Previous research on /s/-lenition in Spanish has relied almost exclusively on impressionistic coding for the independent variable "/s/-realization" (cf. Brown 2008, File-Muriel 2009, Poplack 1979, Terrell 1979. In these studies, researchers are limited to the available devices accorded to them by the International Phonetic Alphabet (e.g. /s/ as [s], [z], [h], Ø, etc.). Although auditory acoustic analysis (i.e. transcription) is an extremely useful descriptive device, it can be influenced by the transcriber's background and expectations. Additionally, acoustic details are lost when tokens are forced into categorical groupings, such as short vs. long duration. The present study examines the production of /s/ by eight university students from Cali, Colombia in informal sociolinguistic interviews. This research departs from the audio transcription tradition, proposing a metric for quantifying the realization of /s/ by employing three scalar dependent variables: center of gravity, /s/ duration, and percentage of voicing. Such a method is less vulnerable to bias, given that it is based on acoustic measurements that are not necessarily perceptible to the human ear. The results of the linear regressions indicate that the dependent variables are significantly conditioned by a variety of linguistic factors: lexical frequency, local speaking rate, stress, speaker, position within the syllable, the preceding and following phonological context, word length, and lexical class. The magnitude of effect trends are elucidated by predicted probability plots. For example, as lexical frequency increases, /s/ duration decreases, center of gravity decreases, and percentage of voicing increases, all indicative of lenition. We argue that /s/ lenition is better explained in gradient terms, rather than categorical ones. This paper contributes to the growing body of literature documenting the influence of frequency effects on this otherwise well-studied phenomenon of phonological variation and change.

The Spanish phoneme /s/ has been of particular interest to Hispanic linguists and to Linguistics in general because it is produced in different ways across different varieties of Spanish, depending on linguistic, social, and stylistic factors (c.f. Poplack 1979, Terrell 1975, Cedergren 1973. In many varieties of Spanish, the sound undergoes a process of weakening. Only recently has research has been carried out regarding the role of lexical frequency in s-lenition (Brown 2006, Eddington 2002, Bybee 2002. Furthermore, the research regarding the phonetic context that surrounds /s/ and its role (if any) on lenition has been limited to the most general categories.This study focuses on the influence of lexical frequency and phonetic context on s-lenition. The lexical factors examined are lexical frequency, stress, and word length. Lexical frequency was determined by consulting the Real Academia Española's (RAE) online corpus "Corpus Diacrónico del Español" (CREA) and recording the raw number of occurrences. The search was confined to the years 1975-2006. The raw numbers were subsequently converted into a relative logistic frequency scale in order to run a binary logistic regression analysis. The study also examines several phonological factors yet to be considered involving the sounds that neighbor /s/. This includes the preceding vowel as well as the phonological characteristics of the following consonant, including the point of articulation, manner of articulation (MOA), and voicing.An experiment was conducted in which 33 speakers from Barranquilla, Colombia read sentences that were selected specifically to elicit the production of syllable-final lexical /s/ across all possible sC sequences. The participants, both male and female, were all university students between the ages of 20-26. Productions of /s/ were submitted to auditory acoustical analysis; visual inspection of spectrograms was carried out for ambiguous cases in which the strong sibilance that characterizes the /s/ was not clear.The data were submitted to a stepwise multiple regression analysis. The factor group that was selected first was lexical frequency. High-frequency words favor slenition at .67 while low-frequency words favor disfavor lenition at .33. The results indicate that lexical frequency is the most powerful predictor of s-lenition, a variable that has been overlooked in the previous research. The more frequent the lexeme, the more likely it is to undergo lenition. Furthermore, new findings in this study suggest that surrounding sounds also strongly condition lenition. MOA, which has not previously been considered, was selected as the third factor group. A following fricative strongly favors lenition at 0.711, whereas a following nasal only slightly favors lenition at 0.555. Conversely, stops and laterals disfavor lenition at 0.473 and 0.392 respectively.These results provide evidence for the Exemplar Model as proposed by Bybee (2000Bybee ( , 2002. Lenition occurs more in high-frequency words because these words are easier in terms of proce...

