Les Liaisons Dangereuses: Le Statut Équivoque des Erreurs de Liaison

The phenomenum of "false liaison" (linking errors) in French has almost never been studied in itself. A considerable number of examples from different sources are examined from a lexical, morphological and syntactic perspective. If many instances can be satisfactorily reduced to phrasal affixes (Miller 1991), the remaining cases fall under two types of explanations, analogy and "liaison à distance" (linking from a distance) (Pichon 1935), each of which alone is not sufficient, like the postulation of plural and verbal markers (Kaye & Morin 1982), to cover all the data, and a comparison of the consequences of these accounts is offered. Accounts on syntactical grounds do not make strong predictions, if at all, on this phenomenum, since false liaisons seem to be only loosely restricted. It is suggested that an explanation invoking analogy is possible on a morphological basis for many cases, and that some cases of liaison at a distance may be due to performance error involving the syntactic production stage of an utterance.