Talk:Liaison (French)

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See Talk:Liaison/Translation_from_French. If you can help translate from French, please do. :-) Ruakh 19:27, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Just finished. I still think it's very French specific (and verbose!) to put it all in Liaison; I'd rather make a special Liaison in French article, and leave only the generalities over here. --Pablo D. Flores 12:09, 20 May 2005 (UTC)

But isn't liaison specifically describing the phenomenon in French? I mean, it is a French word. The general term for it might be sandhi, which could use a little reference to its application in French. --Euniana/Talk/Blog 15:24, 20 May 2005 (UTC)

Well, tsunami is a Japanese word. :-( The way I understand it, it's a phenomenon that happens in many languages, but among Western European languages (the most studied, in other times) French is the only one that features it prominently, and so French got to name it. Sandhi is a more general concept I think, and mostly refers to modification of features by other features (not only phonemes, also tonemes). I mentioned to Ruakh that in Rioplatense Spanish syllable final -s tends to become [h] or disappear, but in some areas it reappears when the next word begins with a vowel -- much as in French liaison. So the phenomenon is not exclusive of French. --Pablo D. Flores 03:04, 21 May 2005 (UTC)

Contents 1 Liaison in English 2 Translations + GFDL? 3 Pronunciation of "liaison" 4 Requested move 4.1 Voting 5 sang impur?? 6 stress in French 7 Requested move 7.1 Survey 7.2 Discussion 8 Capitalizing Latin. 9 Some remarks, excuse my english... 10 Liaison with -t- in inverted verbs 10.1 November 2007 edit dispute 11 Impossible liaisons ?

[edit] Liaison in English

We have liaison in English, too, although it doesn't affect spelling. http://www.bartleby.com/185/29.html Saint|swithin 21:21, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

First of all, English has changed, and linguistics progressed, very much since 1921; if you can't find a more recent source for such a claim, then it's probably not a valid one. Second of all, that author is confusing la liaison with l'enchaînement; some of his examples do fall into the former category, but most fall into the latter, and the definition he gives for la liaison is actually the definition of l'enchaînement. (It's possible that the distinction between the terms was not made in 1921, but it's made universally today.)

That said, the linking and intrusive r's found in non-rhotic dialects of English could be considered to constitute liaison, and that does bear mention. Ruakh 03:57, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

I'm not trained in linguistics, so I'm happy to bow to your superior knowledge. "The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language" mentions the linking and intrusive Rs in non-rhotic accents, although it does mysteriously add that "for the rest, [liaison] is a quite general phonological phenomenon" (?) It also mentions "an" as a liaison form of "a".

From a perhaps less reliable source, I also found "linking or liaison, which is the connecting of the final sound of one word or syllable to the initial sound of the next" ("Teaching Pronunciation: A Reference for Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages"). I've seen this use of the word "liaison" in many TEFL books: is it just a looser, informal use of the word, or does "liaison" when used to refer to other languages than French have a slightly different meaning? Would this meaning be worth mentioning here, at least in the form "some laymen mistakenly understand liaison to be..."? Saint|swithin 10:48, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

I'm not trained in linguistics, either, so don't put too much stock in what I say. ;-)

I don't own a copy of the The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, but the discussion of the linking and intrusive r's found in non-rhotic dialects seems to be in chapter 1 (on page 14), which is free online (in this PDF file), and I don't see your quote there? I definitely agree that an is a liaison form of a.

In French, a major distinction is drawn between l'enchaînement and la liaison. The former refers to the way that word-final consonants are pronounced as though they were word-initial consonants in the following words (provided the following words start with vowels). For example, avec is ordinarily [avɛk], but avec une is not [avɛk yn], but rather [avɛ kyn]. The latter refers to the way that word-final consonants are sometimes added to words when the words after them start with vowels. For example, avait is ordinarily [avɛ], but avait une is [avɛ tyn]. Indeed, since the word-final consonants that la liaison adds invariably appear at the start of the next word, one could argue that la liaison entails l'enchaînement (but not the reverse), but in practice, l'enchaînement generally refers specifically to l'enchaînement-without-la liaison. All that said, it's possible that the word liaison, in being borrowed to English, has been broadened to cover l'enchaînement in this language. This being the English Wikipedia, it should use the English definition, not the French one; so we need to include examples of what the French would not consider to be liaison. Ruakh 14:59, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

If you "search inside the book" at amazon.com [1] for "liaison", the quote is on P. 1621 :-) Saint|swithin 17:37, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

I believe that liaisons are not restricted to French. Besides the afore-mentioned linking 'r', it is noteworthy to remind that liaisons are not spelling-related in English. Think of:

