It has been traditionally recognized by linguists that the rules of linking in French are syntactically constrained and that their application depends on the grammatical category of the constituents involved. The author of this paper agrees with the basic thesis that linking is not solely phonological. However, the traditional way of analyzing linking misses an important generalization. The purpose of this paper is thus to show that there exists a deeper explanation for the phenomenon. It will be suggested that linking is not constrained by particular grammatical categories but by the presence of a boundary. The grafting principle will be offered as an explanation for the presence of this boundary. It will also be shown that the present analysis accounts for the phenomenon of pause.