Prononciation de la consonne finale instable des chiffres cinq et huit devant des mots commençant par une consonne (le cas de la liaison)

Abstract

The article deals with a barely studied phenomenon of French phonology, which we characterize as "consonantal liaison". In contrast to the phonetic liaison, which occurs when a word ending in a mute final consonant meets a word with an initial vowel and is realized in the pronunciation of the consonant, the phenomenon of “consonantal liaison” occurs when a word with a final unstable consonant, which is usually pronounced not only before a word with an initial vowel but also before a pause, meets a word beginning with a consonant. Our research, including the study of specialized literature, consultations with native French speakers, and analysis of the speech corpus, confirmed our hypothesis about the tendency to pronounce the final unstable consonant of the numerals cinq and huit when emphasizing their numerical value, and revealed the fact that the pronunciation of the form with the final consonant of the numeral cinq is preferred even in its neutral realization. We see the reason for this asymmetry in pronunciation between these two numerals in the presence of a large number of homonyms for the numeral cinq, and thus the desire and need of speakers to avoid a confusion by pronouncing the final unstable consonant even before words with an initial consonant. The decrease in the pronunciation of the final consonant of the numeral huit, in our opinion, can also be explained by the decrease in the level of familiarization of young people with the etymology of French vocabulary, i.e. its Latin prototypes. We call the variants of the forms with and without the realization of the “consonantal liaison” allolexes. After considering all types of phonetic changes that take place between words during the realization of speech flow (including elision and enchainement), we compared the features of "consonantal liaison" with phonetic liaison and found that the former type does not have a prohibited version. In addition, the pronunciation of the final consonant with "consonantal liaison" does not depend on the form of the numeral – simple or complex, i.e. the number of syllables in the word.