---
title: "Part-introducing 'percent' in English — paper by Coppock (2022)"
description: "Coppock argues the second pattern is much wider than transitive reversed sentences. 30 references."
authors: ["Elizabeth Coppock"]
year: 2022
venue: "Glossa: a journal of general linguistics"
source: "https://www.glossa-journal.org/article/id/5791/"
doi: "10.16995/glossa.5791"
licence: "CC BY 4.0"
licence_url: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"
summary_licence: "Elamur Cosmic License"
canonical: "https://research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/coppock-2022-part-introducing-percent-english/"
---
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# Part-introducing 'percent' in English

**Authors:** [Elizabeth Coppock](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/elizabeth-coppock/) · **Year:** 2022 · **Venue:** [Glossa: a journal of general linguistics](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/venues/glossa-a-journal-of-general-linguistics/) ([Glossa a journal of general linguistics 2022](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/venues/glossa-a-journal-of-general-linguistics/2022/)) · **Publisher:** [Ubiquity Press](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/publishers/ubiquity-press/) · **Licence:** [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

**Links:** [Publisher's page](https://doi.org/10.16995/glossa.5791) · [PDF](https://www.glossa-journal.org/article/5791/galley/21860/download) · [DOI 10.16995/glossa.5791](https://doi.org/10.16995/glossa.5791) · [OpenAlex](https://openalex.org/W4210526517)

**Citations:** 0 citations (OpenAlex, 2026-10-14)

## Summary
English *percent* can be followed by a phrase naming the whole ("50% of the women") or by one describing a portion of that whole ("50% women", usually called the reversed reading). Coppock argues the second pattern is much wider than transitive reversed sentences. It also appears after copula-like verbs such as *be*, *become* and *remain* ("The solution is 30% acid"), and inside noun phrases ("50% recycled paper"). She groups all of these as *part-introducing* uses and documents them with attested sentences from COCA and BNCWeb. She separates them from *scalar* uses like "70 percent full" with an entailment test: only part-introducing sentences say something about subparts of the subject.

She then makes two proposals. A type-shift called *part* turns a yes/no predicate into a degree predicate that measures mereological coverage, so a slightly revised version of Pasternak's (2019) analysis of "75% full" covers every case. For cumulative-like sentences ("mix 10% manure with 90% coal"), she sketches an account in Keshet's (2019) PLural Update Semantics. This clarifies how proportion expressions are actually interpreted.

## Key points
- The paper distinguishes conservative uses (the phrase after *percent* names the whole) from part-introducing uses (it names the part). Part-introducing uses span reversed, predicative and attributive constructions.
- Scalar predicatives ("40 percent sure", "100 percent faithful") imply nothing about parts of the subject. Part-introducing ones ("90 percent black" audience) can be restated with a partitive over the subject's members. Some examples, such as "100 percent American", allow both readings.
- Reversed readings occur only with a small set of verbs (e.g. *consist of*, *hire*, *use*). The author treats *consist of* as close to a copula. Why the set is so limited remains an open question.
- In the PLUS sketch, the operator `+x` gathers all values of x across assignments. Percent then applies to that sum, e.g. `[x]; hired(z,x); 75%(part(women))(+x)`.
- A reviewer's two-barrel scenario shows the predicted truth conditions may be too weak. A corpus study is provided as a supplementary file.

## Interesting ideas
- Separate readings with an entailment check: rewrite "X is N% P" as "N% of the parts of X are P" and see whether the rewrite still follows.
- A single lifting operator turns any yes/no property into a degree of coverage, so one percent rule serves both "full" and "Hispanic".
- Measure the proportion only after all other clause conditions have filtered the referent. The whole is then everything that satisfies the clause (all tobacco used), not a single object.
- Reversed readings depend on the verb, which suggests a lexical whitelist rather than a general rule.
- The reviewer's barrel scenario is a minimal case where the formal analysis says true but speakers balk.

## For Mova

How these ideas could serve Mova, our small open language model — its files, stages and tests:

- **I1** (frames): A predicative-percent frame could run this rewrite test to choose a part-distribution frame or a scalar degree frame, and log the choice as its explanation.
- **I2** (world): The measures layer could store "30% acid" as a coverage fraction over the entity's parts, while natively gradable adjectives keep their own closed scales.
- **I3** (world): When building holdings and events, compute a percent's base set only after the clause's constraints are applied, so "used 75% domestic tobacco" refers to all tobacco used.
- **I4** (tree): The parser or UD conversion could allow a "N% NOUN" object to be read as a part description only under verbs such as *consist of*, *hire* or *use*, and flag other cases.
- **I5** (learn): Add such scenarios to evaluation as negative controls, so cumulative percent handling is tested on cases where literal truth and natural description come apart.

*Our summary of the paper, in our own words — not its text. The work belongs to its authors; read it at the links above.*

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## Cite

Cite as: Elizabeth Coppock. 2022. Part-introducing 'percent' in English. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics.

The paper itself, not this page. BibTeX from the library's record of the work.

```bibtex
@article{coppock2022part,
  title = {{Part-introducing 'percent' in English}},
  author = {Elizabeth Coppock},
  journal = {Glossa: a journal of general linguistics},
  year = {2022},
  doi = {10.16995/glossa.5791},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.16995/glossa.5791}
}
```

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*Updated 1 November 2026*