Re: [tied] La contraverse de nos pauvres haricots

I hope nobody took my innocent April Fools' Day joke too seriously. But
joking apart, h-aspiré is not a monolithic phenomenon in French.

Here is what Bernard Tranel writes in "Current issues in French phonology"
(1996, in: The Handbook of Phonological Theory. Oxford: Blackwell).

"Cornulier (1981) observed that in the speech of some speakers, h-aspiré
words could be divided into two categories with respect to enchaînement. A
few words never allow such resyllabifications (e.g. in his own speech héros
"hero", hair "hate", hideux "hideous", honte "shame"), while the others do
(e.g. hasard "chance"). ... What must be recognised is that a majority are
OPTIONAL [emphasis added] exceptions to enchaînement, while a few are
obligatory exceptions."

For Tranel himself (a Frenchman and an eminent phonologist), haricot belongs
to the "optional" category (it's one of his examples). He notes that other
words, e.g. hollandais, don't allow elision (*l'hollandais) but do tolerate
optional enchaînement (le[z]ollandais).

I'd be surprised if regional and extraterritorial Frenches were very
pedantic in distinguishing h-muet from h-aspiré or conformed to handbook
prescriptions concerning French liaison. One is reminded of linking and
"intrusive" /r/ in non-rhotic Englishes.

Piotr

----- Original Message -----
From: Glen Gordon <glengordon01@...>
To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Sunday, April 01, 2001 9:01 PM
Subject: [tied] La contraverse de nos pauvres haricots


>
> Piotr to Pete Gray:
> >So you haven't heard yet. L'Académie has recently abolished the
> > >distinction between H muet and H aspiré, and /lezariko/ is now fully
> >legitimate.
>
> Thanx, P. While I do hear "le hero" pronounced /l@? ero/ all the
> time (and this _is_ the proper pronunciation), I have never heard
> "les hero" pronounced anything other than /lez ero/. The word
> "hockey" is another one. Using a glottal stop in the plural feels
> kinda awkward. I regularly watch programs in french as well to keep
> up to snuff. This doesn't seem to be the accepted pronunciation
> from what I know. I think it's because anyone who speaks French
> for a length of time comes to associate the /e/ segment of "les",
> or the elided /ez/, as _the_ indicators of the plural, despite the
> h-muet thing. The glottal stop is somehow "singular" sounding,
> methinks. So, it's pronounced /le/ before consonants other than
> "h" and /lez/ otherwise, but never /le?/, afaih.
>
> Have you heard /le? ariko/ somewhere, Pete? Even if you have, it
> doesn't explain the Cajun pronunciation, which in itself, derives
> from Acadian French pronunciation.
>
> That reminds me: How do you spell the letter /aS/ in French???
> "Ache"? "Hache"?? Guillaume, le sais-tu? I still forget how to
> write it in English for god's sakes :)
>
> - gLeN