Wikidata:Lexicographical data/Documentation/Languages/br

Breton

natural language, modern language

Subclass of	Southwestern Brythonic
Part of	regional languages of France
Native label	brezhoneg, Brezhoneg
Country	France
Indigenous to	Brittany, Brittany
Start time	5. century
Linguistic typology	verb–subject–object, V2 word order, nominative–accusative language, fusional language
Has grammatical gender	masculine, feminine, neuter
Writing system	Breton alphabet
Language regulatory body	Ofis Publik ar Brezhoneg
UNESCO language status	4 severely endangered
Ethnologue language status	7 Shifting
Hashtag	bzhg
Has conjugation class	regular Breton conjugation
Related category	Category:Breton pronunciation
Wikimedia language code	br

Context

Language spoken in Brittany (Q327), some limited recognition in Brittany (Q12130) and in France (Q142).

Part of the Brythonic (Q156877) (with Cornish (Q25289) and Welsh (Q9309)), itself part of Insular Celtic (Q214506), Celtic (Q25293), of Indo-European (Q19860).

• Breton
  • Southwestern Brythonic
    • Brythonic
      • Insular Celtic
        • Celtic
          • Indo-European ^(@)→
          • Italo-Celtic
            • ^→(@) Indo-European
              • human language
                • language
                  • languoid
                    • abstract entity
                      • entity ^…

Replaced the Middle Breton (Q787610) and Old Breton (Q3558112).

Dialects :

• Cornouaille Breton (Q2924573)
• Leonais (Q769659)
• Trégorrois Breton (Q2924581)
• Gwenedeg (Q2924576)
  • Batz-sur-Mer Breton (Q2924571)

alphabet (Q9779)

Use Breton alphabet (Q20581324), modified version of Latin alphabet (Q41670).

A (Q9659), B (Q9705), ch (Q142237), C'h (Q2344267), D (Q9884), E (Q9907), F (Q9765), G (Q9739), H (Q9914), I (Q9893), J (Q9773), K (Q9922), L (Q9927), M (Q9933), N (Q9937), O (Q9941), P (Q9946), R (Q9852), S (Q9956), T (Q9813), U (Q9747), V (Q9963), W (Q9964), Y (Q9973), Z (Q9751),

Also used (rare):

• Ꝃ (Q3595038)

diacritic (Q162940)

• tilde (Q11167) (only on "n" = Ñ (Q476))

• grave accent (Q627319) (only on "u" = Ù (Q56162))

More rare, mostly in old documents before the orthograph stabilized :

• acute accent (Q216042) (only? on "e" = É (Q9995))
• overdot (Q16798246) (only on "n" = Ṅ (Q425454))
• underdot (Q2118445) (only on "l" = Ḷ (Q425441))
• macron (Q627627) (only on "n" = N̄ (Q3347346))
• macron below (Q460147) (only on "l" = Ḻ (Q425447))
• diaeresis (Q472947) (mostly? on i)

grammatical gender (Q162378)

Mainly masculine (Q499327), feminine (Q1775415)

Some traces of inanimate (Q51927539) and neuter (Q1775461).

grammatical number (Q104083)

Breton has 3 grammatical numbers: singular (Q110786), dual (Q110022), plural (Q146786).

dual (Q110022)

Dual is formed with a gendered prefix (daou- / div-) and is restricted to only a small number of lexemes ; other lexemes use the common "a pair of" to represent the equivalent of the dual. Dual can itself be pluralized to represented several pairs (double plural). See lagad (L114) : lagad (eye), lagadoù ("eyes"@en, rare, as it is separate eyes, like in "the Witch has a bag of eyes"), daoulagad (two eyes ≈ *"bi-eye", like in "the two eyes on someone face", "she has blue eyes [on her face]"), daoulagadoù (two-eyes, like in "the eyes in a crowd of people").

plural (Q146786)

Plural can be irregular and has a lot a different suffixes for differents classes of noun : -où (more common), -ed (for people), -ien/-ion (also for people). The suffixe can change the stem (kazh (L458), plural of "kazh" is "kizhier" where the suffixe -ier change the first "a" in "i"). There is also broken plural (Q3392669) and some words have a totally irregular plural, sometimes by suppletion (Q324982) (see ki (L69), ki/chas).

collective (Q694268) and singulative (Q1450795)

Some words (around 10%) are unmarked as collective (Q694268) and have a singulative (Q1450795) (which itself can have a plural forms, similar to a paucal (Q489410)).

See gwez (L62):

• gwez : trees ;
• gwezenn : tree ;
• gwezennoù : a few trees.

verb (Q24905)

All verbs are regular except 6 of them : kaout (L3395), bezañ (L3396), ober/gober (L3397), mont (L3398), dont (L3399), gouzout (L3400).

consonant mutation (Q557863)

Breton has consonant mutation (Q557863) where the first consonant of a word change depending on the context and on the previous word.

Only these consonnants are affected: K, T, P, G, D, B, M, Gw and there is 4 types of mutations.

no mutation (Q101252532)	soft mutation (Q56648699)	aspirate mutation (Q56648701)	hard mutation (Q97130345)
k	g	c'h
t	d	z
p	b	f
g	c'h		k
d	z		t
b	v		p
m	v
gw	w		kw

Example with ki (L69):

• ø ki = dog
• ur c'hi = a dog ; ar c'hi = the dog ; ma c'hi = my dog
• da gi = your dog

There is also a nasal mutation (Q56648700) but it's used in only a very small number of words starting with a D, dor (L229826) being the only common word concerned.

There is also a mixed mutation which is a mix between soft and hard mutation

orthography (Q43091)

Main one: peurunvan orthography (Q55085635)

Less common: academic Breton orthography (Q54555486), interdialectal Breton orthography (Q54555509)

And a lot of rare/old orthography.

