Gradience and Variability of Intervocalic /s/ Voicing in Highland Ecuadorian Spanish Dissertation Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Christina Marie García Graduate Program in Spanish and Portuguese The Ohio State University 2015 Dissertation Committee: Dr. Terrell A. Morgan, Advisor Dr. Rebeka Campos-Astorkiza, Advisor Dr. Scott Schwenter Dr. Anna M. Babel Copyright by Christina Marie García 2015 ABSTRACT This dissertation focuses on Highland Ecuadorian Spanish (HES), more specifically in the city of Loja, exploring how linguistic and social factors interact to condition a sound change in progress. While Lojano Spanish has many distinctive features, I examine intervocalic /s/ voicing, that is the variable pronunciation of /s/ as [s] or [z] (for example [losamiɣos] ~ [lozamiɣos] ‘the friends’). This feature has been attested in a few modern dialects of Spanish, most prominently in HES (cf. Robinson 1979) and Catalonian Spanish (McKinnon 2012, Davidson 2014). The present work provides a comprehensive look at this feature in Lojano Spanish by investigating both production and perception. First, I analyze the production of this feature by carrying out a detailed acoustic analysis of 31 recordings with native Lojanos. These recordings were collected during two fieldwork trips spent in Loja in 2010 and 2013. The recordings include both sociolinguistic interviews, as well as a reading task. I measured over 2,969 tokens of /s/ for percent voicing and examined the influence of the following factors: word position, stress, speech rate, preceding/following vowel, and participants’ age and gender. Voicing is analyzed as both a continuous dependent variable (percent voicing) as well as a categorical variable (voicing category). Following Campos-Astorkiza (2014), voicing category is considered a tripartite distinction: voiceless (0-20%), partially voiced (20- ii 90%) and fully voiced (100%). Overall, the production results show that /s/ voicing in Lojano Spanish is not categorical, but rather is a gradient, variable process. Increasingly voiced realizations are more likely in faster speech; in word final and initial contexts as opposed to medial; when /s/ is between unstressed syllables; before non-high vowels; and in the speech of younger participants and male participants. Second, I explore the perception of /s/ voicing in Lojano Spanish by conducting an online experiment. Twenty-four native speakers of HES participated in two tasks in the online experiment, the design of which was adapted from Boomershine et al. (2008). In the first, a similarity rating task, participants heard pairs of audio files and rated these pairs on a scale of 1 very similar to 6 very different. The second was a traditional discrimination task in which the participants heard these same pairs and decided if the two tokens were the same or different (Liberman et al. 1957). For the stimuli, I recorded a native speaker of Lojano Spanish saying sequences of words that pertain to the three word positions (medial: asa, initial: la saca, final: las ata), producing voiced and voiceless variants of each. The pairs of audio files either had the same type of voicing, “identity” pairs ([asa] vs. [asa]) or different voicing ([aza] vs. [asa]), “difference” pairs. The results show that the listeners hear difference pairs as different more frequently than identity pairs; however, the robustness of this effect depends on word position, with the most robust effect observed in final position, followed by initial position, and the least robust effect in medial position. This demonstrates a connection between production and perception since it is precisely the environments in which Lojanos voice /s/ more (word- finally and initially) that they perceive most readily the difference between [s] and [z]. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This dissertation would not have been possible without the guidance and support of many people. First and foremost, I want to thank my advisors, Dr. Terrell Morgan and Dr. Rebeka Campos-Astorkiza. Terrell has been my constant guidance literally from day one and recognized my potential as a scholar before I even knew what the word “scholar” meant. He set an outstanding example for me of what it means to be a good professor, in every sense of the word, and I will never be able to repay the opportunities he has bestowed upon me during my time at Ohio State and the incredible experience that has come from these opportunities. Thank you for believing in me and always being in my corner when I needed it. Rebeka has been a steady source of inspiration and support for me, both in research and in the classroom. I greatly appreciate her extreme dedication to my work, which has manifested itself in everything from teaching me the ins and outs of acoustic analysis to helping me think of stimuli, and much, much