Breton
Breton most often refers to:
*anything associated with Brittany, and generally
** Breton people
** Breton language, a Southwestern Brittonic Celtic language of the Indo-European language family, spoken in Brittany
** Breton (horse), a breed
**Ga ...
is a
Brittonic Celtic language in the
Indo-European family, and its grammar has many traits in common with these languages. Like most Indo-European languages it has
grammatical gender,
grammatical number, articles and inflections and like the other Celtic languages, Breton has two genders: masculine and feminine. In addition to the singular–plural system, it also has a singulative–collective system, similar to
Welsh
Welsh may refer to:
Related to Wales
* Welsh, referring or related to Wales
* Welsh language, a Brittonic Celtic language spoken in Wales
* Welsh people
People
* Welsh (surname)
* Sometimes used as a synonym for the ancient Britons (Celtic peop ...
. Unlike the other Brittonic languages, Breton has both a definite and indefinite article, whereas Welsh and
Cornish lack an indefinite article and unlike the other extant Celtic languages, Breton has been influenced by
French
French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to France
** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents
** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...
.
Nouns
Gender
Like many other European languages, Breton
nouns have
grammatical gender: masculine () and feminine (). The neuter (), which existed in Breton's ancestor,
Brittonic, survives in a few words, such as (thing), which takes and causes the mutations of a feminine noun but in all other grammatical respects behaves as if it were masculine.
The gender of a noun is mostly arbitrary and can often vary from dialect to dialect. However, certain semantic groups of word tend to belong to a particular gender. For example, names of countries and cites are feminine whereas most divisions of time are masculine. Some suffixes also have the same gender:
* Masculine suffixes include: , , , , , , , .
* Feminine suffixes include: , , (see
"singulative" below), , , , , , .
Number
Nouns may exist in as many as four
numbers: collective / singulative (see below) or singular / plural. Most plural forms are formed with the addition of a suffix, often for animate nouns and for inanimates, for example, "Breton" to "Bretons", "book" to , although some nouns referring to people take , such as "witness" becoming . Other suffixes also occur, for example, "Englishman" to , "house" to . A few nouns form their plural via vowel alternation, such as "castle" to , "stone" to , the combination of a suffix and vowel alternation, such as "crow" to , "hare" to while others are irregular, like "person" to , "dog" to either or .
As well as having a regular plural form, certain parts of the body display relics of a
dual
Dual or Duals may refer to:
Paired/two things
* Dual (mathematics), a notion of paired concepts that mirror one another
** Dual (category theory), a formalization of mathematical duality
*** see more cases in :Duality theories
* Dual (grammatical ...
system, prefixing to masculine nouns and to feminine nouns. An example of this is singular "eye", plural "eyes", dual "(pair of) eyes". Dual forms themselves can have a plural form, for example, "(pairs of) eyes".
Singulative
A distinctive and unusual feature of
Brythonic languages is a
singulative
In linguistics, singulative number and collective number (abbreviated and ) are terms used when the grammatical number for multiple items is the unmarked form of a noun, and the noun is specially marked to indicate a single item.
This is the ...
marker, which in Breton is marked with the feminine suffix . While the collective noun , for instance, means "trees (collectively)", the singulative means "(a single) tree". The latter can even be made into a regular plural with the meaning "several trees (individually)".
Diminutive
Breton forms
diminutive
A diminutive is a root word that has been modified to convey a slighter degree of its root meaning, either to convey the smallness of the object or quality named, or to convey a sense of intimacy or endearment. A (abbreviated ) is a word-formati ...
nouns using the suffix with the plural formed by reduplication of the suffix , for example, "meadow", "little meadow", "little meadows" (cf. non-diminutive plural "meadows").
Articles
In Breton, the
article
Article often refers to:
* Article (grammar), a grammatical element used to indicate definiteness or indefiniteness
* Article (publishing), a piece of nonfictional prose that is an independent part of a publication
Article may also refer to:
G ...
has both definite and indefinite forms. This is unlike other Celtic languages, which have only definite articles. The definite article is before
dentals,
vowels and unpronounced , before and elsewhere. Examples of this include "the fire", "the mouse", "the chair". The indefinite article, derived from the number "one", follows the same pattern of final consonants: "a fire", "a mouse", "a chair".
The definite article may contract with preceding prepositions, for instance "in" + gives "in the".
Adjectives
Adjectives can be inflected for
comparison
Comparison or comparing is the act of evaluating two or more things by determining the relevant, comparable characteristics of each thing, and then determining which characteristics of each are similar to the other, which are different, and t ...
with the suffixes (comparative) and (superlative). These suffixes cause preceding consonants to undergo
provection (see "wet" and "red" in the table).
"good" and "bad" are examples of adjectives that can have irregular forms.
In addition to the above forms, some adjectives can have separate equative forms, for example, "as big", "as good", "as bad". More regular equatives are formed with "as", for example, "as wet", "as bad".
