The Pluralization of Haber in Venezuelan Spanish: A Sociolinguistic Change in Real Time

Abstract

This paper studies the pluralization of existential haber ‘there is/are’ as found at two points in time, 1977 and 1987, and it examines the evolution of this phenomenon in Venezuelan Spanish. Many studies (Bello 1972, Bentivoglio & Sedano 1987, De Mello 1991, Kany 1945, among others) have documented the pluralization of haber in several varieties of Spanish at one point in time, but there is no research examining this phenomenon in what sociolinguists have called real time. According to Labov (1994:73), real-time studies “observe a speech community at two discrete points in time.”