Liaison Consonants Research Articles

Paradigm uniformity effects on French liaison

French liaison is a type of external sandhi involving the use of a special consonant-final allomorph before vowel-initial words. Consonants occurring at the end of these allomorphs are challenging for phonological theory because of evidence that their prosodic and segmental realization is intermediate between the realizations of word-final and word-initial consonants. This puzzling behavior of French liaison has been used to motivate new phonological and lexical representations, including floating consonants, lexical constructions and gradient symbolic representations. This paper proposes an alternative analysis: the variable realization of liaison is derived as a paradigm uniformity effect, assuming traditional phonological and lexical representations. In a Word1-Word2 sequence, the liaison consonant at the boundary between the two words ends up acquiring properties of both word-final and word-initial consonants because of a pressure to make contextual variants of Word1 and Word2 similar to their citation forms. The proposal is implemented in a probabilistic constraint-based grammar including paradigm uniformity constraints and is shown to account for the intermediate behavior of liaison both in terms of prosodic attachment and segmental realization. The paper provides evidence for two key predictions of this analysis, using judgment data on the prosodic attachment of liaison consonants in European French and phonetic data on the interaction between liaison and affrication in Quebec French.

When language-general and language-specific processes are in conflict: The case of sub-syllabic word segmentation in toddlers.

Infants use statistics-based word segmentation strategies from the preverbal stage. Statistical segmentation is, however, constrained by the Onset Bias, a language-universal principle that disfavors segmentation that harms syllable integrity. Children eventually learn language-specific exceptions to this principle. For instance, sub-syllabic parsing occurs for vowel-initial words in French liaison contexts, that is, when a word's final consonant surfaces as the following word's syllabic onset (e.g., /n/ in un /n/éléphant). In past research, French-learning 24-month-olds succeeded in parsing a vowel-initial pseudo-word surfacing with variable liaison consonants. This study further investigated infants' liaison representation, its potential impacts on parsing, and its interaction with the Onset Bias. In Experiments 1 and 2, French-learning 24-month-olds were familiarized with pseudo-words with variable liaison-like versus nonliaison-like onset consonants, preceded by words that cannot trigger those onsets (e.g., un zonche; un gonche). We found no mis-segmentation as vowel-initial and successful segmentation as consonant-initial. In Experiment 3, when the preceding words could trigger a liaison consonant that matched the onset of the following word (e.g., un nonche), infants showed a vowel-initial mis-interpretation, against the Onset Bias, revealing an effect of liaison knowledge. These results demonstrate that toddlers balance their use of language-general principles/strategies and language-specific knowledge during early acquisition.

Variable forms in French-learning toddlers' lexical representations.

We investigated toddlers' phonological representations of common vowel-initial words that can take on multiple surface forms in the input. In French, liaison consonants are inserted and are syllabified as onsets in subsequent vowel-initial words, for example, petit /t/ éléphant [little elephant]. We aimed to better understand the impact on children's early lexical representations of this frequent intrusion by consonants by testing whether toddlers store multiple forms for vowel-initial words (e.g., téléphant, zéléphant) early in acquisition. Thirty-one Quebec French-learning 30-month-olds completed an eye-tracking experiment (16 girls). Children were predominantly from White, middle-class families living in a large urban area (Montreal). Each trial presented two objects while one of them was named. There were four key trial types: (a) correct vowel-initial (e.g., joli éléphant [pretty elephant]); (b) pragmatically incorrect frequent intrusion (e.g., joli zéléphant, /z/ intrusion [pretty elephants], which is grammatically acceptable but does not correspond to the picture); (c) lexically incorrect frequent intrusion (e.g., joli téléphant, /t/ intrusion, as /t/ is a frequent liaison consonant in general but is impossible with joli); (d) lexically incorrect infrequent intrusion (e.g., joli géléphant, /g/ intrusion, as /g/ is an infrequent liaison consonant and is also impossible with joli). The results showed that target recognition was successful in the frequent /t/- and /z/-intrusion trials and was also evident in the vowel-initial trials, whereas it was impeded in the infrequent /g/-intrusion trials. Our findings demonstrate that French-learning children's early lexicon contains multiple variants for words that are subject to phonological alternations, including frequent liaison-consonant variants. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Gradient behavior without gradient underlying representations: the case of French liaison

French liaison consonants are challenging for phonological theory because they pattern ambiguously between word-initial and word-final consonants. In recent works, these facts have been used to motivate different underlying representations for liaison consonants and non-liaison consonants. This paper argues that this move is not necessary. The gradient behavior of liaison consonants can indeed be derived through constraint interaction while maintaining that liaison consonants and non-liaison consonants have the same underlying representation. Two independently motivated hypotheses will play a key role in deriving this result: (i) word variants strive to be similar to their citation forms via output-output correspondence and (ii) concatenating two words (word 1 and word 2) has phonetic/phonological consequences on word 1's final segment and on word 2's initial segment. Together with the fact that liaison consonants are absent from the citation forms of liaison words, these hypotheses predict that liaison consonants will be less protected against changes than stable word-final consonants but more protected than word-initial consonants, thus explaining their gradient behavior. The analysis is illustrated with a detailed case study on Quebec French affrication combining corpus data and grammatical modeling.