Breton also possesses an exclamative suffix , as in "(how) big!", "(how) wet!", "(how) good!", but this is obsolete except in certain expressions.
Adjectives can also have a diminutive form in , for example, "small" to , "big" to .
Adverbs
Adverbs in Breton do not inflect. Adverbs can be formed from adjectives by means of , as in "loyally" from "loyal"
Prepositions
As in other Celtic languages,
prepositions in Breton are either
simple or complex and may or may not
inflect
In linguistic morphology, inflection (or inflexion) is a process of word formation in which a word is modified to express different grammatical categories such as tense, case, voice, aspect, person, number, gender, mood, animacy, and def ...
for person, number and gender.
Historically,
inflected prepositions derive from the
contraction
Contraction may refer to:
Linguistics
* Contraction (grammar), a shortened word
* Poetic contraction, omission of letters for poetic reasons
* Elision, omission of sounds
** Syncope (phonology), omission of sounds in a word
* Synalepha, merged ...
between a preposition and a personal pronoun.
In general, simple prepositions that inflect take one of two possible groups of suffixes. The stem employed for the third person forms may be different from that of other persons.
Inflected prepositions distinguish gender in the third person singular.
Simple prepositions that do not inflect include and "from", "before" and "after".
Complex prepositions inflect by means of
interfixes, whereby the nominal second element is preceded by a pronominal form. This is similar to how can become in archaic English. Mutations may be triggered following the various pronominal forms.
Conjunctions
Certain
conjunctions have an additional form used when followed by a vowel, such as "and" becoming and "than" becoming . A conjunction is usually followed by the particle when preceding a verb, for example, "and he fell", "because he fell", although this is not the case for "that, if", "if", "if, when, because".
Pronouns
Personal
Personal pronouns
Personal pronouns are pronouns that are associated primarily with a particular grammatical person – first person (as ''I''), second person (as ''you''), or third person (as ''he'', ''she'', ''it'', ''they''). Personal pronouns may also take dif ...
may be strong, post-
clitic
In morphology and syntax, a clitic (, backformed from Greek "leaning" or "enclitic"Crystal, David. ''A First Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics''. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1980. Print.) is a morpheme that has syntactic characteristics of a w ...
head or pre-clitic head. Strong pronouns have the same distribution as a full noun phrase and may be
subjects,
objects
Object may refer to:
General meanings
* Object (philosophy), a thing, being, or concept
** Object (abstract), an object which does not exist at any particular time or place
** Physical object, an identifiable collection of matter
* Goal, an ...
or prepositional objects. Post-clitic head pronouns tend to follow
finite verbs, nouns or inflected prepositions. Pre-clitic head pronouns function as object pronouns preceding verb phrases and
possessive determiner Possessive determiners (from la, possessivus, translit=; grc, κτητικός / ktētikós - en. ktetic
Lallu) are determiners which express possession. Some traditional grammars of English refer to them as possessive adjectives, though they do ...
s preceding noun phrases.
As in
Welsh
Welsh may refer to:
Related to Wales
* Welsh, referring or related to Wales
* Welsh language, a Brittonic Celtic language spoken in Wales
* Welsh people
People
* Welsh (surname)
* Sometimes used as a synonym for the ancient Britons (Celtic peop ...
and
French
French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to France
** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents
** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...
, the second person plural pronoun is used in the singular to show politeness. A large part of central Brittany has lost the second person singular altogether and uses for all second person reference.
The partitive paraphrase has replaced the traditional post-clitic object pronoun in every dialect except Gwenedeg (Vannetais), except when object is fronted for emphasis. The inflected forms of the preposition ‘of’ placed after the verb are substituted for the traditional object pronoun, e.g. ‘Yannig saw them in town’, more literally ‘In the town Yannig saw of them’, and occasionally function as subjects (with intransitive, usually negative, verbs).
Demonstrative
Demonstrative pronouns
Demonstratives (abbreviated ) are words, such as ''this'' and ''that'', used to indicate which entities are being referred to and to distinguish those entities from others. They are typically deictic; their meaning depending on a particular frame ...
display three degrees of proximity as well as gender and number.
Demonstrative determiners are post-head clitics used in conjunction with the definite article.
Indefinite
Indefinite pronouns
An indefinite pronoun is a pronoun which does not have a specific familiar referent. Indefinite pronouns are in contrast to definite pronouns.
Indefinite pronouns can represent either count nouns or noncount nouns. They often have related forms ...
may be positive, such as "some, ones" and "all" and negative, such as "nothing" and "nowhere", and may be preceded by a determiner, for example "some" ("the ones") and "your" ("your ones").
