EL DEBILITAMIENTO EN EL USO DEL IMPERFECTO DE SUBJUNTIVO EN EL ECUADOR. UNA COMPARACIÓN ENTRE QUITO (SIERRA) Y PORTOVIEJO (COSTA)

The following work is the product of a research carried out in two Ecuadorian cities: Quito, located in the Andean region and capital of the country, and Portoviejo, located in the coast. It seeks to corroborate/confirm the weakening of the use of the imperfect of the subjunctive in the highlands, and to identify changes in its use in the coast. For this purpose, 279 surveys were collected in the two cities: 148 are students from the Pontifical Catholic University of Ecuador, PUCE, from now on, and 149 from the Technical University of Manabí, UTM. The surveys had 24 questions, each of them with 4 choices, the imperfect subjunctive with endings ra/se, the infinitive and the present subjunctive. The hypothesis is that people from the highlands prefer the latter two and people from the coast prefer for the former two. However, it is important to point out that all four are widely used in Ecuador, both in formal and informal contexts.