• Law [r] and order
• No, [w] I don't
• Mary [j] and John

User:Unser_meister

I don't use any of those purported liaisons; I say "law and order" and "Mary and John" without any [r] or [j], and I say "no" with [w] whether or not it's followed by a vowel. I've heard that some speakers do use that [r] — it's called an "intrusive r" — and I've even heard it once for myself, but I've never heard of [w] or [j] being inserted in that way. Do you have a source? Ruakh 01:07, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

---

The following comes from Wikipedia:Village pump (assistance):

[edit] Pronunciation of "liaison"

It would be nice to know the pronunciation of 'liaison' -- possibly the accepted English as well as French version.

Making this clear at the beginning of the article would be an improvement, in my opinion. 69.6.162.160 21:58, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

That's not really an encyclopedia's role; that's more of a dictionary thing. (I don't know why that is, just that it is.)

For your information, though, it's pronounced /ljɛ 'zɔ̃/ in French. As for English, I'm not good with the IPA for English vowels, but informally I'd spell its pronunciation "lee-A-zon." Ruakh 05:05, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

That's probably one of the best ways to give it's English pronunciation. I'd also say \liːeɪzɒn\. If one knew this particular pseudo-IPA scheme, one would be able to work out it corresponds to the same in RP, /li.ezɑn/ in GAm. and /liːæɪzɔn/ in AusE: All equally bad at representing the French sound. This is part of the reason it's not Wikipedia's job to indicate pronunciations. (The stress is either on the second last or the last syllable, but if more than one vowel has a full quality I can never work out which just thinking about it.) —Felix the Cassowary 08:47, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for your IPA-ings. :-) And the stress is definitely on the second-to-last syllable, at least in American English.

One quibble: I'm a bit surprised by the iː in your IPA transcriptions of RP and AusE. Doesn't the ː indicate a lengthening of the i? In AmE, at least, the i is quite short (duration-wise, I mean), and I can't imagine any dialect in which the word could be pronounced with an extended i sound. Ruakh 09:25, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

Well, in a phonetic transcription it does, but in a phonemic one it just means that native speakers consider the first vowel of "liaison" and "bead" to be the same, and "bead" is written as /biːd/. In a stressed syllable, it's pronounced longer than /ɪ/ (KIT) in an equivalent syllable (in RP and AusE), and this extra duration is important in distinguishing it from /ɪ/ (in RP and AusE), so it gets the length mark. In an unstressed syllable it tends to be shortened (at least in AusE), so phonetically one could say it's pronounced as [liæɪzɔn] in AusE. That's part of the way I was able to tell that the first syllable isn't stressed. (OTOH, in American English the duration is often a lot less relevant, even in stressed syllables, and often the way to tell a pair such as bin /bɪn/ vs bean /bin/ apart is by the quality of the sound, and so the colon is often unused even in stressed syllables. This means that to me (as an Australain) the way some Americans say "bean" (or even "bait") can sound like "bin" (or "bet").) —Felix the Cassowary 12:16, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Requested move

• Talk:Liaison — Liaison → Liaison (linguistics) – Too specific on one definition of liaison, but translated from a FA on fr.wiki McNeight 22:51, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Voting

Add *Support or *Oppose followed by an optional one-sentence explanation, then sign your vote with ~~~~

• Support - Excellent page, but there is no reference to English uses such as a military liaison or as a synonym for affair. McNeight 22:58, 10 January 2006 (UTC)
• Support. Ruakh 01:56, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Moved. —Nightstallion (?) 08:20, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] sang impur??

As a native speaker of French, I cannot think of a liaison in [g] or [k]. I'm going to delete this example unless this raises controversy. user: unser_meister

The phrase "sang impur" is from La Marseillaise.

To quote from one of my old French textbooks (Savoir dire: Cours de phonétique et de prononciation, by Diane Dansereau, ISBN 0-669-20996-1):

Les lettres s, x, z, t, d, r, p, g, f, et n, muettes pour la plupart à la fin du mot isolé, se prononcent en liaison de la manière suivante:

[...]

g = [g] dans la langue parlée courante (mais les mots terminés en g sont rares: long été [lɔ̃ ge te])

g = [k] dans le style littéraire soigné: long été [lɔ̃ ke te]

[...]

(For those who don't understand French, the above says, if I may summarize, that it's rare for a word to end in g, but when it does, and a liaison is formed, ordinary spoken speech pronounces it [g], while a careful literary style pronounces it [k].)

