New Mexican Spanish - Morphological Variation

Morphological Variation

Besides a great deal of phonological variation, there are various morphological differences throughout New Mexican Spanish, usually in verb conjugations or endings:

• Change from bilabial nasal /m/ to alveolar nasal /n/ in the first person plural (nosotros) ending of imperfect: nos bañábamos /nos baˈɲabamos/ is realized as
• Regularization of the following irregular verb conjugations:
  • Radical stem changes: quiero becomes quero, this is clearly an archaism still kept. In fact this feature still remains in some parts of the northwest of Spain such as Asturias and Galicia.
  • Irregular present indicative 1st person singular: salgo becomes salo, vengo becomes veno
  • Irregular subjunctive: subjunctive present of haber becomes haiga (esp. est. haya).
  • haber as an auxiliary verb: "nosotros hamos comido" instead of "nosotros hemos comido", "yo ha comido" instead of "yo he comido".