominal, because, as we saw, they show different distributions in important respects, specifically in the fact that first names do not show the D_pl-N_sg pattern. However, other languages do not show differences between first and last names (Japanese, Akan to a certain extent), so presumably no null nominal is present.

Note, incidentally, that the definite determiner does not seem to play a direct role in the interpretive facts. Some of these languages have plural definite determiners (Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, Italian, etc.), whereas others do not (Akan, Japanese, Turkish, for example). This seems to argue against accounts of plurality that rely on a primary partition between languages with determiners and those without (cf. Chierchia 1998).