Ruakh 01:07, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Doesn't "sang impur" come under the "forbidden liaisons" category: "after the silent final consonant of a singular common noun"?--Andrew, 220.253.100.51 03:31, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Yes, but it's still pronounced in La Marseillaise. (And indeed, there a number of fixed expressions where that rule is violated, including nuit et jour, mot à mot, and accent aigu.) Ruakh 12:03, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

As a native speaker of french, I agree with unser meister. There is no liaison with g or k in french today , the exemple of the marseillaise, that I have already met, comes from where at the beginning ? I have always heard people singing it WHITHOUT that liaison and I am fifty...and living when I was young in Paris nor I have heard anybody saying "lon gété" !

thoses liaisons existed maybe in the XIXth century !

a textbook is only a text book, Diane Dansereau is only a professor of french somewhere, where has she found her examples ? Many textbooks have mistakes, here you can see one : liaison in french is not really the "pronounciation of a letter" ! this is only a simplification to explain to students ! stefjourdan@caramail.com

You can find this K-liaison referenced in :

• Pierre Fouché, Traité de prononciation française, Klincksieck, Paris, 1988, réimpr. 2×10^{{{1}}} éd. 1959, 528 p. ISBN 2-252-02610-3, p. 434-479
• Maurice Grevisse, Le bon usage, 12×10^{{{1}}} éd. refondue par André Goosse, Duculot, Paris, 1993, 1762 p. ISBN 2-8011-0042-0, p. 45-49

but they are obviously mostly historical. I never heard it either (But I'm only 26.)

I do not remember having heard [g] pronunciation with "long été", but this is indeed a situation where you can feel incomfortable in careful reading : you feel that there "should be something" since anteposed adjective normally require compulsory liaison, yet cannot find it. This happens especially with long and blanc.
Possibly some speakers get rid of the trouble by using a feminine-sounding form "longue" as a prevocalic form of the adjective. There are alreally anteposed adjectives that use prevocalically a feminine-sounding form French (though orthography still distinguishes genders) : 1st, those ending in a nasal vowel make a liaison in -n with denasalisation, which is exactly the way feminines are formed orally (orthographically, you also have to add-e) ; 2nd, beau, nouveau, fou, mou, vieux become bel, nouvel, fol, mol, vieil sounding like the feminines belle, nouvelle, folle, molle, vieille prevocalically (an alternation actually related to historical vocalisation of l). Possibly those speakers inconsciously have a rule "use feminine forms of anteposed adjectives prevocalically" there and extend it to "long". Maybe ; unfortunately, I do not remember any study about it, and as original research, it cannot enter Wikipedia. Bertrand Bellet (on French Wikipedia) 13:35, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

The "gender-switching" idea has been proposed before (Perlmutter 1998, Tranel 1996), but this article argues against it. CapnPrep 13:04, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] stress in French

The article says "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,...". I strongly disagree with this statement being native French speaker myself. The French language does not stress any part of a word over another unless a special effect is desired (ex: SEULement ) and in which case it could be anywhere in the word. Where did the wikipedian who wrote that got his/her references from? 209.202.82.139 18:05, 9 January 2007 (UTC) Artaxerxes

It's well established that in French the accent (l'accent tonique) always falls on the last full syllable of a word or group of words (d'un mot phonétique). Now, accent not being quite the same as stress, there is a minor fix to be made (viz, replace the word stress with accent), but you seem to be objecting to more than that? —Ruakh_TALK 23:09, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Capitalizing Latin.

Regarding the recent revert war: I'd like to cast my vote for spelling Latin using normal modern conventions — Romance-style capitalization (most words all-lowercase, some words starting with a capital letter for any of various reasons), distinguishing u and v but not i and j, marking long vowels with macrons and leaving short vowels unmarked. —Ruakh_TALK 18:42, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Some remarks, excuse my english...

1 "In French, most written word-final consonants are silent in most contexts. Liaison is the pronunciation of such a consonant immediately before 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 obligatory; and in yet others, it is possible but not obligatory"

this is a very naive definition, based on the "letter concept" of the vovels and consonants, the rest of the article is more scientific, so it should be stressed here that it is rather the vulgar definition

2 Like elision (as in *je aime → j'aime), it can be characterized functionally as a euphonic strategy for avoiding hiatus. If we look at it like this, we are adopting a synchronic approach. This approach does not explain cases where the first word already ends in a consonant, such as tels‿amis, and is therefore already perfectly euphonic.

very good, and does not explain why hiatus is not avoided in cases like "le plus laid en france" (compare with les enfants)

3 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.

