Breton 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 mutations. In addition to the singular–plural system, it also has a singulative–collective system, similar to Welsh. 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.
Nouns
Gender Like in most other Indo-European languages, Breton nouns belong to distinct grammatical genders/noun classes: 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 hard to predict, and for some words can even vary from dialect to dialect. However, certain semantic groups of word tend to belong to a particular gender. For example, names of countries and cities often are feminine, whereas most divisions of time are masculine. Some suffixes denote 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 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 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 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 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 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 (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. positive comparativesuperlative "big" "bigger" "biggest" "wet" "wetter" "wettest" "red" "redder" "reddest" "good" "better" "best" "bad", "worse", "worst" 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 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. endings endingsuninflected "with" "for"1sg "with me" "for me"2sg "with you" "for you"3sgm. "with him" "for him"f. "with her" "for her"1pl "with us" "for us"2pl "with you" "for you"3pl, "with them", "for them"impersonal "with one" "for one"
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.
uninflected "about" "near"1sg "about me" "near me"2sg "about you" "near you"3sgm. "about him" "near him"f. "about her" "near her"1pl "about us" "near us"2pl "about you" "near you"3pl "about them" "near them"impersonal "about one" "near one"
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 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.
strongpost-clitic headpre-clitic headpartitive paraphrase1sg2sg 3sgm.f.1pl2pl3pl
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 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 display three degrees of proximity as well as gender and number. masculine singular feminine singularcommon pluralnear the speaker near the listener far from speaker and listener Demonstrative determiners are post-head clitics used in conjunction with the definite article. clitic examplenear the speaker "here" "this river"near the listener "there" "that little house"far from speaker and listener "over there, yonder" "that lake over there"
Indefinite Indefinite pronouns 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 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):
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:
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):
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:
singular plural impers. 1st 2nd 3rd 1st 2nd 3rd Indicative Present no ending Imperfect Preterite Future Conditional Present Imperfect Imperative no ending
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 ).
singular plural impers. 1st 2nd 3rd 1st 2nd 3rd Indicative Present Imperfect Preterite Future Conditional Present Imperfect Imperative
Verbal nounPresent participlePast participle
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 is translated into "to be" in English and in French, but both the English word "be" and the French word themselves are irregular verbs as well).
The first one is .
singular plural 0 1st 2nd 3rd 1st 2nd 3rd Indicative Present Imperfect Preterite Future Conditional Present Imperfect Imperative
Verbal nounPresent participlePast participle
The second one is "go", which has irregular conjugation.
singular plural 0 1st 2nd 3rd 1st 2nd 3rd Indicative Present Imperfect Preterite Future Conditional Present Imperfect Imperative
Verbal nounPresent participlePast participle
The third verb, "know", is also irregular. In addition to the forms below, it also has a number of other possible variant roots.
singular plural 0 1st 2nd 3rd 1st 2nd 3rd Indicative Present Imperfect Preterite Future Conditional Present Imperfect Imperative
Verbal nounPresent participlePast participle