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Cette coiffure te donne un plus indéniable.

I've learned that there should not be an enchaînement between "un plus" and "indéniable" somewhere, which means it shouldn't be pronunced as [œ̃-ply-sɛ̃-de-njabl], but I don't know why. I mean here "plus" is a noun prounced as [plys] and "un plus indéniable" is a groupe rythmique, why shouldn't I connect the [s] in [plys] and [ɛ̃] in [ɛ̃denjabl]?

You can see the related question on HiNative here: question about enchaînement. Merci beaucoup!

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2 Answers 2

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When you split the phrase un plus indéniable in syllables, the S of plus belongs to the syllable of that word so that gives the five syllables /œ̃.plys.ɛ̃.de.njabl/. Because the substantive plus is used and not the adverb plus, we generally chose to end the groupe rythmique so the enchaînement is not realized.

Here are three examples of native French pronunciation of un plus indéniable that can be found in YouTube. None of them exhibits an enchaînement while the pause between between plus and indéniable vary:

  1. YouTube 3'33"

  2. YouTube 2'17"

  3. YouTube 3'57"

The faster you pronounce it, the shorter the inter-syllables pauses will be so that will give the impression that there is no pause between the syllables but I guess audio analysis will still show that the /y/ and the /s/ are closely linked. On the opposite, if you strongly mark the pauses between syllables, pronouncing /œ̃...ply...sɛ̃...de...njabl/ would sound unnatural.

You might compare it with the sentence C'est plus sain where the S of plus is almost always dropped. The sentence is typically pronounced /sɛ.ply.sɛ̃/ because there is a single groupe rythmique. Saying /sɛ.plys.ɛ̃/ would risk to be misunderstood as C plus un, at least in Northern France.

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  • Thanks for the answer! So it's about the essence of enchaînement? I mean, in a phrase like "une amie", the syllables are /yn.a.mi/ but not /y.na.mi/, and if I prounce it as /y...na...mi/, it will also sound unnatural?
    – Yuehkai
    Commented Jul 27 at 3:21
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    Good follow up question. It's a case where the word boundary is less marked so both variants would sound natural. There is no ambiguity between /y/ and /yn/. The masculine un ami is syllabified to /œ̃.na.mi/ so the feminine tends to follow. It's like if the noun was nami(e) (or zami(e) in plural. )
    – jlliagre
    Commented Jul 27 at 7:49
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    @guillaume31 Unless I'm mistaken, the source you linked doesn't include un plus indéniable or un plus (subtantive) followed by a vowel. Answer updated with real life pronunciations.
    – jlliagre
    Commented Jul 28 at 1:54
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    Really thank you for the answer. I recognised it indeed is because “un plus indéniable” is not a single groupe rythmique as I thought before. And so sorry for the unnecessary trouble I caused.
    – Yuehkai
    Commented Jul 28 at 19:50
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    @guillaume31 The statement that there should not be an enchaînement in the question is from a website not in English nor in French, so I did not write it down at first. But if you don’t mind, I will show it. So sorry for the misunderstanding!
    – Yuehkai
    Commented Jul 28 at 19:56
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It is not obvious from your question if you come from an academics perspective or a foreign language learner perspective.

If you just want to know how the sentence is pronounced, the answer proposed as duplicate by several commenters has ample enough information.

From a phonetic point of view, here's what I found: there is always an enchaînement, in the linguistics sense, when a word ends with a consonant and the next begins with a vowel sound. See explanations here, there.

Si le premier mot finit par une consonne prononcée et que le mot suivant commence par une voyelle, la consonne finale s’enchaîne au mot suivant comme une attaque.

In your example, as "plus" is a noun (last bullet point of case 2 in the duplicate answer) so the final consonant "s" is always pronounced, and as the next word begins with a vowel, there must also be an enchaînement.

The end consonant is recombined into the syllable of the next word, which makes it [ply.sɛ̃.de.njabl].

It is similar to:

Un abribus aérien

Un prospectus emballé

etc.

I've learned that there should not be an enchaînement

I'm not sure why, from a linguistics point of view it seems to be a misunderstanding.

I think there are indeed many people who would avoid the enchaînement

I'm not sure about "many" people, but maybe some do it because they want to emphasize "indéniable" and they pause slightly between the words. It is definitely not a rule (or an identified exception to the rule) - actually you'll hear a thousand shades of pauses or emphasis in the wild... it's the difference between theory and practice.

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