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Liaison (linguistics)

Encyclopedia : L : LI : LIA : Liaison (linguistics)

Note: This page contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. See IPA chart for English for a pronunciation key.

In French, most written-word-final consonants are silent in most contexts. Liaison is the pronunciation of such a consonant due to a following vowel sound. For example, the letter s in the word les (the) is generally silent, but it is pronounced /z/ in the combination les amis (the friends). In certain syntactic contexts, liaison is impossible; in others, it is necessary; and in yet others, it is possible but not necessary.

Contents

Classification

Liaison is an external sandhi: a phonological process occurring at a word boundary. Like elision (as in *je aime → j'aime), it serves the euphonic purpose of preventing hiatus.

It is a form of paragoge, the addition of a sound to the end of a word.

Unlike an ephelcystic consonant (like the /t/ in donne-t-il), the consonant in liaison is tied to the history of the language: it is a final consonant that is normally suppressed but that continues to be pronounced before an initial vowel. (See Historical linguistics.)

Realization of liaison

The (usually) silent final consonants of certain words can be pronounced, in certain syntactic contexts, when the following word begins with a vowel. Since the sound thus obtained is an ancient one, spellings that are based on the etymology of the word may not reflect the real pronunciation.

For example, final consonants are pronounced as follows in the case of liaison (the transcription uses IPA; in IPA, liaison is indicated by placing an undertie [‿] between the consonant and the vowel):

With most words whose spellings end in -n and whose pronunciations end in nasal vowels ([ɑ̃], [ɛ̃], [œ̃], or [ɔ̃]), the vowel will be denasalized during liaison:

Types of liaisons

We can broadly define three types of liaison in French. Liaison appears between words that are strongly connected grammatically within one phrasal tonic accent. We distinguish between the following:

Obligatory liaison

The omission of an obligatory liaison is felt by French-speakers as an error in pronunciation, regardless of register. Liaison is obligatory:

Optional liaison

If some liaisons are truly obligatory, others are only "obligatory" in formal speech. The following are some of these optional liaisons, often omitted from everyday speech: Other liaisons that are not explicitly forbidden (see below) are possible. Depending on their frequency, these are more or less pedantic: ils ont‿attendu ("they have waited") seems much less pedantic than tu as‿attendu ("you have waited"). (Note that the everyday spoken forms would more likely be [izɔ̃atɑ̃dy] and [taatɑ̃dy], or simply [taːtɑ̃dy].)

Forbidden liaison

Finally, certain liaisons are impossible:

Errors of liaison

As can be seen, liaison, outlined above, is only obligatory in rare cases. The omission of such a liaison would be considered an error, not simply as taking liberties with the rule. In cases of optional liaison, the omission is common, and liaison appears only in careful speech.

On the other end, placing a liaison where one is impossible can also pass as an error, except in the cases of disjunction with aspirated h's: the liaison will indicate an uncultivated speaker. Even in familiar language, liaison before an aspirated h can seem unsophisticated.

Finally, it happens, due to hypercorrection or due to euphony, that a liaison is pronounced where it doesn't exist (where it is possible by spelling, but forbidden, as with et‿ainsi, or where it is impossible even by spelling, as with moi-z-avec). This phenomenon is called pataquès. In rare cases, these liaisons may be conserved by the language and become obligatory, such as in donnes-en and mange-t-il; see ephelcystic phoneme. Otherwise, they are felt in the same way as omissions of disjunction, suggesting a poorly cultivated or clumsy speaker. Such an error is sometimes called cuir ("leather") when the inserted consonant is [t], velours ("velvet") when it is [z], although dictionaries do not all agree on these terms:

Special cases: poetic verse and applied diction

The reading of poetry (whether said or sung) requires that all liaisons be used (except those described above as impossible), even those of -es in the second-person singular as well as the reading of all necessary “null e’s” (see [the French article on poetry], for more details). The reading of the liaisons affects the number of syllables pronounced, hence is of chief importance for the correct pronunciation of a verse. French-speakers tend as much as possible to avoid a hiatus or a succession of two consonants between two words, in a more or less artificial way.

An applied reading (but without the obligatory reading of “null e’s”) is necessary in an oratory setting. The voice is in effect one of the tools of persuasion: it reflects through a pronunciation that feels exact—according to prevailing norms—intellectual qualities, culture, self-control, and finesse of wit. Pushed too far, the forced respect of liaisons can render a speech ridiculous. It has been pointed out that French politicians and speakers in the 2000s (Jacques Chirac, for example, has a habit of this) apply a strange diction, consisting of automatically pronouncing certain liaisons independently of the following word and introducing a pause (disjunction or euh) after the consonant of liaison. For example, ils ont entendu (“they heard”) is normally pronounced [ilz‿ɔ̃‿ɑ̃tɑ̃dy] or, in more careful speech, [ilz‿ɔ̃t‿ɑ̃tɑ̃dy]. A speaker using this incorrect pronunciation would say [ilz‿ɔ̃t (where [|] represents a pause; ils ont'... entendu). Worse, one might even hear ils ont décidé (“they decided”) pronounced [ilz‿ɔ̃t (ils ont’... décidé) or [ilz‿ɔ̃təː(ːːː) deside] (ils onteuh... décidé). In the first case, a pause between two words related so strongly can seem strange on the part of a speaker; in the second, the liaison is worse than a pataquès since it introduces a phoneme of liaison that is useless in the absence of hiatus.

