Breton Mutations: Literary vs. vernacular usages

Timm, Lenora A.

doi:10.1080/00437956.1985.11435866

Cited by 2 publications

(2 citation statements)

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Section: Acoustic Measurementsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Added to this, it has been suggested that lenition is expanding in terms of its applicable contexts, at the expense of other types of mutation. Well-attested examples include the replacement of spirantisation by lenition following the numerals tri/teir 'three (M/F)', pevar/peder 'four (M/F)' and nav 'nine' (Favereau 1984, Timm 1985, Stephens 1993, Press 2009, but this is by no means the only instance of such a change. In his work on language attrition among Breton speakers, Dressler (1972Dressler ( , 1991 writes that the decay of spirantisation tends to precede that of lenition, and that lenition largely replaces spirantisation among weaker speakers, that is, generally those born after the end of the Second World War.…”

Section: Acoustic Measurementsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Mutation in Breton verbs: Pertinacity across generations

Kennard

Lahiri

2015

J. Ling.

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Although word-initial consonants are highly salient cross-linguistically, the process of initial-consonant mutation has nonetheless continued to affect them in the Celtic languages. This paper investigates the use of the mixed mutation (MM) in Breton, following the progressive particle. Like all mutation, it naturally affects the phonology, but also gives (redundant) information for morphosyntax. Mutation is generally presumed to be a regular process, but as there has been a gap in the transmission of Breton, the extent to which this phono-syntactic phenomenon is consistent across generations remains open to discussion. It has been claimed that younger speakers, being strongly French-dominant, do not use mutation correctly. We tested this examining both distribution of usage and acoustic measurements of the consonants in question. Data from original fieldwork indicate that young adults use MM in the same way as older speakers, but children attending Breton-medium schooling are less proficient. Mixed mutation is difficult to acquire, the crucial factor being sustained Breton input beyond the early teenage years. Acoustically, there is no difference in the production of MM cross-generationally. The difference between the two generations is in the use of the progressive particle itself, omitted by the older generation, but retained by younger speakers.

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Section: Acoustic Measurementsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Acoustic Measurementsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mutation in Breton verbs: Pertinacity across generations

Kennard

Lahiri

2015

J. Ling.

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Mutation in Celtic

Iosad

2023

The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Morphology

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The Celtic languages are characterized by an elaborate system of alternations of word‐initial segments, traditionally known as ‘consonant mutations’. Although historically they arose from across‐the‐board phonological sandhi, they are now deeply embedded in morphosyntactic processes. They are relatively phonologically coherent, but also non‐concatenative, and sensitive to a wide range of lexical, morphological, syntactic and semantic factors. As a result, Celtic mutations present an important test bed for theories of word structure and its interactions with both phonology and syntax.

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Breton Mutations: Literary vs. vernacular usages

Cited by 2 publications

References 5 publications

Mutation in Breton verbs: Pertinacity across generations

Mutation in Breton verbs: Pertinacity across generations

Mutation in Celtic

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