Intonational phonology and the domain of liaison in French

Abstract

French liaison is a phenomenon where certain word final consonants are pronounced as the onset of a following vowel-initial word. The application of liaison varies depending on a number of factors including morphological, phonological, syntactic, and sociolinguistic factors. For the cases where liaison applies postlexically, prosodic phonologists have claimed that liaison applies within a phonological phrase (PhP), a prosodic domain indirectly defined by syntax. However, many of the empirical studies (e.g., Morin and Kaye, 1982; de Jong, 1994; Post, 2000) have found data that cannot be accounted for by this view, suggesting that this characterization is inadequate. In the current study, liaison data were examined to see if the domain of liaison matches a prosodic unit defined by intonation under the framework of intonational phonology. Data were taken from Post (2000): 27 sentences [nine each in three conditions: the target sequence (C♯V) being inside a PhP, across optional PhPs and obligatory PhPs]. Sentences were randomized and printed with no internal punctuation. Intonation was analyzed using Jun and Fougerons (1995, 2000, in press) model of French intonation. Preliminary results show that the domain of liaison matches an accentual phrase, 91% (including all the optional PhPs), higher than the results predicted by PhP.