Liaison and syllable structure in French

Sequences of an adjective and a noun in French are privileged locations for the study of liaison and enchainement. Liaison is the pronunciation of a ‘latent’ consonant in a prevocalic context, and enchainement is the subsequent resyllabification following liaison. It is thus not surprising that phonologists working on liaison have very often focused on this precise environment. The present paper continues this tradition and proposes some theoretical improvements as compared to past proposals. The improved treatment can account for the following phonological aspects of the phenomenon. the triple allomorphy between adjectives like vilaine/vilain ‘ugly’, as compared to the double allomorphy of adjectives like petite/petit ‘small’. the puzzle why bon ‘good, masc.’ can be pronounced [bçn] in the liaison context, but the possessive mon ‘my, masc.’ is [mõn] in the same environment and never [mçn]. 2 the difference between the realization of the feminine and the masculine allomorphs in the plural. Petites in petites hirondelles ‘little swallows’ is pronounced as [p ́titz] but petits in petits albatros ‘little albatrosses’ is pronounced either as [p ́tiz] or, marginally, as [p ́tit], but never as [p ́titz].