more. Her consistency and commitment has been one of the main forces driving me to finish my dissertation and it will continue to motivate me in the future. Thank you for always making time to meet with me, even from afar. I would also like to thank my committee members, Dr. Scott Schwenter and Dr. Anna Babel, for bringing their valuable perspective to my work over the years. I am very iv grateful that Scott awakened the variationist spirit in me so long ago, gave me the opportunity to present at my very first conference, and for allowing me to crash advisee Panera outings to talk over stats, look at abstracts, discuss ideas, and the like. I am thrilled to have a fellow andinista in Anna on my committee and appreciate that she always challenges me to see beyond the data. Additionally, I thank the faculty in the Linguistics Department who challenged me to develop into the scholar I am today: Judith Tonhauser, Cynthia Clopper, and Kathryn Campell-Kibler. I am particularly indebted to Kathryn for showing me the ways of all types of sociolinguistic research and teaching me much of what I know about R. The collection of the data in this dissertation took place during two trips to Loja, which were made possible by different sources of funding. The first trip was funded by an International Affairs Grant from the OSU Office of International Affairs and the Bulkatin-Pardo Graduate Award. The second trip to Loja was funded by a Tinker Foundation Field Research Grant. I acknowledge as well the transcription help of Wendy Feliz, and the expert statistics consulting of Elizabeth Petraglia, Allen Po-hsu, and Sophie Nguyen. I would also like to recognize my amazing colleagues and friends. Hannah Washington and Mary Beaton have been with me in this adventure since the very first day of classes and are the two best dissertation buddies anyone could ask for. Hannah made sure I was always on track with just about everything, Mary gave me all the supportive hugs I all too often needed, and they both made this whole process a lot more enjoyable and helped to keep me sane. I also thank Abby Walker for being the best collaborator on the planet and putting so much hard work and ingenuity into our joint v endeavors. ¡Mano a mano para siempre! To those who paved the road ahead of me, I am so fortunate to have had your guidance and advise. I am grateful to Jenny Barajas for her constant positive attitude, giving me the encouragement I needed even at the most challenging times. I have always looked up to Sonia Barnes and Mary Johnson and their work has both inspired and informed my own. This dissertation quite honestly might not have been written without the vision of and many discussions with Whitney Chappell, and I am extremely appreciative that she first pointed out this linguistic feature to me. I also appreciate the others who brightened my existence at Hagerty Hall, Meghan Dabkowksi with her laugh that can be heard down the hall, and Karen Lopez-Alonso with her infectious smile. Además quiero agradecer a todos los participantes y las personas que colaboraron con el reclutamiento de este estudio. Gracias por compartir sus historias y sus vidas conmigo. A las familias Samaniego y García, estoy perennemente agradecida por su constante apoyo, cariño, y hospitalidad inmensa. Me hicieron enamorarme de Loja y siempre llevaré conmigo una parte de esta hermosa ciudad. I would also like to recognize the never-ending love and support of my family. I am thankful to my parents, Dan and Sandy, for always believing in me no matter what I wanted to do in life, and to my brother, Kevin, for providing the soundtrack to my dissertation and encouraging me all along. Finalmente, quiero reconocerles a mi esposo, Santiago, y mi perrito, Rocco. Sin la constante compañía, y besos peludos, de Rocco durante el proceso de escribir la tesis, estoy segura de que me habría vuelta loca. A Santiago, mi fundación en todo, le agradezco eternamente los sacrificios que ha hecho por apoyarme, por siempre creer en mí, y por su paciencia infinita. Sin tu devoción y vi ánimo, nada de eso hubiera sido posible y tampoco tendría importancia en absoluto. Te amo con todo mi corazón. vii VITA 2009…………………………………………B.A. Spanish and Linguistics, The Ohio State University 2011…………………………………………M.A. Hispanic Linguistics, The Ohio State University Publications Walker, Abby, Christina García, Yomi Cortés, and Kathryn Campbell-Kibler. 2014. Comparing social meanings across listener and speaker groups: the indexical field of Spanish /s/. Language Variation and Change 26.02.169-89. García, Christina. 2011. Distinguishing Two “Synonyms”: A Variationist Analysis of quizá and quizás in Six Spanish Dialects. Selected Proceedings of the 5th Workshop on Spanish Sociolinguistics, ed. by Jim Michnowicz and Robin Dodsworth, 103-12. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.