I should specify : "final written consonants" and we are again in the vulgar explanation, based on letters, it would be smarter to refer to latent consonants

4 Littré. A liaison consonant should not be pronounced immediately after [ʁ]. Plural [z] is recognized as an exception to this rule, and various other counterexamples can be observed: pars‿avec lui, fort‿agréable, vers‿une solution.

those examples are not good ! in fort agréable, the liaison with the t is probably an hypercorrectism as you can link with the r but you can say, it's true "for ta gréable" the two other examples simply are out of date : nobody today could say "par za vec lui" or "ver zun solusion" even in poetry or theatre so I think your counter examples are wrong and Littré is still good !

5 [taːtɑ̃dy].) this phonetic transcription is not good, the tilde should be on top of the a instead of the d, but this a smal problem. the great problem is that the [aː] does not retranscript the prononciation of this phonemes : a long a is not prononced here but rather a long a with two peaks of intensity !

6 Careful pronunciation (but without the obligatory reading of “null e’s”) is necessary in a formal setting. yes, it is what I call diction (see the diction page in french) The voice is a tool of persuasion: it reflects, through a pronunciation perceived as correct (according to prevailing norms), intellectual qualities, culture, self-control, and wit. Pushed too far, the over-proliferation of liaisons can render a speech ridiculous. or prononciation of all the null e's, yes it's true (and that why the "midi" accent still is laughed at in french...

It has been pointed out that French politicians and speakers (Jacques Chirac, for example) pronounce some liaison consonants, independently of the following word, introducing a pause or a schwa afterwards. 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 "politician" pronunciation would say [ilz‿ɔ̃t ǀ ɑ̃tɑ̃dy] (where [ǀ] represents a pause; ils ont'… entendu). One might even hear ils ont décidé (“they decided”) pronounced [ilz‿ɔ̃t ǀ deside] (ils ont’… décidé) or [ilz‿ɔ̃təː(ːːː) deside] (ils onteuh… décidé). In the first example, we have liaison without enchaînement, not the normal configuration in ordinary speech. In the second, the liaison is completely non-standard, since it introduces a liaison consonant before another consonant.

the presence of a schwa or a pause in some liaisons can occur in normal native speaker speech, when he hezitates

the same can be true for the apperance of the t in "is ont décidé" (maybe the speaker was hezitating between "décidé" et "envisagé")if the phenomenon stay rare...

but in the case of Chirac, there is a real deformation of the normal process of the liaison, attested by the high frequencie of such prononciations,

taking Chirac as an "example" is dangerous : he doesnt only prononce his liaisons with pauses or shwa but with glottal stops. (Kwowing that glottal stop never occur in obligatory liaison, what can we deduce of their systematic presence in optional liaisons in some speakers speech ?)

that kind of deformation of the liaison, and the production of unnecessary glottal stops can be heard in a growing number of speakers (are they still native speakers of french ? lot of them have a mixed background of overseas/north african/occitan family, Chirac and Bayrou are in the third category, Royal in the first one and other distortions of the caracteristic french phonological system can be observed in their speech : Chirac says "la pé" instead of correct "la pai", Royal pronounce her imparfait "mangeais" like "manger")

those speakers, apparently native french, doesnt not display the genuine mecanisms of the french language. Scholars wanting to study those pure phenomenons in french have be very carefull before accepting anybody that dont have an other mother language than french as a "native french speaker" (Bayrou also speaks "bearnais", a variety of occitan; probably Chirac understands the corrèze variety of occitan too, but does he speaks, I dont know ? Does Royal speaks or have spoken in her childhood an african language ? where did their parents come from ?). Especially the mother tongue (see the debate on that concept) of the parents and grand-parents, insisting on matriarcal genealogy. On the other hand, Sarkozy, who emigrated to France at the age of eleven has probably learnd the language by immersion in a traditional speaking environment and does not display phonological deformation, even if his prononciation sometimes seems a little exotic (?)

stefjourdan@caramail.com (user "motunono" in french wikipedia)

Thanks, those are very helpful comments. I'd just add, in regard to the examples from Littré, that it is valuable if the article also covers now-obsolete systems of liaison, with a clear specification, of course, that they are obsolete. I'd hate to see valuable information about past speakers' preferences removed from the encyclopedia, just because it is no longer current; the article is not a how-to and can consider the subject diachronically. Wareh 15:49, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Liaison with -t- in inverted verbs

Not all traditional grammars agree whether this really belongs liaison or not, partly because many naively define liaison as pronounciation of silent letters, while here there is an additional lette. Of course, linguistically it is obviously one other instance of that specific French sandhi feature, so it may well belong here.

