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. Each of the ten
chapters probes into the pertinent variants of MCS and the stage of development by century.
Qualitative and quantitative analyses reveal the trails followed by each select variant from
the years of the Second Letter (1520-1522) of Hernán Cortés to the end of the colonial period.
The tridimensional historical sociolinguistic model offers explanations that shed light on the
multiple causes of change and the outcome that eventually differentiated peninsular Spanish
tree from New World Spanish. Focused-attrition variants were selected because in the process of
transplantation speakers assigned them a social meaning that eventually differentiated the
European from the Latin American variety. The core chapters include narratives of both major
historical events (e.g. the conquest of Mexico) and tales related to major language change and
identity change (e.g. the socio-political and cultural struggles of Spanish speakers born in
the New World). The core chapters also describe the strategies used by prevailing Spanish
speakers to gain new speakers among the indigenous and Afro-Hispanic populations such as the
appropriation of public posts where the need arose to file documents in both Spanish and
Nahuatl forced and free labor in agriculture construction and the textile industry. The
examples of optimal and popular residual variants illustrate the trends unfolded during three
centuries of colonial life. Many of them have passed the test of time and have survived in the
present Mexican territory others are also vital in the U.S. Southwestern states that once
belonged to Mexico. The reader may also identify those that are used beyond the area of Mexican
influence. Residual variants of New World Spanish not only corroborate the homogeneity of
Spanish in the colonies of the Western Hemisphere but the speech patterns that were unwrapped
by the speakers since the beginning of colonial times: popular and cultured Spanish point to
diglossia in monolingual and multilingual communities. After one hundred years of study in
linguistics this book contributes to the advan
