Linguistic Archaism in a Migrant Community

Abstract

This study analyses morphological and lexical aspects of Mexican Spanish usage in two communities: Moroleón (Mexico) and Kennett Square (the United States). The morphological phenomena exhibit use of [nos] for [mos] as the first person plural verb suffix of the imperfect indicative, nosotros trabajabanos en el campo ‘we worked in the field' and the use of the auxiliary [ha] in the first person singular of the present perfect indicative, yo ha ido muchas veces a Moroleón ‘I have gone to Moroleón many times'. The lexical phenomenon refers to use of the indefinite articles un, una, unos and unas 'a, an, some' instead of the indefinite adjectives alguno, alguna, algunos and algunas 'a, an, some'. Migratory patterns of the population explain the linguistic archaism in the community. Statistical results suggest an interesting interplay between the migratory patterns and other sociolinguistic factors such as gender, generation, education and origin.