Reassessing the influence of word position on the variation of Spanish syllable-final s: Data from Ciudad Real

Word position, together with the following phonetic context, is generally considered to be one of the most important linguistic factors that condition the weakening of Spanish syllable-final s. In this article a critical look is taken at the ways its influence has been studied up to this date, and, based on the data from our own previous research in Ciudad Real, Spain, a more precise way of assessing its relevance is proposed. It is argued that the procedure of comparing one word-internal context (preconsonantal) with three word-final ones (preconsonantal, prevocalic and prepausal) is fundamentally flawed, and it is suggested that the possible influence of all contextual factors needs to be eliminated for us to be able to appraise the actual importance of the distributional factors. When assessed in this way, word position seems to play a far more marginal role than is usually considered.