> and liaison makes word boundaries unclear without context
There's very little blame to be placed on liaison, since word boundaries are unclear in every language, including languages that e.g. don't allow syllable-final consonants. English speakers feel like they have a strong grasp of where word boundaries occur because of the orthographic space, but the space in the writing system does not coincide with word boundaries in the language; it is heavily conventionalized.
There's very little blame to be placed on liaison, since word boundaries are unclear in every language, including languages that e.g. don't allow syllable-final consonants. English speakers feel like they have a strong grasp of where word boundaries occur because of the orthographic space, but the space in the writing system does not coincide with word boundaries in the language; it is heavily conventionalized.