The Pluralization of Haber in Venezuelan Spanish: A Sociolinguistic Change in Real Time
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Abstract
Traditional Spanish prescriptive grammar has described existential haber (there is/are) as an invariant verb as far as number is concerned. 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. Bentivoglio & Sedano (1987) found that linguistic factors such as the nature of the referent codified by the noun phrase [+/- human], and the presence of a modifier that reinforces the idea of plurality are relevant when analyzing pluralization of existential haber in Venezuelan Spanish. The purpose of this investigation is to analyze the pluralization of existential haber as produced at two points in time, 1977 and 1987, and to examine the evolution of this linguistic phenomenon within Venezuelan Spanish. In (1a) the canonical use of existential haber is illustrated, whereas in (1b) an example of pluralization is illustrated:
(1a) pero había unas estadísticas en...
but there were statistics in...
(1b) habían nueve jugadores nada más
there were only nine players
Production of haber is observed in two corpora: one recorded in 1977 (Universidad Central de Venezuela 1979), and the other recorded in 1987 (Corpus para el Estudio Sociolingüístico del Habla de Caracas 1987). Previous research on this topic using the corpus recorded in 1977 has been conducted by Bentivoglio & Sedano (1989). In the present work, an analysis of the 1987 corpus is compared to previous results presented by Bentivoglio & Sedano (1989) for the 1977 corpus.
Ninety-six speakers were selected from the corpus Estudio Sociolingüístico del Habla de Caracas (1987) with equal representation of: socioeconomic level (upper class, middle class, and working class), age (14-29, 30-45, 46-60, and 61 and older), and sex (male and female).
All clauses with existential haber and a plural noun phrase were analyzed from the speech samples of each speaker. Three linguistic factors have been included in the analysis: the nature of the referent codified by the noun phrase [? human], the presence of a modifier that reinforces the idea of plurality (determiner, adjective, etc.), and the conjugation of the verb (preterit, imperfect, etc.). Statistical analysis was applied to the data obtained from the twenty-four speakers by means of Goldvarb 2.0 (Rand and Sankoff 1990).
In this first comparative study of existential haber across time, the findings reveal that pluralization is an extended phenomenon in Venezuelan Spanish. Pluralization of existential haber is stigmatized in certain verb conjugations (the preterit, for example), while in other conjugations the phenomenon is stable and socially unmarked. Previous research regarding pluralization of haber shows the younger generation leading this change. The fact that the levels of pluralization are similar across the different age groups studied in this research as well as for male speakers and female speakers indicates that this phenomenon is firmly established in Venezuelan Spanish, at least in the imperfect and present perfect paradigms.
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