Segmental, syllabic, and phrasal stratum domains of Dominican Surprise-[s] hypercorrection

In popular Dominican Spanish, the unexpected insertion of [s]/[h], which we call Surprise-[s], as in negativa[s]mente ‘negatively’ or atra[s]co ‘robbery’, has been the topic of numerous analyses. Among other claims, it has been regarded as hypercorrection of the deletion of rhyme /s/; it has also been held to be subject to constraints on syllable position; and it has been thought to obey voicing restrictions across a word boundary and at the end of a phrase. This essay seeks to gain a deeper understanding of Surprise-[s] by proposing two different hypotheses regarding its appearance. First, we attempt to demonstrate that its distribution is not due to any phonological restrictions but, rather, to the phonotactic and lexical frequencies of some consonantal sequences in Spanish. Second, it is shown that whereas underlying /s/ resyllabifies, Surprise-[s] fails to do so. We propose that there exists an abstract, syntactic disjuncture expressed in terms of a metrical grid, preventing Surprise-[s] from resyllabifying.