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Allophonic Variation In The Spanish Sibilant Fricative, Alison Garcia

Theses and Dissertations

In Spanish, the phoneme /s/ has two variants: [z] occurs in the coda when preceding a voiced consonant, and [s] occurs elsewhere. However, recent research has revealed irregular voicing patterns with regards to this phone. This dissertation examines two of these allophonic variations. It first investigates how speech rate and speech formality contribute to the gradient and variable nature of the voicing assimilation rule. Next, it explores possible intervocalic /s/ voicing in Highland Colombian Spanish.

In accordance with other studies, the results showed partial voicing of coda position /s/ before voiced consonants (25%-80% voiced frication noise). Furthermore, there was scarce …