Variación meridional en el pluscuamperfecto de subjuntivo: situación en la comunidad de habla de la ciudad de Almería

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to prove the presence of a subjunctive pluperfect using ser as an auxiliary verb in the speech community of the city of Almería, Spain. In order to do this a sample of 50 survey respondents was obtained, considering certain social variables such as gender, age and socio-educational level as well as several types of linguistic factors, like semantic features of the verb, its transitivity or its intransitivity, its grammar both person and number concerning verb conjugation and the syntactic-semantic context of occurrence. The results show the predominant usage of this construction over the form haber + participle; its homogeneity (the speaker who uses the verb ser does it so in all cases, he doesn’t alternate with haber); and the gradual extension of usage of the verb ser ending in -se compared to the traditional ending in -ra among younger speakers.