Development of Liaison Representation and its Top-Down Influence on Word Processing in Infants

ABSTRACTWe examined how toddlers process lexical ambiguity where different underlying forms are neutralized at the surface level. In a preferential-looking procedure, French-learning 30-month-olds were familiarized with either liaison-ambiguous phrases (i.e., sentences containing a determiner and a non-word, e.g., ces /z/onches, “these onches”, “these zonches”) (Experiment 1), or non-ambiguous (non-liaison) phrases (sentences containing un zonche, “a zonche”) (Experiment 2). Infants in both experiments showed a vowel-initial interpretation for the non-word, i.e., perceiving /z/ as an independent unit. In Experiment 3, 36-month-olds accepted both vowel- and consonant-initial forms (e.g., zonche, onche) after hearing the non-ambiguous cases (un zonche), suggesting an emerging but unstable understanding of the relationship between specific determiners and liaison consonants. Overall, infants represented the liaison consonant /z/ as an independent unit, consistent with the adult grammar. Furthermore, liaison knowledge biased infants’ interpretation of liaison-ambiguous cases (same as in adults) and even non-liaison cases.

Contextual phonological errors and omission of obligatory liaison as a window into a reduced span of phonological encoding

ABSTRACTBackground: The question of how much speakers plan ahead before they start articulating their message is essential to understand how fluency is ensured during speech production. This question has been largely investigated in healthy speakers. Surprisingly, this remains unexplored for brain-damaged speakers, even though a reduced span of encoding might account for the fact that those impaired speakers often produce scattered speech.Aims: In this study, we examine whether the span of encoding is reduced in some left hemisphere brain-damaged speakers by taking advantage of two linguistic phenomena which provide an insight into ahead phonological planning.Methods and procedures: First, we elicit the production of French sequences involving obligatory liaisons (e.g., /mõ/ and /ami/ produced /mõ.nami/), for which the correct production requires ahead planning, at least up to the first phoneme of the following word of the utterance. Second, we use tongue-twister-like sequences in order to elicit contextual phonological errors, as phoneme anticipation errors (e.g., bureau vert—green desk—produced /vyRo.vER/) suggest that the speaker has planned ahead before articulating. If brain-damaged speakers do present a reduced span of encoding, they should both produce a high rate of liaison consonant omissions and a low rate of anticipation contextual phonological errors.Outcome and results: The results on a group of 13 speakers with aphasia and/or apraxia of speech overall show few contextual (syntagmatic) errors despite a high rate of segmental errors, whereas the majority of phonological errors produced on the same utterances by healthy speakers were syntagmatic. The speech/language impaired participants also presented a high rate of obligatory liaison consonants omission. Crucially, a negative correlation was observed between the rate of phoneme anticipation errors and the rate of liaison consonant omission.Conclusion: These results suggest that some brain-damaged speakers present a span of phonological encoding limited to single words and that the use of inter-word sandhi phenomena, such as French liaison and the analysis of phoneme anticipation errors, are valid linguistic tools to inform on the span of encoding.

Variable and invariable liaison in a corpus of spoken French

ABSTRACTUsing texts selected from the C-Oral-Rom corpus, this study considers how linguistic and sociolinguistic variables affect liaison. In the majority of cases, liaison appears on monosyllabic function words. Individual lexemes differ greatly in rate of liaison. With regard to sociolinguistic variation, female speakers realize liaison consonants more often than male speakers, younger speakers realize it more often than older speakers, and liaison rates for speakers without university degree are higher than for speakers with university degree. Results are discussed in the light of models of prosodic structure and with respect to their implications for models of socio-linguistic variation.

Distributional cues and the onset bias in early word segmentation.

In previous infant studies on statistics-based word segmentation, the unit of statistical computation was always aligned with the syllabic edge, which had a consonant onset. The current study addressed whether the learning system imposes a constraint that favors word forms beginning with a consonant onset over those beginning with an onsetless sub-syllable, by examining infants' segmentation of vowel-initial non-words in French liaison. French-learning 20- and 24-month-old infants (N = 64) were familiarized with sentences containing variable liaison consonants preceding the same vowel-initial non-word (e.g., /n/onche, /z/onche, /r/onche, /t/onche), such that the distributional cues supported the sub-syllabic target (e.g., onche). After familiarization, we tested sub-syllabic statistical segmentation by presenting the vowel-initial target (e.g., onche) versus another non-familiarized vowel-initial word (e.g., èque). Another group of infants was tested with a consonant-initial mis-segmentation of the target (e.g., zonche) versus another non-familiarized consonant-initial word (e.g., zèque). Results showed that 20-month-olds failed to segment the vowel-initial targets, but they mis-segmented the targets as consonant-initial, indicating that the onset bias dominated over sub-syllabic statistics for word segmentation at this age. Twenty-four-month-olds showed ambiguous interpretations (i.e., both vowel-initial segmentation and consonant-initial mis-segmentation), suggesting that the use of statistics to segment sub-syllabic words was emerging while the onset bias continued to have an impact.

