Gran Canarian Spanish Non-Continuant Voicing: Gradiency, Sex Differences and Perception

This paper examines the process of postvocalic voicing in the Spanish of Gran Canaria from the point of view of language change. A perception-production study was designed to measure the extent of variation in speaker productions, explore the degree to which production is affected by perception and identify variables that can be considered markers of sound change in progress.

20 native speakers of the dialect were asked to repeat auditory input data containing voiceless non-continuants with and without voicing.

Input voicing has no effect on output pronunciations, but voicing is highly variable, with both phonetic and social factors involved. Most importantly, a clear lenition pattern was identified based on such indicators as consonant duration, intensity ratio, absence of burst and presence of formants, with the velar /k/ as the most affected segment. Furthermore, strong social implications were identified: voicing degrees and rates depend both on the level of education and on the gender of the speaker.

The results of the study suggest that the interplay of external and internal factors must be investigated more thoroughly to better address the question of phonetic variation and phonologisation of contrasts in the context of language change.