Pronoms impersonnels dans le breton vannetais de Loeiz Herrieu. Syntaxe, sémantique et usages en concurrence avec le passif

Abstract

Celtic languages have a specific form of agreement for conjugations with an impersonal pronoun. In Breton, this impersonal pronoun is known as ‘en -r’ because that is its form in the present tense: Ne ouier ket (‘one does not know’). This article examines the syntactic/semantic use of this impersonal pronoun in a corpus of early-twentieth-century Vannetais and contrasts it with the other impersonal pronouns used in this dialect. An inventory of its semantic uses and an outline of the areas of optionality with the passive are presented.

Keywords

• impersonal
• passive
• optionality
• Breton (language)
• vannetais
• linguistics