Investigating lenition patterns in south-central Peninsular Spanish / sp st sk / clusters

In this study we report on an instrumental analysis of /sp st sk/ clusters in south-central Peninsular Spanish, documenting a three-way system of /s/ realization: speakers tend to produce alveolar fricatives in /st/ clusters, velar fricatives in /sk/ clusters, and glottal fricatives or deletions in /sp/ clusters. An analysis based on the discrete classification of /s/ variants shows that a combination of linguistic factors (following consonant and stress) influences /s/ realization. An analysis based on the phonetic coding of /s/ variants (using measures of fricative duration, relative voicing, and center of gravity) reveals the extent to which velar fricatives display an intermediate status along the phonetic continuum of /s/ lenition variations. Taken together, these analyses shed light on the nature of coda /s/ in Spanish and on the extent to which the attested allophony constitutes a lenition process.