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Variable and invariable liaison in a corpus of spoken French

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 April 2015

JUDITH MEINSCHAEFER ,
SVEN BONIFER  and
CHRISTINE FRISCH
JUDITH MEINSCHAEFER*
Affiliation:
aFreie Universität Berlin
SVEN BONIFER
Affiliation:
bFormerly Universität Konstanz
CHRISTINE FRISCH
Affiliation:
cFormerly Universität Würzburg
*
Address for correspondence: Judith Meinschaefer Freie Universität BerlinHabelschwerdter Allee 45D-14195 BerlinGermany email: judith.meinschaefer@fu-berlin.de
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Abstract

Using texts selected from the C-Oral-Rom corpus, this study considers how linguistic and sociolinguistic variables affect liaison. In the majority of cases, liaison appears on monosyllabic function words. Individual lexemes differ greatly in rate of liaison. With regard to sociolinguistic variation, female speakers realize liaison consonants more often than male speakers, younger speakers realize it more often than older speakers, and liaison rates for speakers without university degree are higher than for speakers with university degree. Results are discussed in the light of models of prosodic structure and with respect to their implications for models of socio-linguistic variation.

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Articles
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Journal of French Language Studies , Volume 25 , Issue 3 , November 2015 , pp. 367 - 396
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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