Breton grammar

Articles

In Breton, the article has both definite and indefinite forms. This is unlike other Celtic languages, which have only definite articles. The definite article is an before dentals, vowels and unpronounced h, al before l and ar elsewhere. Examples of this include an tan "the fire", al logodenn "the mouse", ar gador "the chair". The indefinite article, derived from the number un "one", follows the same pattern of final consonants: un tan "a fire", ul logodenn "a mouse", ur gador "a chair".

The definite article may contract with preceding prepositions, for instance e "in" + an gives en "in the".

Adjectives

Adjectives in Breton usually follow the noun they modify; however, adjectives that precede the modified noun do exist.

Breton adjectives do not inflect for gender or number. However, they may be mutated by a preceding modified noun depending on its gender and number.

Adjectives can be inflected for comparison with the suffixes -oc'h (comparative) and -añ (superlative). These suffixes cause preceding consonants to undergo provection (see gleb "wet" and ruz "red" in the table). Mat "good" and drouk "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, kement "as big", koulz "as good", ken gwazh "as bad". More regular equatives are formed with ken "as", for example, ken gleb "as wet", ken drouk "as bad". Breton also possesses an exclamative suffix -at, as in brasat "(how) big!", glepat "(how) wet!", gwellat "(how) good!", but this is obsolete except in certain expressions.

Adjectives can also have a diminutive form in -ik, for example, bihan "small" to bihanik, bras "big" to brazik.

Adverbs

Adverbs in Breton do not inflect. Adverbs can be formed from adjectives by means of ez', as in ez' leal "loyally" from leal "loyal"

Prepositions

As in other Celtic languages, prepositions in Breton are either simple or complex and may or may not inflect for person, number and gender. Historically, inflected prepositions derive from the contraction 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 eus and deus "from", kent "before" and goude "after".

Complex prepositions inflect by means of interfixes, whereby the nominal second element is preceded by a pronominal form. This is similar to how instead can become in my stead 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 ha "and" becoming hag and na "than" becoming nag. A conjunction is usually followed by the particle e when preceding a verb, for example, hag e kouezhas "and he fell", peogwir e varvas "because he fell", although this is not the case for ma "that, if", mar "if", pa "if, when, because".

Pronouns

Personal

Personal pronouns may be strong, post-clitic head or pre-clitic head. Strong pronouns have the same distribution as a full noun phrase and may be subjects, objects 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 determiners preceding noun phrases.

As in Welsh and French, 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 te altogether and uses c'hwi 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 a ‘of’ placed after the verb are substituted for the traditional object pronoun, e.g. E kêr e welas Yannig anezho ‘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 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 may be positive, such as re "some, ones" and holl "all" and negative, such as netra "nothing" and neblec'h "nowhere", and may be preceded by a determiner, for example an re "some" ("the ones") and da re "your" ("your ones").

Verbs

Verb conjugation

Breton verbs can be conjugated to show tense, aspect, mood, person and number by adding suffixes to the verbal stem.

Restrictions on inflection for person and number

In non-negative clauses, third-person singular forms must be used if the subject of the verb appears explicitly as a noun phrase or pronoun. It does not matter if the subject is plural or not in the third person. Take for instance (example from Kennard, 2014):

(1a)

Me

I

a

(particle)

soñj

think.PRES.3SG

din

to.1SG

e

(particle)

kan-ont

sing-PRES.3PL

mat.

good

"I think they sing well."

The finite main-clause verb soñj is conjugated in the third-person singular form and not in the first-person singular because the first-person singular subject pronoun me is present. Meanwhile, the subordinate-clause verb kanont without an explicit subject remains able to conjugate for the third-person plural.

Another example from Le Clerc, 1908 apud Jouitteau:

(1b)

Ma

if

ne

NEG

zihun-ont

wake.up-PRES.3PL

ket

NEG

ar

DEF

wech-man,

time-this

ni

we

ouez-o

know-FUT.3SG

petra

what

d'ober.

to-do

"If they don't wake up this time, we know what to do."

In this example, the main clause verb ouezo "will know" is in the 3rd-person singular form instead of 1st-person plural because the subject ni "we" appears; meanwhile, no explicit subject appears in the subordinate clause, so its verb zihunont "they wake up" takes the third-person plural ending.

Finite verbs are also forced to assume third-person singular forms in negative clauses if the verb's subject is explicitly expressed but fails to precede the verb. Contrast the following examples from Kennard (2014):

(2)

Ne

NEG

gan-ont

sing-PRES.3PL

ket

NEG

mat.

good

"They do not sing well."

(3)

Ar

the

baotr-ed

boy-PL

ne

NEG

gan-ont

sing-PRES.3PL

ket

NEG

mat.

good

"The boys do not sing well."

(4)

Ne

NEG

gan

sing.PRES.3SG

ket

NEG

ar

the

baotr-ed.

boy-PL

"The boys do not sing."

Examples (2) and (3) show how the third-person plural marking is grammatical if the subject is unexpressed or preceding the negated verb, while (4) shows the third-person singular marking being required due to the subject ar baotred "the boys" not preceding the verb.

Regular conjugation

A typical verb conjugates as follows:

Additional suffixes may form the verbal noun. The most common of these are:

• -out as in lavarout "say", gallout "can, be able", klevout "hear, smell"
• -añ as in evañ "drink", gwiskañ "dress", skrivañ "write"
• -iñ as in debriñ "eat", deskiñ "learn", reiñ "give"

For other verbs, the stem itself is also the verbnoun, for example, gortoz "wait", lenn "read", kompren "understand".

Verbs also have a past participle formed with a suffix and a present participle form comprising the verbal noun preceded by the particle o, 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 debriñ "eat" (verbal stem debr-).

