1. Family: Indo-European
  2. Genus: Celtic

Breton

WALS coordinates: 48° N, 3° W

spoken in France

Alternative Names

Ethnologue:
Ruhlen:
  • Breton
Routledge:
    Other:
      ISO 639-3:

      Features

      Feature Value References
      Phonology
      Consonant Inventories Moderately large
      Vowel Quality Inventories Large (7-14)
      Consonant-Vowel Ratio Average
      Voicing in Plosives and Fricatives In both plosives and fricatives
      Voicing and Gaps in Plosive Systems None missing in /p t k b d g/
      Uvular Consonants None
      Glottalized Consonants No glottalized consonants
      Lateral Consonants /l/, no obstruent laterals
      Front Rounded Vowels High and mid
      Syllable Structure Complex
      Tone No tones
      Fixed Stress Locations Penultimate
      Weight-Sensitive Stress Fixed stress (no weight-sensitivity)
      Weight Factors in Weight-Sensitive Stress Systems No weight
      Absence of Common Consonants All present
      Presence of Uncommon Consonants None
      Morphology
      Prefixing vs. Suffixing in Inflectional Morphology Weakly suffixing
      Nominal Categories
      Coding of Nominal Plurality Plural suffix
      Definite Articles Definite word distinct from demonstrative
      Indefinite Articles Indefinite word distinct from 'one'
      Politeness Distinctions in Pronouns Binary politeness distinction
      Position of Case Affixes Prepositional clitics
      Comitatives and Instrumentals Identity
      Ordinal Numerals First, second, three-th
      Position of Pronominal Possessive Affixes Possessive suffixes
      Nominal Syntax
      Noun Phrase Conjunction 'And' different from 'with'
      Verbal Categories
      Position of Tense-Aspect Affixes Tense-aspect suffixes
      The Morphological Imperative Second singular and second plural
      Semantic Distinctions of Evidentiality No grammatical evidentials
      Coding of Evidentiality No grammatical evidentials
      Word Order
      Order of Subject, Object and Verb VSO
      Order of Subject and Verb VS
      Order of Object and Verb VO
      Order of Adposition and Noun Phrase Prepositions
      Order of Genitive and Noun Noun-Genitive
      Order of Adjective and Noun Noun-Adjective
      Order of Demonstrative and Noun Noun-Demonstrative
      Order of Numeral and Noun Numeral-Noun
      Order of Relative Clause and Noun Noun-Relative clause
      Position of Polar Question Particles Initial
      Position of Interrogative Phrases in Content Questions Initial interrogative phrase
      Order of Adverbial Subordinator and Clause Initial subordinator word
      Relationship between the Order of Object and Verb and the Order of Adposition and Noun Phrase VO and Prepositions
      Relationship between the Order of Object and Verb and the Order of Relative Clause and Noun VO and NRel
      Relationship between the Order of Object and Verb and the Order of Adjective and Noun VO and NAdj
      Simple Clauses
      Expression of Pronominal Subjects Subject affixes on verb
      Negative Morphemes Negative affix
      Polar Questions Question particle
      Predicative Possession Locational
      Predicative Adjectives Nonverbal encoding
      Nominal and Locational Predication Identical
      Zero Copula for Predicate Nominals Impossible
      Comparative Constructions Locational
      Lexicon
      Hand and Arm Different
      Finger and Hand Different
      Tea Words derived from Min Nan Chinese te