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a b s t r ac tUsing texts selected from the C-Oral-Rom corpus, this study considers how linguistic and sociolinguistic variables affect liaison. In the majority of cases, liaison appears on monosyllabic function words. Individual lexemes differ greatly in rate of liaison. With regard to sociolinguistic variation, female speakers realize liaison consonants more often than male speakers, younger speakers realize it more often than older speakers, and liaison rates for speakers without university degree are higher than for speakers with university degree. Results are discussed in the light of models of prosodic structure and with respect to their implications for models of socio-linguistic variation. i nt roduc t i onFrench liaison is a phrasal phonological phenomenon that consists in the pronunciation of a word-final consonant that is followed by a vowel-initial word, see (1a), where this consonant is otherwise not pronounced when the word is realised in isolation or before a pause, 1 (1b). Here and in all following examples, realization of a liaison consonant is indicated in the orthographic representation by an underscore ('_'), and word boundaries are indicated in the phonetic transcription by a hash ('#').(1) Liaison vs. absence of liaison for petit, Adj Masc 'little' a. before vowel-initial word petit_amiThe present study addresses the question of how liaison is used in informal speech, based on a small selection of texts drawn from the French part of the C-Oral-Rom 1 An exception constitute numbers like six 'six' or dix 'ten', whose final consonant remains silent if it precedes a consonant, but is pronounced when followed by a vowel-initial word or by a pause. These cases will not be examined here.

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