# More on Sibilant Devoicing in Spanish Diachrony: An Initial Phonetic Approach
## 2 The Acoustic Approach
### Results
#### 2.2.2 Affracate Sibilants  
Descriptive data for affricates are shown in Table 5. As in fricatives, voiceless affricates display longer duration and a higher proportion of unvoiced frames, though when it comes to intensity, dentoalveolars and palatals do not seem to fit: the former have the same behaviour as fricatives ([6] is more intense), but palatals do not, since the voiced segment shows more intensity than the voiceless one. This deviation is due to the results in Majorana Catalan, a dialect in which [d\(\overline{3}\)] has more intensity than [\(\overline{i}\)]. It is important to highlight some interesting information obtained from standard deviation values. In general, unlike fricative sibilants, voiced categories do not present more variability. In this case, [\(\overline{i}\)s] is the most heterogeneous segment in almost every parameter, not only if we consider the whole sample, but also if we take into account the dialect factor. However, we can see that while there is great variability regarding fraction of unvoiced frames in Majorana Catalan, there is great homogeneity in Girona Central Catalan. Possibly, the word position in this category is playing a role in its results, since it is the only case in word-initial intervocalic context, as we explained before.  
The results for dentoalveolar affricates indicate that friction duration and the fraction of unvoiced frames are affected by the voicing quality of the consonant (F(1, 110) = 14.973, \(p<0.0001\) and F(1, 2) = 32.797, \(p<0.023\)): [\(\overline{i}\)s] is significantly longer (19.39 ms; b\({}_{0}=21.078\), se = 6.137, t = 3.434, \(p<0.001\)) and displays a higher proportion of unvoiced frames (27.14% more; b\({}_{0}=31.466\), se = 5.034, t = 6.251, \(p<0.007\)) than [\(\overline{d}\)z]. Intensity does not significantly change. Dialect does not affect the voicing cues and no interaction has been detected. However, the speaker affects both duration (se = 158.352, \(Z=2.043\), \(p<0.041\)) and the fraction of unvoiced frames (se = 145.542, \(Z=2.399\), \(p<0.016\)).  
\begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c c c c c c c c} \hline \hline  & \multirow{2}{*}{**Variables**} & \multicolumn{3}{c}{**[\(\overline{i}\)s]**} & \multicolumn{3}{c}{**[\(\overline{d}\)z]**} & \multicolumn{3}{c}{**[\(\overline{i}\)\(\overline{i}\)]**} & \multicolumn{3}{c}{**[\(\overline{d}\)\(\overline{3}\)]**} \\ \cline{3-10}  & & \(\widetilde{\mathbf{x}}\) & **sd** & \(\widetilde{\mathbf{x}}\) & **sd** & \(\widetilde{\mathbf{x}}\) & **sd** & \(\widetilde{\mathbf{x}}\) & **sd** \\ \hline \multirow{3}{*}{Global values} & Duration & 149.87 & 38.91 & 130.05 & 25.01 & 147.98 & 21.99 & 117.90 & 24.78 \\ \cline{2-10}  & intensity & 38.31 & 10.27 & 35.98 & 6.01 & 31.09 & 7.94 & 34.92 & 7.71 \\ \cline{2-10}  & Fraction of unvoiced frames & 66.95 & 25.79 & 38.73 & 23.26 & 64.14 & 14.89 & 30.85 & 21.47 \\ \hline \multirow{3}{*}{Majorcan Catalan} & Duration & 140.64 & 33.87 & 122.94 & 27.45 & 148.57 & 23.73 & 105.96 & 24.34 \\ \cline{2-10}  & intensity & 36.79 & 10.21 & 33.41 & 4.19 & 24.16 & 5.00 & 36.04 & 7.72 \\ \cline{2-10}  & Fraction of unvoiced frames & 66.24 & 32.05 & 43.40 & 29.60 & 59.74 & 17.77 & 16.17 & 19.74 \\ \hline \multirow{3}{*}{Girona Central} & Duration & 155.40 & 41.06 & 134.33 & 22.72 & 147.63 & 21.19 & 125.07 & 22.40 \\ \cline{2-10}  & intensity & 39.22 & 10.32 & 37.52 & 6.44 & 35.25 & 6.31 & 34.25 & 7.73 \\ \cline{1-1} \cline{2-10}  & Fraction of unvoiced frames & 67.38 & 3.42 & 35.92 & 18.33 & 66.78 & 12.35 & 39.65 & 17.40 \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table}
Table 5: Mean value and standard deviation for the dependent variables. Duration values are offered in milliseconds, intensity in decibels, and fraction of unvoiced frames is presented as a percentage of the sound’s duration.