It is generally thought that in the 15th century during the colonial period[clarification needed], its original Kʼicheʼ speakers came from the area of what is now the Department of Quiché and founded Santa María Cauqué.
This particular process of relexification of the original Kʼicheʼ that had emigrated to a predominantly Kaqchikel-speaking region probably began with borrowing from the contact language (Kaqchikel) of roots and content morphemes, such as nouns and verbs.
[2] According to a preliminary phonological analysis by Paul S. Stevenson,[4] the speech of those from Santa María Cauqué came from an original variety of Kʼicheʼ, which now acts as the mixed language's grammatical base.
Furthermore, Santa María Cauqué utilizes Kʼicheʼ suffixes at the end of a phrase that indicate whether the verb was transitive or intransitive, //-o//~//-u// or //-ik// respectively, those which Kaqchikel does not.
The third person pronoun is also affected, in that the mixed language shows a higher number of speakers displaying Kʼicheʼ rareʼ 'him/her/it', instead of Kaqchikel rijaʼ 'him/her/it'.