# More on Sibilant Devoicing in Spanish Diachrony: An Initial Phonetic Approach
## 4 Discussion
If we admit duration as one of the most reliable cues for voicing, the resulting picture is highly complex and shows multiple areas of coincidence among sibilants: in Figure 5 (_supra_) we can observe that only two voiced categories are clearly distinct: [z], the shortest sibilant, and [d\(\overline{2}\)], which holds an intermediate place between voiceless affricates and the rest of the sibilants. The central space is occupied by [s], [J], [s] and [d\(\overline{3}\)]. Note that [s] and [d\(\overline{5}\)] are the sibilants which showed a more evident tendency to devoic, according to our figures (in this respect, Rioplatense Spanish devoicing of /\(\underline{3}\)/ --[PERSON], 1987, 2000; [PERSON], 2013, 2015; or [PERSON] and [PERSON] 2020-- constitutes a perfect case of study for the explanation of the diachronic evolution). This ambiguous crowded space may be the key to shedding light on the historical process in Spanish. As is known, not all voiced sibilants were devoiced at the same time: the phenomenon began with dentoalveolar segments, which induced devoicing in the fricative series ([PERSON], 1987, p. 58; [PERSON], 1981, p. 283; [PERSON], 2004, p. 422; [PERSON], 2005, pp. 168-69; [PERSON], 2012, p. 224). [PERSON] (1993, p. 210) agrees with this claim and points out that devoicing is usually gradual and starts with a specific sibilant pair before spreading to the others. She notes that the progression was from affricates to fricatives and from palatals to alveolars. Our data in Catalan support this. Ambiguities are found mostly in affricate sibilants, namely [d\(\overline{3}\)] and [f\(\overline{6}\)]. The first case clearly demonstrates the devoicing process, particularly at the auditory level, as we commented before. The second is also very interesting, despite the limitations to its distribution. If we examine [f\(\mathbf{s}\)] and [d\(\overline{2}\)] in terms of [PERSON]'s (1997, p. 478) degree of voicing classification, we observe an interesting result: most of the utterances of both affricates are partially devoiced (46.9% of the total in the case of [6] and 78.1% for [d\(\bar{\bar{z}}\)]). It is even more interesting to examine this by dialect: Majorcan Catalan speakers tend to produce [6] as fully devoiced, but 66.7% of instances of [d\(\bar{\bar{z}}\)] are partially devoiced (only 25% fully voiced). Girona Catalan speakers show a similar pattern for [6], but the proportion of partially devoiced instances of [d\(\bar{\bar{z}}\)] rises to 85% (only 6% are fully voiced). This suggests that dentoalveolars are not produced at the extremes, like alveolar fricatives, but at an ambiguous intermediate point. Their clouds of exemplars tend to overlap in the acoustic-auditory space, as described by [PERSON] (2001, 2002). Historical change may thus be accounted for as a case of phonological ambiguity ([PERSON], 2004; [PERSON], 1981, 2012). What seems to be clear is that phonetic variation regarding voicing is a fact. This is the first compulsory step for a sound change to initiate ([PERSON], 1990; [PERSON], 1981, 2012; [PERSON], 2001, 2002; [PERSON], 2004). After this, the presence of multiple allophones can lead to a process of reanalysis and recategorization following different paths: in the dentoalveolar pair, the acoustic ambiguity among phonetic realizations may imply the selection of the more frequent variants, which would have tended to be the more devoiced ones, so a recategorization as voiceless would follow (a case of choice, according to [PERSON], 2004). In the case of palatal affricates, misperception indicates that listeners reinterpret the input as voiceless, which would mean that their production would have varied to fit a voiceless category (a case of chance in [PERSON], 2004). Even [3] seems to show an incipient tendency to devoicing. These complementary sources could have been the starting point of the whole process.