English Listeners’ Use of Distributional and Acoustic-Phonetic Cues to Liaison in French: Evidence from Eye Movements

This study investigates English listeners’ use of distributional and acoustic-phonetic cues to liaison in French. Liaison creates a misalignment of the syllable and word boundaries, but is signaled by distributional cues (/z/ is a frequent liaison but not a frequent word onset; /t/ is a frequent word onset but a less frequent liaison) and acoustic-phonetic cues (liaison consonants are 15 per cent shorter than word-initial consonants). English-speaking French learners completed a visual-world eye-tracking experiment in which they heard adjective-noun sequences where the pivotal consonant was /t/ (expected advantage for consonant-initial words) or /z/ (expected advantage for liaison-initial words). Their results were compared to those of native French speakers. Both groups showed an advantage for consonant-initial targets with /t/ but no advantage for consonant- or liaison-initial targets with /z/. Both groups’ competitor fixations were modulated by the duration of the pivotal consonant, but only the learners’ fixations to liaison-initial targets were modulated by the duration of the pivotal consonant. This suggests that English listeners use both top-down (distributional) and bottom-up (acoustic-phonetic) cues to liaison in French. Their greater reliance on acoustic-phonetic cues is hypothesized to stem in part from English, where such cues play an important role for locating word boundaries.

Segmenting liaison-initial words: The role of predictive dependencies

Listeners use several cues to segment speech into words. However, it is unclear how these cues work together. This study examines the relative weight of distributional and (natural) acoustic–phonetic cues in French listeners' recognition of temporarily ambiguous vowel-initial words in liaison contexts (e.g., parfai t [t]abri “perfect shelter”) and corresponding consonant-initial words (e.g., parfait tableau “perfect painting”). Participants completed a visual-world eye-tracking experiment in which they heard adjective–noun sequences where the pivotal consonant was /t/ (more frequent as word-initial consonant and thus expected advantage for consonant-initial words), /z/ (more frequent as liaison consonant and thus expected advantage for liaison-initial words), or /n/ (roughly as frequent as word-initial and liaison consonants and thus no expected advantage). The results for /t/ and /z/ were as expected, but those for /n/ showed an advantage for consonant-initial words over liaison-initial ones. These results are consistent with speech segmentation theories in which distributional information supersedes acoustic–phonetic information, but they also suggest a privileged status for consonant-initial words when the input does not strongly favour liaison-initial words.

Acoustic and articulatory evidence for the phonological status of liaison consonants

French liaison consonants (LC) are a special class of word-final segments whose realization depends on a combination of phonological, lexical, and syntactic factors. Most previous analyses viewed LCs as coda consonants realized only before vowel-initial words. Because of their special status as syntactically and lexically conditioned, an interesting question is whether LCs exhibit typical acoustic and articulatory characteristics of word-final consonants. This paper presents the results of an experimental investigation of LCs in adjective+noun pairings in Quebec French, using electromagnetic articulography to collect kinematic data. Compared to typical coda and onset consonants, liaison consonants were found to exhibit smaller magnitude release gestures, and in some cases, LC closure gestures were more similar to those of onsets than codas. Unlike coda consonants, LCs did not induce gestural shortening or laxing (F1 raising) of the preceding vowel. Hence our results indicate that, although LCs have been analyzed as word-final consonants, they exhibit neither typical coda- or onset-like acoustic and articulatory properties. These results are important because they show that syntactically conditioned lexical phonology can result in non-canonical articulatory patterns, and hence speak to the need for models of production to incorporate both lexical representations and syntactic context as factors.