Origins of liaison

In order to understand the origins of liaison, as well as the divergencies between the written form and the pronunciation, it is necessary to study the language from a diachronic point of view. While the current orthography is recent and artificial, liaison produces the re-appearance of ancient consonants that had been masked by orthographical modifications.

Medieval consonants

For example, the word grand is written grant in medieval manuscripts (grant served for both masculine and feminine gender). The orthography of that age was more phonetic; the word was in all likeliness pronounced [grɑ̃nt], with an audible final /t/, at least until the 12th century. When that consonant become mute (like the majority of ancient final consonants in French), the word continued to be written grant (the preservation of this written form is explained by other reasons; see note), and then become grand by influence of its Latin etymology grandis, with a new (analogic) feminine form grande. The current spelling with a final mute d allows to better show the alternation between grand and grande (an alternation gran ~ grande or grant ~ grande would look less regular to the eye), as well as the lexical relation to grandeur, grandir, grandiloquent, etc. The root grand is written thus regardless of whether the d is pronounced [d], [t] or mute in order for its derivatives to have a single graphic identity, which facilitates memorization and reading.

However, the ancient final [t] of grand did not cease to be pronounced when the following word began with a vowel and belonged to the same tonic cell; It is effectively not at the end of the word anymore, since the ear identifies the stressed group (formed by univerbation), in which the final consonant and the initial vowel appear together, as a new group (or "word") within which the consonant in question has ceased to be final. Bearing in mind that stress in French falls on the last syllable of a word, or a group of words when they are bound grammatically, this situation can be symbolized as follows (the accute represents stress):

This has to do with what the hearer considers to be a word. If grand homme is analyzed as ʁɑ̃t‿ɔm], the ear in fact understands [gʁɑ̃'tɔm], a continuous group of phonemes whose tonic accent signals that they form a unit. It is possible to make a division as [gʁɑ̃] + [tɔm] instead of [gʁɑ̃t] + [ɔm]. Then this [t] will no longer be felt to be a final consonant but a pre-stress intervocalic consonant, and therefore it will resist the deletion that it would undergo if it were at the end of a stressed syllable. It can however undergo other modifications thereafter.

The written form, though, was adapted to criteria that are not phonetic, but etymological (among others): where grand is written, [gʁɑ̃t] is pronounced in front of certain vowels, without that being really awkward: the maintenance of the visual alternation -d ~ -de is more productive.

The other cases are explained in a similar fashion: sang, for example, was pronounced [sɑ̃ŋk] (and written sanc) in Old French, but the final -g has replaced the -c in order to recall the Latin etymology, sanguis, and derivatives like sanguinaire, sanguin. Currently this liaison is almost never heard except in one part of the singing of the Marseillaise ("qu'un san(g) /k/ impur") or in the expression "suer sang et eau". Outside those, the hiatus is tolerated.

Finally, the case of -s and -x pronounced [z] in liaison is explained differently. One must be aware, firstly, that word-final -x is a medieval shorthand for -us (in Old French people wrote chevax for chevaus, latter written chevaux when the idea behind this -x was forgotten). The sound noted -s and -x was a hard [s], which did not remain in French after the 12th century (it can be found in words like (tu) chantes or doux), but which was protected from complete elision when the following word began with a vowel (what effectively means when it was found between two vowels). However, in French, such [s] is voiced and becomes [z] (which explains why, in words like rose and mise, the s is pronounced [z] and not [s]).

Note: if the final -t of grant was kept in the Middle Ages in spite of the disappearance of the corresponding [t], it is because there existed, along with this form, others like grants (rather written granz), wherein the [t] was heard, protected from elisin by the following [s]. The ancient orthography rendered this alternation visible before another one replaced it (the one with d). Indeed, it would be false to state that the orthography of Old French did not follow usage, or that it was without rules.

Fluctuating usages

From the 16th century onward, it was common for grammarians who wished to describe the French language or discuss its orthography to write documents in a phonetic alphabet. From some of these documents, we can see that the liaisons have not always been pronounced as they are today.

For example, the Prayer by Gilles Vaudelin (a document compiled in 1713 using a phonetic alphabet, and introduced in the Nouvelle maniere d'ecrire comme on parle en France ["A New Way of Writing as We Speak in France"]), probably representative of oral language, maybe rural, of the time, shows the absence of the following liaisons (Vaudelin's phonetic alphabet is transcribed using equivalent IPA):

References

See also

 

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