Giudice Grillo, Andrés2022-03-182022-03-182022-032371-2643http://hdl.handle.net/1880/114489https://dx.doi.org/10.11575/PRISM/39649Ecuadorian Spanish displays significant regional variation affecting the realization of coda /s/. Within the highlands of Ecuador, the pronunciation of coda /s/ as [z] occupies different phonological environments depending on the subregion: While in the far north and south [z] is only found preceding voiced consonants, central and central-southern varieties display [z] in more environments, namely word-final prevocalic and prefix-final environments, which makes them unique in the Spanish-speaking world. In this investigation, I review the main studies that have focused on the description and analysis of coda /s/ voicing in Ecuadorian Spanish (Lipski, 1989 and Bradley & Delforge, 2006) and combine their insights with those of other studies (Muñiz Cachón & Cuevas Alonso, 2012, Navarro Tomás, 1968) which have explored the sonority of preconsonantal /s/. Stemming from this exploration, I present a conciliatory solution to the problem of /s/-voicing. I modify Lipski’s formal analysis to include a voice-neutral [S] that appears in pre-consonantal position, which resonates with the findings by Muñiz Cachón and Cuevas Alonso (2012) and the observations by Navarro Tomás (1968), both of which show that pre-consonantal /s/ in Spanish has gradient voicing.engEcuadorian Spanish/s/-voicingphonologydialectologyworking paper