La liaison relève-t-elle d'une tendance à éviter les hiatus ?

Constraint-based theories of phonology have prompted the revival of an early seventeenth conception of liaison as a means to break hiatuses between words. Liaison would be the French response to the resolution of conflicts between various universal constraints, in particular word invariance and optimal syllable onsets. The specific interplay between various constraints, it is claimed, explains dialectal and social variations, language acquisition and evolution (Tranel 2000: 43). This paper examines the historical development of liaison in French and finds, however, no evidence that it ever was motivated by constraints against hiatuses or empty syllable-onsets. It has its source in the loss of some word-final consonants before word- initial consonants, and appears to be the result, in most cases, of imperfect transmission across generations of various consonant sequences. Later developments from the seventeenth century onwards were mostly motivated by what appears to be a cognitive bias for word invariance that was actually responsible for the steady increase of hiatuses between words in utterances. During the same period, various analogical processes lead to the extension of [t] liaisons before consonants after quand, vingt (Morin 1990) and, in some formal forms of speech, after third person verb-forms, as in Il faut [t] faciliter...
ENG : French liaison! enchaînement!historical change!phonological constraints!noun flexion!
Morin Yves-Charles. La liaison relève-t-elle d'une tendance à éviter les hiatus ? . In: Langages, 39ᵉ année, n°158, 2005. La liaison : de la phonologie à la cognition. pp. 8-23.