Seeds of change

Abstract

Intervocalic /s/ voicing is of much interest recently in Hispanic Linguistics for two principal reasons: this feature has been attested in diverse dialects of Spanish, and it has been shown to correlate in production and perception with social factors (Davidson 2014; Chappell 2016; García 2019; among others). One finding that often surfaces is that male speakers voice more than female speakers, and recent studies consider whether this may be due to physiological differences (File-Muriel, Brown, and Gradoville 2015; Chappell and García 2017). The present study examines the interaction of gender, age, and interspeaker variation in the voicing of intervocalic /s/ in the speech of 31 natives of Loja, Ecuador. While variationist studies overwhelmingly show women leading change in progress, I argue that young men are leading voicing in Lojano Spanish and that this study of a smaller, non-English speaking community further elucidates the intricacies of gender and linguistic change.