Hacia los orígenes de la s aspirada en español

Abstract

This study examines the phonetic principIes which underlie the origin of s-aspiration in Spanish. The change s > h likely derives from inherent limitations in speech perception and parsing in dealing with a potentially ambiguous acoustic signal. It is proposed that aspiration began as coarticulatory forces reduced the auditory distinctiveness of [s] causing listeners to perceive a sound similar to [h].

Many of the robust perceptual cues for [s] are degraded in the original conditions favoring s-aspiration. Furthermore, vowel margins preceding [s] show a breathy voice quality whose auditory properties mimic the effect of postvocalic [h]. It was hypothesized that this murmured vowel offset might be interpreted as intentional aspiration upon removal of the masking [s] noise. Results from perceptual tests support this hypothesis and suggest that this is likely the mechanism which triggered the historical sound change.