French Liaison as a Function of Grammatical, Phonetic and Paralinguistic Variables

Abstract

Abstract This article, the sixth in a series presenting the results of a computer-assisted analysis of a tape-recorded corpus of natural conversations by members of the educated middle-class of Paris, deals with liaison. The results, as compared to those of earlier studies on this subject, show a number of interesting differences, possibly due to recent linguistic evolution. The frequency of liaison is studied in the context of (1) the grammatical functions of the contiguous words involved in the phenomenon, (2) the phonetic characteristics of the liaison consonant and (3) a number of paralinguistic variables such as sex, age, occupation, syllabic rate, loudness, the attitude and posture of the speaker, and subject matter. These results are incorporated into a new table of practical rules for the linguist, teacher and student of French, that also specifies liaison differences between the conversational style of the dominant (Ile-de-France) dialect of French and the artistic affectation known as elocution.