What is the relationship between phonetics and phonology? Are phonological features innate and universal, and do they have fixed phonetic correlates? These questions have received renewed prominence ...in theoretical debates, and this book explores them from a modular, substance-free perspective. This in-depth analysis of Breton serves not only to introduce important data from this endangered language into the theoretical landscape but also to demonstrate the viability of a modular phonological framework. The book introduces a minimalist system of phonological representations built up on a language-specific basis, and integrates it with a fully-fledged computational framework, showcasing the numerous empirical and conceptual advantages of a substance-free view of phonology.Presenting the first comprehensive analysis of the sound patterns of a Breton variety treated in a substance-free phonological framework, this book will enhance the understanding of Celtic phonology and offers a valuable reference for postgraduate students, academics and researchers working in phonological theory and Celtic studies.
With the end of the practice of Breton within most families for a few decades, schools appear today as the main place for the transmission of this language. This leads some people to express doubts ...about the institutionalisation of an artificial language that is opaque to vernacular speakers, a criticism that echoes various studies in other contexts. In order to document the facts, I analysed the Breton spoken by pupils in a bilingual class in central Brittany. The aim was to ascertain the extent to which the Breton variety of this region was influenced, or even replaced, by a new standardised school variety. The initial results unsurprisingly show an influence of French. They also testify to the breakthrough of a form of Breton which is foreign to the region. But the resistance of some local peculiarities also appears, making the Breton of these new speakers a fundamentally composite phenomenon.
Three of the great texts of the Gothic literature of Breton contain quite numerous scenes or descriptions presenting with great luxury of details bodies subjected to very diverse tortures: Mirouer de ...la mort (1519), the Passion de notre seigneur Jésus Christ (1530) and the Vie de sainte Barbe (1557). The imperfect justice of men here on earth leads to the death and apotheosis of the righteous who are subject to it; God's perfect righteousness condemns unrepentant sinners to endless suffering in the hereafter. Our hypothesis is that there is a second level of reading of these passages, which addresses the social question in a pedagogical way: the poor must accept inequalities in this world, in the hope of obtaining their reward in the other world; the rich must not abuse their privileged position or risk being eternally punished; the Church and her clergy are the spiritual force that maintains on earth the providential balance between these two opposing poles.
The school now plays a central role in the process of revitalizing Breton, a language in a minority situation. As such, teaching in Breton must take particular account of the sociolinguistic and ...ideological context in which it takes place. This teaching, which has been constantly increasing for 40 years, has certain assets for its development, but the ratios of minorization / increase between Breton and French can hinder expression in Breton or its learning among students in bilingual Breton-French courses. In this article, we present, at first, the main challenges faced by those involved in bilingual education that we believe can be overcome by investing in academic research. In the second part, we present an example of action research: we show how research in language didactics can propose concrete avenues of work to the actors of teaching in Breton to promote the sociolinguistic appropriation of Breton among students.
In this paper I present an overview of the linguistic distance separating the Breton-speaking communities of western Brittany, France. This was achieved by applying a dialectometric approach ...dedicated to the quantitative analysis of dialectal data extracted from the Nouvel Atlas linguistique de la Basse-Bretagne. The literature confirms the degree to which geographical factors can have a strong influence on the distribution of dialectal features. In a previous article, I revealed that geographical parameters determine the level of linguistic similarity between small neighboring communities. In this paper, I seek to determine whether geographical factors apply also to the entire territory mapped by the NALBB. More specifically, I assess which geographical parameters contribute most to shaping linguistic similarity/distance and the extent to which these factors interact to create specific linguistic niches.
