Resumen de Voicing assimilation and weakening of /s/ in iberian spanish: Connecting both phenomena in a gestural model
This paper analyzes and models Spanish /s/ voicing assimilation before voiced consonants from a cross-dialectal perspective. This process has been shown to be gradient and variable, and conditioned by several factors. Here, I argue that /s/ voicing assimilation in Spanish is a type of weakening that results from reduced gestural magnitude and increased gestural overlap of adjacent glottal gestures, following Campos-Astorkiza (2014, 2015, in press). The gestural account makes a connection between /s/ voicing assimilation and another process that affects /s/ in many Spanish varieties, i.e. /s/ aspiration and deletion. In this study, I present evidence for this connection, supporting the gestural model of assimilation.
