Liaison (French)  From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to:
navigation, search Sound change and alternation   In French,
most written word-final consonants are no longer pronounced and
are known as latent or mute. For example, the letter s in the
word les, 'the', is generally silent (i.e., dead and
phonologically null), but it is pronounced /z/ in the
combination les amis /le.z‿a.mi/, 'the friends'. In certain
syntactic environments, liaison is impossible; in others, it is
obligatory; in others still, it is possible but not obligatory
and its realization is subject to wide stylistic variation.
Liaison operates in word sequences whose components are closely
linked by sense, e.g., article + noun, adjective + noun,
personal pronoun + verb, and so forth. This would seem to
indicate liaison is primarily active in high-frequency word
associations (collocations). Liaison is a form of vestigial
enchainement since both involve a follow-through between a final
consonant (though otherwise mute in liaison) and an