La liaison et l'illusion

Arguing both in synchrony and in diachrony, the paper shows that French liaison is not to be considered as a unique or unified phenomenon. The relationship between phonology and orthography is at play in the stabilization of contemporary liaison. We underline the interplay of three different dynamics. The first is a purely phonological one aiming at simplifying codas by dropping final consonants. The second is morphological in nature as its main purpose is the preservation of number and person marks. The third one is (ortho)graphical. It promotes the visual form of written words. Contradiction between those three dynamics leads to a state of equilibrium where liaison on a main category word is morphologically motivated and tends to be categorical, when liaison from a main category word is phonologically motivated and tends to be variable. This analysis argues for a constructional approach of the grammar and of the lexicon where graphical form, graphical endings and graphical segmentation of words are added to constructional representations.ENG : French liaison!synchrony!diachrony!words!orthography!Construction Grammar!Laks Bernard. La liaison et l'illusion. In: Langages, 39ᵉ année, n°158, 2005. La liaison : de la phonologie à la cognition. pp. 101-125