However, I am quite doubtful of this sentence :

Depending on the word, this -t- may be deemed to be euphonic, but in 100% of cases it is the preservation of an ancient t.

I do not think this is true for 1st group verbs, for final latin -t did not remained unchanged there : after the still preserved ultimate vowel (a > e) it was weakened to a fricative [θ], still written t in the oldest Old French texts (e.g. The Song of Roland's last line Si falt la geste que Turoldus declinet "Here ends the story that Turoldus tells"), and disappeared quickly. You have donat > donet > done "gives" (now written donne).
On the other hand, in 2nd and 3rd verb groups the ultimate vowel was regularly dropped (as is regular when not a) and the final -t, now after another consonant, was not weakened and kept in Old French. It disappeared only much afterwards with most other final consonants in the course of Middle French. E. g. debet > deift (in Oaths of Strasbourg) > deit > doit "must, has to", dicit > dist "says" (now dit), *finiscit > finist "finishes, ends" (now finit).
The usual explanation I know of is that the t is indeed historical in 2nd and 3rd group verbs, where it is a regular case of liaison : doit-il, dit-il, finit-il, and that it was analogically extended to 1st group verbs.

That section would then need to be checked and sourced. Bertrand Bellet (on French Wikipedia) 13:03, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

I agree with you, but I'm not sure it would be appropriate to put all of this historical detail into the article. I suggest simply rewriting the statement you quoted to make it less disputable. I don't agree, by the way, that this is "obviously" an instance of liaison in modern French, since the inverted forms "donne-t-il", "dit-il" etc. behave like single words, and many linguists would treat the appearance of "/t/" as a word-internal morphological phenomenon. But again, this doesn't really need to go into the article. CapnPrep 12:45, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] November 2007 edit dispute

The version that I tried to edit (but got reverted) contains incorrect OR:

• "The French could of course have chosen to always write the consonant (e.g. il parlet)"

No. This would mean that "Jean parlet t-à sa mère" is predicted to be a good liaison, but it is in fact a hypercorrection. Contrast with "Jean et Marie parlent t-à leur mère", which has a completely different status.

• "This occurs with the present tense of all non-er verbs"

No. Not ouvrir, (ac)cueillir, assaillir, …, or avoir

I attempted to sidestep the issue of diachronic continuity, because so far I have not found a source to confirm the very strong claim that "in 100% of cases it is the preservation of an ancient t". In the following examples, what evidence is there that an ancient t is still preserved?

et je cuit que si fera il (Erec et Enide, 12th cent.)

Et lors a il encontré jusqu'a vint homes armez (Queste, 13th cent.)

The answer is not "obvious if you know French and Latin"; we will never know exactly what happened during all the centuries in between. Restoring this controversial, flagged statement without attempting to provide a source is unacceptable.

In my edits, I also removed the Latin "sources" because, for example, while chante does come from cantat, and on does come from homo, the suggestion that chante-t-on is the direct descendant of the Latin sentence cantat homo is ridiculous (among other things, because on developed as a proclitic to the verb). The final sentence "No French speaker would ever even accidentally say parl'il", although plausible, is also completely unverified OR. CapnPrep (talk) 13:39, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Update: I found an article that states clearly that -t disappeared for four centuries before being reintroduced as a "ridiculous" popular pronunciation in the 15th century, and was not recognized as correct written French until the 17th century. A quote from the author that directly contradicts the previous version of this section: "je me permettrai de rappeler que ce t, quoi qu'en disent les auteurs de certaines grammaires dites "classiques," n'est dû ni à 'l'euphonie' ni à une prétendue survivance du t primitif" (p. 89). CapnPrep (talk) 14:56, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Impossible liaisons ?

As a native speaker, I am afraid that the "impossible liaisons" category is indeed artificially inflated, as warned before in the text. Acceptability of utterances is known to vary quite a bit between speakers, and I do not agree that these ones are impossible :

• between a non-pronominal subject and the verb: Mes amis arrivent [mezami.aʁiv] ("My friends are arriving.")^{[citation needed]}
• between two complements of a ditransitive verb: donner des cadeaux à Jean [dekado.aʒɑ̃] ("give presents to Jean")^{[citation needed]}

Mes‿amis‿arrivent and donner des cadeaux‿à Jean definitely sound quite stilted, but not plainly wrong to me... as for instance linking the t of et "and" would be, a widely acknowledged impossibility both in grammars and in actual use, that should be mentioned.

Bertrand Bellet (on French Wikipedia) 13:54, 15 August 2007 (UTC)