This book offers a diversification model of transplanted languages that facilitates the
exploration of external factors and internal changes. The general context is the New World and
the variety that unfolded in the Central Highlands and the Gulf of Mexico herein identified as
Mexican Colonial Spanish (MCS). Linguistic corpora provide the evidence of (re)transmission
diffusion metalinguistic awareness and select focused variants. The tridimensional approach
highlights language data from authentic colonial documents which are connected to
socio-historical reliefs at particular periods or junctions which explain language variation
and the dynamic outcome leading to change. From the Second Letter of Hernán Cortés (Seville
1522) to the decades preceding Mexican Independence (1800-1821) this book examines the variants
transplanted from the peninsular tree into Mesoamerican lands: leveling of sibilants of late
medieval Spanish direct object (masc. sing.] pronouns LO and LE pronouns of address (vos tu
vuestra merced plus plurals) imperfect subjunctive endings in -SE and -RA) and Amerindian
loans. Qualitative and quantitative analyses of variants derived from the peninsular tree show
a gradual process of attrition and recovery due to their saliency in the new soil where they
were identified with ways of speaking and behaving like Spanish speakers from the metropolis.
The variants analyzed in MCS may appear in other regions of the Spanish-speaking New World
where change may have proceeded at varying or similar rates. Additional variants are classified
as optimal residual (e.g. dizque) and popular residual (e.g. vide). Both types are derived from
the medieval peninsular tree but the former are vital across regions and social strata while
the latter may be restricted to isolated and or marginal speech communities. After one
hundred years of study in linguistics this book contributes to the advancement of newer
conceptualizationof diachrony which is concerned with the development and evolution through
history. The additional sociolinguistic dimension offers views of social significant and its
thrilling links to social movements that provoked a radical change of identity. The amplitude
of the diversification model is convenient to test it in varied contexts where transplantation
occurred.
