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Use of the impersonal pluralized verb haber in Caribbean varieties of Spanish
Angelica Hernandez
The University of Western Ontario
According to prescriptive grammars of Spanish, impersonal verbs can only be conjugated
in the third person singular. One such verb is the Spanish verb haber, ‘there is’. However, we
often find pluralized forms of this verb being used by native speakers of Spanish, as in 1:
1. Habia-n muchas personas.
There were-PL many persons.
This phenomenon, known as ‘the pluralization of haber’ has been studied in several
countries of Central and Latin America, and is reported to be increasing in frequency despite
being stigmatized by speakers of higher education levels (Diaz-Campos 2003, De Mello 1994).
A study by Claes (2014) explains this phenomenon as a result of a change in the function of the
complement of the verb. When the verb haber is pluralized, the direct object of the verb is used
as the subject. This causes pluralization of the verb when the direct object is plural since it
creates subject-verb agreement. Claes argues that this phenomenon shows a linguistic change in
progress in the language where a personal form of impersonal haber emerges. This conclusion,
however, is not shared by all. Another opinion relating to this phenomenon is expressed by
Quintanilla-Aguilar (2009) who argues that pluralized forms of impersonal haber can be traced
back to the 18th century and represent simply variation that has been and will remain stable.
In this study I look at the effect that certain sociolinguistic parameters like age, sex and
socioeconomic status have on the frequency of use of plural forms of the impersonal verb haber.
This can allow us to see whether the phenomenon shows characteristics of a linguistic change in
progress or not (Labov 2001).
For this project I use three corpora representing the Caribbean varieties of Spanish: One
corpus composed of 30 interviews from Holguín (Tennant et al. 2006), a corpus composed of 29
interviews from La Habana, Cuba ((Gonzales Mafud et al. 2010), and a corpus composed of 23
interviews from San Juan, Puerto Rico (Morales and Vaquero 1990). Using this data I compare
the frequency of use of pluralized impersonal haber according to age (Younger N=43; Older
N=42), education level (Higher education N=16; Lower education N =14), and sex (Men, N=43;
Women, N=42) of the participants. Furthermore, I also briefly look at the effect that other
linguistic factors have on the use of this phenomenon in Caribbean Spanish: (+ human) trait of
the direct object, the tenses of the verb most frequently pluralized, and the distance and position
of the SN (direct object) relative to the verb in the sentence.
Some preliminary results show that the factor most strongly predicting the use of plural
forms of haber is the educational level of the speaker. Furthermore, the older group uses plural
forms more often than the younger group, but this could also be due to a confounding effect with
educational level. Further investigation is required to tease apart the effects of these different
factors. I also find in the data strong indicators of stigmatization of pluralized haber forms. This
may indicate that the stigma tied to the phenomenon may be having an effect on the progression
of the linguistic change.
Bibliography
Claes, Jeroen. 2014. A cognitive construction grammar approach to the pluralization of
presentational haber in Puerto Rican Spanish. Language Variation and Change, 26(02):
219–246. doi:10.1017/S0954394514000052
De Mello, George. (1994). Pluralizacion del verbo ‘haber’ impersonal en el español hablado
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Díaz-Campos, Manuel. 2003. La pluralizacion del verbo haber en dos areas dialectales de
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Gretel Gutiérrez Fuentes. 2010. Muestras del habla culta de La Habana. Editorial UH.
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Jose Roberto Alexander Quintanilla-Aguilar. 2009. La (des)pluralizacion del verbo haber
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Labov, William. 2001. Principles of linguistic change. Vol. 2. Social factors.
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estudio. Editorial de la Universidad de Puerto Rico. Rio Piedras, Puerto Rico.
Tennant, Jeff, David Heap and Ana Faure. 2006. The Holguín Cuban Spanish corpus.
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