The Breton of the Canton of Briec

Abstract

This work is a detailed description of the phonology, morphology and syntax of the Breton dialect spoken in and around Briec, Brittany. The study is based in part on a corpus of about forty-five hours of recorded conversations with 31 Breton native speakers from the Canton of Briec. This dialect has never been studied in detail so far. However, existing works provide specific data about it: the linguistic atlases, contain information about several locations within the canton: Edern, Landudal and Briec itself. A doctoral thesis by André Cornec on the canton’s toponyms, provides phonological, lexical and grammatical information on it and a manuscript dictionary composed during WWII by Father Jean Louis Le Scao, a native speaker of Briec Breton supplies not only lexical data, but also information on all other areas of the dialect The thesis starts with the study of the phonology of the dialect done through an inventory of its phonemes, followed by a study of its morphophonology, which covers consonantic mutations. Breton in general has one of the broadest ranges of mutations amongst Celtic languages. The Briec dialect has an even broader range than literary Breton. In addition, Briec Breton has developed an array of sandhi-based phenomena termed ‘linking and intrusive consonants’ in the present work. These latter phenomena have been little-reported so far. Verbal morphology presents unusual features too, namely the use of the past unreal conditional to express the present conditional and the use of the pluperfect to express a perfect. The work concludes on a substantial lexical section followed by an extensive glossary. The author, who resides in Australia, also provides an extensive description of his acquisition, mainly as an adult, of the dialect through family members and native informants. This provides an illustration the plight of speakers of minority languages.