Stressed lax triggers in Eastern Andalusian Spanish harmony: The effects of final - r and - s deletion

Eastern Andalusian Spanish (EAS), spoken in southern Spain, is characterized by the loss of most word-final consonants in casual speech. This deletion leads to adjacent vowel laxing which, in turn, drives harmony: the open quality of the final vowel spreads leftwards to the stressed syllable, as in beso [ˈbe.so] ‘kiss, sg’ vs. besos [ˈbɛ.sɔ] ‘kiss, pl’ (Navarro Tomás 1939; Rodríguez Castellano & Palacio 1948; among others). While the nature of triggers (deletion of - s ) and targets (stressed syllables) has been assumed, other patterns remain understudied. For this study, I recorded 18 EAS speakers’ production of oxytonic words containing two mid vowels, with and without underlying final - r /- s (e.g., triplets such as bebé ‘baby’, beber ‘to drink’, and bebés ‘babies’). First and second formants of final and penultimate vowels were extracted. Participants also completed a perception experiment, where they had to match a written word with a recording ending in unpronounced - r, -s, or bare vowel. Results show that deletion of - r and - s produce comparable changes in the two preceding vowels; final vowels become lax, and preceding vowels undergo harmony. Speakers can also identify whether a word ends in an underlying consonant, as well as determining which (- r or - s ) above chance (albeit with limited success). These results suggest that EAS harmony (a) is stress-independent and (b) can be triggered by deletion of fricatives and liquids. I propose V-to-V coarticulation as a potential origin of harmony in EAS, aligning with its role as the most common cause of harmony cross-linguistically.