a b st r a c t 'Special reduction' refers to instances of extreme phonetic reduction which is restricted to particular words or phrases, usually grammaticalizing constructions ( going to > [gəɾə]), greetings ( hi from how are you ), discourse markers (Spanish o sea > sa ), or other sequences that are often used together. On the basis of data from English, Brazilian Portuguese, and Colombian Spanish, we argue that special reduction is based on the general phonetic tendencies in the language, but that these tendencies are carried to an extreme where word sequences are used with high frequency and become chunked, allowing formerly stressed syllables to lose stress and reduce. The data also show that special reduction takes place gradually over time, and refl ects general patterns of change seen in the history of the language. In fact, in some examples, special reduction presages more general sound changes that occur later. We argue that the gradual phonetic changes that accumulate for particular words or phrases, eventually changing them dramatically, requires an exemplar model for the phonological representation of words and phrases, which is updated continually as sequences are used and aff ected by reductive phonetic processes.k e y w o r d s : phonetic reduction , phonological change , frequency eff ects , chunking , exemplar models .[ * ] We would like to thank Earl Brown and Sarah Peceny for their work on the Colombian data, Chris Koops for his discussion on the gradient modeling of vowel formant transitions, Naomi Shin for giving feedback on the Spanish section, and Heliana Mello for drawing our attention to the C-Oral Brasil corpus. b y b e e e t a l . 422 IntroductionIt has sometimes been assumed that lexically restricted phenomena are of less interest to linguists and less revealing than phenomena that make up the more general and more regular core of the structure of a language. One contribution of cognitive and usage-based approaches has been to demonstrate that even restricted, lexically determined constructions reveal the same processing mechanisms that operate in more general constructions. In this paper, we turn the spotlight on phonological phenomena that at fi rst blush seem to be irregular, 'special', and outside the mainstream phonological trends -the extreme reduction that very frequent phrases and words undergo. Our argument rests on the fact that such reduction occurs in ongoing language use, and therefore turns out to provide evidence for the cognitive processes that shape phonology and grammar. We argue specifi cally that special reduction is one end of a continuum of interaction between the normal phonetic processes that occur in automated production and the frequency of use of words and phrases in particular contexts. The importance of special reduction to comprehension and production can be demonstrated with the example of the words can and can't . These two auxiliaries both undergo some reductive processes which help to keep them distinct. Can reduces by the change of the sequence [aen]...

Variability abounds in speech. According to usage-based accounts, lexical representations reflect phonetic variants of words resulting from contextual conditioning. Because faster speech contexts promote durational shortening of words and segments, words that occur more often in fast speech may be more reduced than words commonly used in slow speech, independent of the target’s contextual speech rate. To test this, linear mixed-effects models including a word form’s ratio of conditioning by fast speech contexts (FRCRATE) are used to predict the duration of Spanish /s/ and words containing /s/ in a corpus of spoken Spanish. Results show that words’ cumulative exposure to relatively fast speech affects phonetic realizations independent of factors operative in the production contexts. Thus, word and segment rates reflect cumulative (lexicalized) effects of words’ experience in fast speech contexts. The results suggest that lexically specific cumulative measures should be incorporated into models of linguistic variation and change.

This study examines the relationship between lexical frequency and s-lenition in Barranquillero Spanish, looking at lexical frequency as a scalar variable. A quantitative analysis of /s/ in words of different lexical frequencies, in which productions from a reading task were submitted to auditory acoustical analysis, reveals that the single most important factor in s-lenition is lexical frequency. Speakers tend towards a full articulation of /s/ in low-frequency words, while weakening it in high-frequency words. This study addresses three questions: Do subtle differences in lexical frequency influence how sounds are produced synchronically? What are the advantages of considering lexical frequency in scalar terms as opposed to a categorical variable (high vs. low-frequency)? What is the relationship between lexical frequency and other linguistic factors?