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

[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)

[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)