A Sociolinguistic Study on the Pluralization of haber in Lima Spanish

In the Spanish language, the impersonal-existential construction with the verb haber exhibits syntactic variation with the intransitive-existential construction, in which the verb haber agrees in number with its argument. The pluralization of haber is widespread across the Spanish-speaking world. In this study, we present an analysis of this linguistic phenomenon observed in Lima Spanish. To carry out this study, a linguistic corpus offered by PRESEEA and the data that come from a survey on the use of this verb carried out in Lima with 59 informants are analyzed. The main factor that seems to condition the pluralization of haber in the Spanish of this city is the age of the speakers. The results of the analysis of both data show that speakers over 55 years of age show the highest frequency of pluralized cases and that the frequency decreases as the age of the speakers decreases.