Verbs
Regular conjugation
Breton
verbs can be
conjugated to show
tense,
aspect,
mood,
person and
number by adding
suffixes to the verbal
stem
Stem or STEM may refer to:
Plant structures
* Plant stem, a plant's aboveground axis, made of vascular tissue, off which leaves and flowers hang
* Stipe (botany), a stalk to support some other structure
* Stipe (mycology), the stem of a mushro ...
, seen in the following table.
Additional suffixes may form the verbal noun. The most common of these are:
* as in "say", "can, be able", "hear, smell"
* as in "drink", "dress", "write"
* as in "eat", "learn", "give"
For other verbs, the stem itself is also the verbnoun, for example, "wait", "read", "understand".
Verbs also have a past participle formed with a suffix and a present participle form comprising the verbal noun preceded by the particle , which causes a
mixed mutation.
Most verbs are regular and stray little from the usual patterns.
The table shows and example of the regular verb "eat" (verbal stem ).
Irregular conjugation
A few common verbs are irregular, including "do".
"go" has irregular conjugation.
The verb "know" is also irregular. In addition to the forms below, it also has a number of other possible variant roots.
"be" is another irregular verb, which is conjugated for additional tense or aspect distinctions.
Another common irregular verb is "have", which combines a person marker with the tensed form. is historically derived from
and a similar development is seen in
Cornish.
Compound tenses
, and can all be used as
auxiliary verbs
An auxiliary verb (abbreviated ) is a verb that adds functional or grammatical meaning to the clause in which it occurs, so as to express tense, aspect, modality, voice, emphasis, etc. Auxiliary verbs usually accompany an infinitive verb or a p ...
.
In the present, Breton (like Cornish and
Irish but unlike the other Celtic language) distinguishes between the simple and progressive present. The simple present is formed by either conjugating the verb or using the verbal noun with the present of . The progressive present, on the other hand, is formed with the present situative of combined with present participle. In addition to these two aspectual distinctions, Breton has a habitual present which utilises the present habitual of and the present participle. Combining the past participle with either or is the usual way of forming the past tense, the conjugated forms being restricted to more literary language. The choice between or depends on whether the past participle is that of a
transitive or
intransitive verb respectively (similar to the
passé composé
The ''passé composé'' (, ''compound past'') (meaning compound past) is a past tense in the modern French language. It is used to express an action that has been finished completely or incompletely at the time of speech, or at some (possibly un ...
of
French
French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to France
** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents
** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...
), for instance, "find" takes to give "he has found" whereas "fall" takes to give "he has fallen".
Negation
Non-tensed verbs are negated with bipartite either side of the main verb, for example, "I do not write", or auxiliary, for example, "he was not killed".
is replaced with in imperatives, relative clauses, after "before" and "for, so" and in expressions of fear, for instance, "do not sing", "a thing which I did not ask", "so that he does not see you".
Unable to be negated by the previous structure, infinitives can be expressed negatively by means of a compound phrases, so that, for instance, "eat" may become "not eat" (literally, "pass without eating") and "run" "not run" (literally, "keep from running"). is occasionally used, however, to negate infinitives.
Numbers
Cardinal numbers
Similar to other
Celtic languages, Breton has an underlying
vigesimal
vigesimal () or base-20 (base-score) numeral system is based on twenty (in the same way in which the decimal numeral system is based on ten). '' Vigesimal'' is derived from the Latin adjective '' vicesimus'', meaning 'twentieth'.
Places
In ...
counting system. "One" is , , before a noun (the same as the
indefinite article
An article is any member of a class of dedicated words that are used with noun phrases to mark the identifiability of the referents of the noun phrases. The category of articles constitutes a part of speech.
In English, both "the" and "a(n)" ar ...
). "Two", "three" and "four" and derivative numbers have separate masculine and feminine forms. Interesting irregularities in the system are "eighteen", literally "three sixes", and "fifty", literally "half a hundred" (compare Welsh "two nines" and "half a hundred").
Ordinal numbers
A gender distinction can again be shown with some
ordinal numbers.
Mutations
The main
mutations
In biology, a mutation is an alteration in the nucleic acid sequence of the genome of an organism, virus, or extrachromosomal DNA. Viral genomes contain either DNA or RNA. Mutations result from errors during DNA or viral replication, mi ...
cause the following changes:
References
* Jouitteau, M. (2009-now)
ARBRES Breton wiki grammar on-line'', IKER, CNRS.
* Press, I. (1986) ''A Grammar of Modern Breton'' (Mouton De Gruyter)
*
Denez, P. (1971) ''Kentelioù brezhoneg : eil derez'', Al Liamm
*
Denez, P. (1977) ''Étude structurale d'un parler breton:
Douarnenez, thèse (3 vol.)'', Université de Rennes
*
Denez, P. (1985) ''Geriadur brezhoneg Douarnenez'', 4 vol., Mouladurioù Hor Yezh
*
Denez, P. (1987) ''Mont war-raok gant ar brezhoneg'', MHY
{{language grammars