Context and vowel harmony: are they essential to identify underlying word-final /s/ in Eastern Andalusian Spanish?

Eastern Andalusian Spanish has been studied in detail; however, scholars have focused on production and the debate regarding its phonetic and phonological features is still ongoing. This paper analyses Eastern Andalusian Spanish perceptually to establish whether contextual information (articles, numerals, etc.) and vowel harmony are essential to identify underlying word-final /s/. The correct identification of underlying /s/ has been attributed to contextual information and to vowel harmony; however, no perceptual study has been performed to support these claims. A total of 7126 answers from 153 participants across two experiments are analysed to establish whether context and vowel harmony are necessary to perceive underlying word-final Eastern Andalusian /s/. These experiments examine the ability of Eastern Andalusian speakers to distinguish words with and without word-final /s/ deletion. The results show that neither contextual information nor vowel harmony are necessary to identify underlying /-s/ in Eastern Andalusian Spanish.