Word order in 20th century Breton

Timm, Lenora A.

doi:10.1007/bf00208101

Cited by 9 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…There is not complete agreement on this, however. A drift toward SVO has been documented for Breton and Welsh (Raney, 1984 ; but see Willis, 1998 for Welsh), and a claim made that SVO is more frequent in modern Breton than VSO (Varin, 1979 ; but see Timm, 1989 ). We conclude that, on the whole, languages in general favor SOV, not just sign languages, and languages in general favor adjacency of V and O.…”

Section: A Comparison To Two Accountsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Order of the major constituents in sign languages: implications for all language

2014

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A survey of reports of sign order from 42 sign languages leads to a handful of generalizations. Two accounts emerge, one amodal and the other modal. We argue that universal pressures are at work with respect to some generalizations, but that pressure from the visual modality is at work with respect to others. Together, these pressures conspire to make all sign languages order their major constituents SOV or SVO. This study leads us to the conclusion that the order of S with regard to verb phrase (VP) may be driven by sensorimotor system concerns that feed universal grammar.

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Section: A Comparison To Two Accountsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Order of the major constituents in sign languages: implications for all language

2014

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“…The same is true of other prepositional phrases, for instance the goal of ditransitives like 'give' in the passive (Rezac 2020 topics from accessible referents (a.o. Timm 1989, Hewitt 2002, Favereau 1997: §505, 2000, Jouitteau 2005, Kennard 2014, 2018, on NB-KLT; Schapansky 1996 on NB-W; similar finding for MW, Meelen 2016Meelen : ch. 5, 2017.…”

Section: Subjecthood and Doubling In Infinitivesmentioning

confidence: 78%

Mihi est from Brythonic to Breton I

Řezáč¹

2020

Indogermanische Forschungen

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Middle Breton (MB) presents a singular anomaly of pronominal argument coding. Objects are accusative proclitics save in two constructions, where coding is split by person: 3rd unique enclitics ~ 1st/2nd accusative proclitics. The constructions are HAVE, from Insular Celtic mihi est, where the new coding replaces inflectional nominatives (cf. Latin mihi est ~ sunt); and imperatives, where it replaces accusative enclitics in V1 (cf. French aide-moi ~ ne m’aide pas). The evolution is traced in light of a crosslinguistic construction type that suggests its nature, noncanonical subject + 3rd nominative ~ 1st/2nd accusative object. Part I: (1) Decomposition of HAVE as dative clitic + BE from Brythonic throughout “conservative” varieties of Breton. (2) Breton-Cornish innovation of nonclitic datives for mihi est and their subjecthood. Part II: (3) Brythonic unavailibility of mesoclisis in V1 and Breton-Cornish nonagreement with nominative objects, resulting in independent > enclitic pronouns for accusative objects of imperatives and nominative objects of mihi est. (4) MB alignment of imperatives with mihi est in 3rd person, restriction on nominative enclitics, and recruitment of 1st/2nd person accusative proclitics upon loss of mesoclisis. (5) Transition to accusative objects in “innovative” varieties and subject-object case interactions.

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“…Stephens 1983;Press 1986;Hewitt 2002). Under this view, Vnfin-initial word order is a type of repair strategy: in a neutral context there is no element to receive narrow focus, but due to the V2 constraint, something must appear in the 10 One exception is Timm (1989;, who appears to claim that Breton is a surface VSO language; however, as Tallerman (1997) points out, there are a number of problems with Timm's analysis, not least the fact that she conflates finite and non-finite verbs under the single heading V. Indeed, the need to distinguish between the finite and non-finite verb is discussed by Hewitt (2002), who suggests distinguishing between the predicate (P) and the tensed element (T). While this may be a useful distinction to make, it overlooks the fact that the predicate and the tensed element can be identical, as they are in example (8a) above, and so this usage will not be followed here.…”

Section: Discussion Of Breton Word Order In the Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

Non‐Negative Word Order In Breton: Maintaining Verb‐Second

Kennard

2018

Trans of the Philol Soc

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This paper examines variation in Breton word order patterns in non‐negative utterances across speakers of different ages. Not only has there been some disagreement on how best to characterise unmarked word order in Breton, it has also been claimed that younger speakers of so‐called Neo‐Breton overuse subject‐initial word order under influence from French. Data from fieldwork provide a complex picture of word order variability. This seems to be driven by a number of factors, including the nature of the subject (lexical or pronominal), regional variation among older speakers, and a corresponding lack of regional features among younger speakers. Rather than overusing subject‐initial word order, the Neo‐Breton speakers tend to avoid this word order pattern when other word orders are available, such that the verb‐second pattern is being maintained.

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Word order in 20th century Breton

Cited by 9 publications

References 13 publications

Order of the major constituents in sign languages: implications for all language

Order of the major constituents in sign languages: implications for all language

Mihi est from Brythonic to Breton I

Non‐Negative Word Order In Breton: Maintaining Verb‐Second

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