Acoustical cues versus top-down bias in infants’ parsing

French liaison involves the surfacing of an underlying consonant as the onset of the following vowel-initial word (e.g., les amis - /le/ /zami /), creating misalignment. However, acoustic cues that support vowel-initial parsing may exist. We tested French-learning 30-month-olds using a preferential looking procedure. Familiarization stimuli in experiment 1 were sentences each containing a determiner preceding a vowel-initial non-word (e.g., ces onches). Infants’ parsing of the non-word was assessed. The vowel-initial condition presented the vowel-initial non-word versus another non-target (onches - èque). The syllabic condition tested the consonant-initial parse (zonches - zèque). Infants in the vowel-initial, but not the syllabic condition, showed discrimination (p = 0.008), i.e., they correctly parsed the vowel-initial target, possibly using acoustic cues. However, knowledge of underlying liaison consonants can also explain these results. In experiment 2, we removed acoustic cues to vowel-initial parsing by using a consonant-initial non-word following a determiner as the familiarization stimuli (e.g., un zonches). Infants were tested with the same two conditions as in experiment 1. Infants yielded the same results as in experiment 1, showing discrimination only in the vowel-initial condition (p = 0.047). Taken together, 30-month-olds perceived /z/ as an underlying floating element; they used this liaison knowledge, rather than possible acoustical cues, for parsing.

Le statut lexical des consonnes de liaison

One of the issues raised by liaison concerns the lexical status of liaison consonants (LCs). LCs are generally assumed to be lexically attached to the preceding word. It has also been proposed that they are epenthetic and lexically independent, or that they belong to the following word. This issue is revisited in light of new or neglected data, notably from acquisition and phonetics. In the general case LCs are argued to be epenthetic, but in marginal cases they correspond to (fixed) initial or final consonants belonging to distinct allomorphs of the following or preceding word. The model of liaison that emerges from these different categories of LCs differs from the traditional view in several respects. First, liaison is not considered a uniform process. Second, “floating” segments are evacuated. Third, liaison appears to be driven by a constraint requiring lexical invariance, as it involves no modifications of lexical forms, and a constraint against allomorphy. This approach is characterized by the unicity, simplicity, and invariance of lexical forms. By contrast, previous analyses have viewed liaison as a simple and unified process, but they involve either numerous lexical exceptions, widespread allomorphy, or complex autosegmental representations.

Sur la grammaire des consonnes latentes

Liaison in French is commonly described as involving a “latent” consonant whose realization or suppression is determined by contextual factors. This is an oversimplified view of the phenomenon, but liaison consonants (when pronounced) do have distinctive properties that call for a special treatment. Furthermore, the same notion of latent consonant appears to be relevant for morphological derivation. In this paper we offer a new formalization that captures the special status of latent consonants, by representing them as an “appendix” to the phonological “body” of a linguistic sign. We present an analysis of liaison that makes use of phonological representations of this type (while remaining general enough to accommodate cases where liaison does not involve a latent consonant). We explain in detail how the phonology is constructed in phrasal combinations, incorporating syntactic and lexical constraints, giving rise to the observed inventory of obligatory, optional, and impossible liaison contexts. We also show that the phonological appendix can be used to account for the realization of latent consonants in morphological derivation (even when these consonants do not participate in the liaison alternation).

Le statut lexical des consonnes de liaison

ENG : phonology!French!liaison!acquisition!lexical representations!

La liaison : effets de fréquence et constructions

This paper views the alternation between liaison consonants and their absence as due neither to insertion nor deletion, but rather to the existence of alternant morphosyntactic constructions containing the liaison consonant. These alternate constructions can be viewed as irregular in much the same way as certain morphological paradigms are considered irregular. A certain level of token frequency is necessary to maintain these irregularities (as confirmed with data from Âgren, 1973), and the less frequent of such constructions tend to be lost. High frequency constructions (such as determiner + noun) are also felt to have a higher degree of syntactic cohesion; thus frequency can account for the intuition that liaison is maintained where there is tighter syntactic cohesion.

Sur la grammaire des consonnes latentes

Liaison in French is commonly described as involving a "latent" consonant whose realization or suppression is determined by contextual factors. This is an oversimplified view of the phenomenon, but liaison consonants (when pronounced) do have distinctive properties that call for a special treatment. Furthermore, the same notion of latent consonant appears to be relevant for morphological derivation. In this paper we offer a new formalization that captures the special status of latent consonants, by representing them as an "appendix" to the phonological "body" of a linguistic sign. We present an analysis of liaison that makes use of phonological representations of this type (while remaining general enough to accommodate cases where liaison does not involve a latent consonant). We explain in detail how the phonology is constructed in phrasal combinations, incorporating syntactic and lexical constraints, giving rise to the observed inventory of obligatory, optional, and impossible liaison contexts. We also show that the phonological appendix can be used to account for the realization of latent consonants in morphological derivation (even when these consonants do not participate in the liaison alternation).

Le traitement cognitif de la liaison dans la reconnaissance de la parole enchaînée

How do French listeners recognise words in liaison environments? This article presents a literature review on liaison processing by French adults. First, we will see that despite phonological variations and resyllabification associated to the liaison phenomenon, lexical access is not impaired for bound words. We will then examine various factors that are involved in lexical access for words that undergo liaison. We will see that the resolution of liaison depends partly on acoustic cues that distinguish liaison consonants from non-liaison consonants, and partly on the availability of lexical support for a liaison interpretation.