Positional debuccalisation of /s/ in Spanish dialects: the variable cyclicity of prefixes

This paper attempts to resolve the dialect variation of s-debuccalisation without invoking rule ordering (Harris & Kaisse 1999), or level ordering (Broś 2018), or using tools such as Output-Output Correspondence (McCarthy 2005). What makes this possible is renouncing the belief that “prefixes” and “words” represent unified domains across the different dialects of Spanish. Instead, I will demonstrate that the differences are explained almost entirely by whether one considers prefixes to be cyclic. If they are, there is effectively a word-boundary between prefix and stem, otherwise the juncture between prefix and stem is effectively word-medial. With this assumption alone, the representational account here allows the opacity to emerge directly from the representation in the Granadan prefix-juncture and the Chilean word-juncture. The typology of positional s-debuccalisation is then completed as we consider Buenos Aires Spanish. The analysis will be stated in realisational terms using a modular phonology > phonetics architecture (cf. Substance Free Phonology (Hale & Reiss 2008; Reiss 2017)) and the representational tools of Strict CV (Ségéral & Scheer 2001).