>Glen explains it almost correctly (he's only wrong about ALL vowels >being
>treated in the same way, see below), but maybe more detail >would help Mark
>to understand the motivation for R insertion and the >mechanism of its
>generalisation. It's quite an instructive story.
Piotr, just to clarify in reference to my error, you're saying that a
non-historical "r" is inserted only after _certain_ vowels. Thus, after
vowels like [I] or [i:] where _there was never an "r"_ as in "me and you",
we obtain something like /mI-y-and yU/ and not
*/mI-R-and yU/. Yes, of course, whoops. :)
As for whether it's elaison or liaison, Mark, I'm not sure anymore. Maybe
it's both. For some reason, calling it "liaison" sounds funny to me. The
term "elaison" would literally mean "eliding" which would refer to the
blurring of two words together in pronunciation. A "liaison" means a "link"
or "relationship". I find "liaison" attested in my English dictionary but I
could swear it was "elaison" in French Class, dammit! I think it's a case of
differing terms in two different languages. I've been known to "speak funny"
amongst my friends and I blaim it all on French.
- gLeN
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