摘要：Although lenition processes have been traditionally analysed from a segmentalperspective, they can also affect whole lexical and functional units. This is the caseof the Spanish preposition de, which can be deleted in casual speech and in certainsyntactic constructions (e.g. noun complements) (see Rigau, 1999; Suñer, 1999;Estrada, 2016). Some authors have shown that de deletion is a very commonphenomenon, especially in certain geographical areas (see Arjona, 1978, 1979;Sosa Alonso, 2003; Gómez, 2014, as a few examples). Our aim in this paper is toanalyse the production of de in spontaneous speech in order to check whetherlenition is really affecting the preposition. We will approach the topic from aphonetic and experimental standpoint. The results demonstrate that the productionof de renders a lot of phonetic variation, which can be organized in a hyper tohypoarticulation continuum. Speakers seem to choose from the pool of variants according to (i) the preceding phonetic context and (ii) the distance from the last lexical stress: they prefer hypoarticulated realizations (including deletion) after a vowel and at least two syllables away from stress, whereas they tend to select hyperarticulated realizations after a pause or a consonant and in a posttonic syllable. The syntactic value of the prepositional phrase does not seem to condition the reduction of de.