Irregular conjugations

A few common verbs are irregular, and the English and French equivalents of these Breton verbs are irregular as well (e.g. the word bezañ is translated into "to be" in English and être in French, but both the English word "be" and the French word être themselves are irregular verbs as well).

The first one is ober 'do'.

The second one is mont "go", which has irregular conjugation.

The third verb, gouzout "know", is also irregular. In addition to the forms below, it also has a number of other possible variant roots.

Bezañ "be" is the fourth irregular verb, which is conjugated for additional tense or aspect distinctions.

Another common irregular verb is eus "have", which combines a person marker with the tensed form. Eus is historically derived from bezañ and a similar development is seen in Cornish.

Compound tenses

Ober, bezañ and eus can all be used as auxiliary verbs.

In the present, Breton (like Cornish and Irish but unlike the other Celtic languages) 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 ober. The progressive present, on the other hand, is formed with the present situative of bezañ combined with present participle. In addition to these two aspectual distinctions, Breton has a habitual present which utilises the present habitual of bezañ and the present participle. Combining the past participle with either endevout or bezañ is the usual way of forming the past tense, the conjugated forms being restricted to more literary language. The choice between eus or bezañ depends on whether the past participle is that of a transitive or intransitive verb respectively (similar to the passé composé of French), for instance, kavout "find" takes endevout to give kavet en deus "he has found" whereas kouezhañ "fall" takes bezañ to give kouezhet eo "he has fallen".

Negation

Non-tensed verbs are negated with bipartite ne ... ket either side of the main verb, for example, ne skrivan ket "I do not write", or auxiliary, for example, ne voe ket lazhet "he was not killed". Ne is replaced with na in imperatives, relative clauses, after ken "before" and evit "for, so" and in expressions of fear, for instance, na ganit ket "do not sing", un dra na c'houalennen ket "a thing which I did not ask", evit na welo ket ac'hanoc'h "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, debriñ "eat" may become tremen hep debriñ "not eat" (literally, "pass without eating") and redek "run" mirout a redek "not run" (literally, "keep from running"). Na ... (ket) is occasionally used, however, to negate infinitives.

Numbers

Cardinal numbers

Similar to other Celtic languages, Breton has an underlying vigesimal counting system. "One" is un, ul, ur before a noun (the same as the indefinite article). "Two", "three" and "four" and derivative numbers have separate masculine and feminine forms. Interesting irregularities in the system are triwec'h "eighteen", literally "three sixes", and hanter kant "fifty", literally "half a hundred" (compare Welsh deunaw "two nines" and hanner cant "half a hundred").

Ordinal numbers

A gender distinction can again be shown with some ordinal numbers.

Mutations

The main mutations cause the following changes:

Syntax

Word order

Underlying word order

Breton, like other Insular Celtic languages, has underlying verb–subject–object word order. This order is mainly visible in subordinate clauses. Jouitteau provides the following example:

(1a)

Lavarout

say.VN

a

(particle)

ra

do.3SG

e

(particle)

wel

see.PRES.3SG

da

your

verc'h

daughter

Paol.

Paul

"He says (that) your daughter sees Paol."

In the embedded clause e wel da verc'h Paol, the finite verb wel "sees" appears in clause-initial position, ignoring the particle e; da verc'h "your daughter" is the subject and the personal name Paol is the object, thus demonstrating VSO order.

Another example, from Press (1986: 210):

(1b)

Int

they

a

(particle)

zeuy

come.FUT.3SG

pa

if

roy

give.FUT.3SG

mammig

Mummy

dezho

to.3PL

arc'hant.

money

"They will come if Mummy gives them money."

In the subordinate clause pa roy mammig dezho arc'hant, VSO order is once again exhibited — the verb roy "will give" precedes the subject mammig "Mummy", which in turn precedes the object arc'hant "money". But it stands in stark contrast to the main clause int a zeuy..., where the subject int "they" comes before the verb a zeuy "will come"; this positioning is due to a verb-second constraint to be described below.

Verb-second constraint

Main clauses, however, are subject to a verb-second word order (or V2) constraint. This means that Breton sentences generally cannot begin with a finite verb and must have some other constituent precede one. Non-exhaustively, noun phrases (whether subject or object), prepositional phrases, negative particles like ne, and non-finite verbs are among those permissible word-initial constituents.

The constituent that appears in sentence-initial position is generally the focus of the sentence, thus the following example sentences differ by focus (examples from Kennard, 2018):

(1a)

Gwenn

white

eo

be.PRES.3SG

ar

DEF

paper.

paper

"The paper is white."

(1b)

Ar

DEF

paper

paper

zo

be.PRES.3SG

gwenn.

white

"The paper is white."

Sentence (1a) focuses on the colour of some paper, while sentence (1b) focuses on the type of object that is white.

Preverbal particles (rannig)

Before affirmative finite verbs, the particle a appears when the verb's subject, object, or a non-finite verb precedes the verb, while the particle e appears otherwise (examples from Kennard, 2018):

(2a)

Krampouezh

pancakes

a

(particle)

zebr-an.

eat-PRES.1SG

"I eat pancakes."

(2b)

Alies

often

e

(particle)

zebr-an

eat-PRES.1SG

krampouezh.

pancakes

"I often eat pancakes."

In (2a), the object krampouezh "pancakes" is in front of the finite verb, triggering the particle a. But in (2b), the adverb alies "often" is in front of the verb, triggering the particle e.

The two particles a and e are known as rannig, and do not count as a valid sentence-initial constituent for the purpose of Breton's V2 rule, so a sentence like the following is ungrammatical (example also from Kennard, 2018):

(2c)

*E

(particle)

tebr-an

eat-PRES.1SG

krampouezh.

pancakes

(Intended: "I eat pancakes.")