Breton grammar
The grammar of the Breton language.
Nouns
Gender
Breton has two genders, masculine (gourel) and feminine (gwregel). The neuter (nepreizh), which existed in Brythonic, survives in a few words such as tra (thing) considered as masculine but behaving as if they were feminine.
The gender of a noun is mostly arbitrary and can vary from place to place. There are however some suffixes that have always the same gender:
- masculine for words ending in for example -adur
- feminine for words ending in for example -iezh or -enn (see "singulative" below)
Plural
Most plural forms are formed with -(i)où, but other common suffixes are -ien, -ed, -i, ...
Singulative
A distinctive and unusual feature of Brittonic languages is a singulative marker, which is in Breton marked with the suffix -enn. While the noun gwez means "trees" (collective), the word gwezenn means "a single tree". The latter can even be made into a regular plural gwezennoù meaning "several trees [individually]".
Article
In Breton, unlike other Celtic languages, there are two forms of the article, definite and indefinite. The definite article is "an" (the), and the indefinite article is "un" (a). These final consonant, 'n', in these articles changes depending on the following consonant. It is realised as 'n' in front of 'n', 'd', 't', 'h', and vowels, as 'l' in front of 'l' and as 'r' in front of all other consonants.
Adjectives
There are two kinds of adjectives in Breton, synthetic adjectives, for example "bras" (big) inflects as -ø (stative), -oc’h (comparative), -añ (superlative) and -at (exclamative). Other adjectives, for example "heñval" (similar) do not inflect.
Adverbs
Adverbs do not inflect.
Prepositions
Like other Celtic languages, prepositions in Breton come in two forms, non-conjugated and conjugated.
Pronouns
Personal
| Singular | Plural | |
|---|---|---|
| 1st person | me | ni |
| 2nd person | te | c’hwi |
| 3rd person | eñ (masculine) hi (feminine) |
int |
Verbs
Verbs inflect for person, number, tense and mood. Breton verbs have impersonal forms, verbal adjectives, but no participles. Unlike other Celtic languages, Breton has a distinct periphrastic continuous aspect.
Mutations
References
- Press, I. (1986) A Grammar of Modern Breton (Mouton De Gruyter)