Queries

Words without sense

#title:Words without sense
SELECT ?l ?lemma WHERE {
  ?l dct:language wd:Q12107 ; wikibase:lemma ?lemma .
  MINUS { ?l ontolex:sense ?s . }
}
ORDER BY ?lemma

Words without sense

Words without form

#title:Words without form
SELECT ?l ?lemma WHERE {
  ?l dct:language wd:Q12107 ; wikibase:lemma ?lemma .
  MINUS { ?l ontolex:lexicalForm ?f . }
}
ORDER BY ?lemma

Words without form

1. To be improved

Mutable words without mutation grammatical features

#title:Mutable words without mutation grammatical features (k only for now)
SELECT ?l ?representation ?initial WHERE {
  ?l dct:language wd:Q12107 ; wikibase:lemma ?lemma .
  ?l ontolex:lexicalForm ?form .
  ?form ontolex:representation ?representation .
  BIND ( SUBSTR(STR(?representation),1,1) AS ?initial )
  FILTER ( ?initial = "k" ) #extend to k, t, p, g, d, b, m for "no mutation" + other letters for other mutations
  MINUS { ?form wikibase:grammaticalFeature wd:Q101252532 }
}
}
ORDER BY ?lemma

Mutable words without mutation grammatical features (k only for now)

Nouns (noun (Q1084)) without grammatical gender (P5185)

#title:Nouns without grammatical gender
SELECT ?l ?lemma WHERE {
  ?l dct:language wd:Q12107 ; wikibase:lexicalCategory wd:Q1084 ; wikibase:lemma ?lemma .
  MINUS { ?l wdt:P5185 [] }
}

Nouns without grammatical gender

Lexemes using described by source (P1343) = Lexique étymologique du breton moderne (Q19216625)

SELECT DISTINCT ?item ?lemma ?page WHERE {
  ?item wikibase:lemma ?lemma ; dct:language wd:Q12107 ; p:P1343 [ ps:P1343 wd:Q19216625 ; pq:P304 ?page ] .
}

Try it!

Lexemes described by source (P1343) Lexique étymologique du breton moderne (Q19216625) without sense

SELECT DISTINCT ?lexeme ?lemma ?lexicalCategoryLabel {
  ?lexeme wikibase:lemma ?lemma ; wikibase:lexicalCategory ?lexicalCategory ; wdt:P1343 wd:Q19216625 .
  FILTER NOT EXISTS { ?lexeme ontolex:sense ?sense } .
  SERVICE wikibase:label { bd:serviceParam wikibase:language "[AUTO_LANGUAGE],br,fr" }
}
ORDER BY ?lexicalCategoryLabel ?lemma

Try it!

Verb lexemes where the past participle (Q12717679) is not consistent with word stem (P5187)

SELECT * WHERE {
  ?l wikibase:lemma ?lemma ; wikibase:lexicalCategory wd:Q24905 ; dct:language wd:Q12107 .
  ?l wdt:P5187 ?them .
  BIND ( CONCAT(?them , "et") AS ?part )
  ?l ontolex:lexicalForm ?f .
  ?f wikibase:grammaticalFeature wd:Q12717679 .
  ?f ontolex:representation ?form .
  FILTER ( ?part != str(?form) )
}

Try it!

Common mistake, confusing collective (Q13473501) (wrong) and collective (Q694268) (right):

#title:Wrong grammatical feature
SELECT * WHERE {
  ?l dct:language wd:Q12107 ;
     ontolex:lexicalForm ?f .
  ?f wikibase:grammaticalFeature wd:Q13473501 .
}

Wrong grammatical feature

Forms with "no mutation" not starting with a mutable letter

#title:Forms with "no mutation" not starting with a mutable letter
SELECT * WHERE {
  ?l dct:language wd:Q12107 ; ontolex:lexicalForm ?f .
  ?f wikibase:grammaticalFeature wd:Q101252532 ; ontolex:representation ?form .
  FILTER (!REGEX(?form,"^[ktpgdbmKTPGDBM]"))
}

Forms with "no mutation" not starting with a mutable letter

Forms with "soft mutation" not starting with a soft letter

#title:Forms with "soft mutation" not starting with a soft letter
SELECT * WHERE {
  ?l dct:language wd:Q12107 ; ontolex:lexicalForm ?f .
  ?f wikibase:grammaticalFeature wd:Q56648699 ; ontolex:representation ?form .
  FILTER (!REGEX(?form,"^[gdbczvwoGDBCZVWO]"))
}

Forms with "soft mutation" not starting with a soft letter

Forms with "hard mutation" not starting with a hard letter

#title:Forms with "hard mutation" not starting with a hard letter
SELECT * WHERE {
  ?l dct:language wd:Q12107 ; ontolex:lexicalForm ?f .
  ?f wikibase:grammaticalFeature wd:Q97130345 ; ontolex:representation ?form .
  FILTER (!REGEX(?form,"^[ktpKTP]"))
}

Forms with "hard mutation" not starting with a hard letter

Forms with "aspirate mutation" not starting with a aspirate letter

#title:Forms with "aspirate mutation" not starting with a aspirate letter
SELECT * WHERE {
  ?l dct:language wd:Q12107 ; ontolex:lexicalForm ?f .
  ?f wikibase:grammaticalFeature wd:Q56648701 ; ontolex:representation ?form .
  FILTER (!REGEX(?form,"^[fzcFZC]"))
}

Forms with "aspirate mutation" not starting with a aspirate letter

Lexical Masks

See Wikidata:Lexical Masks.

• E264
• E253

History on Wikidata

• 2022-01 : mass import from the Lexique étymologique du breton moderne (Q19216625) (see Wikidata:Requests for permissions/Bot/EnvlhBot 1)

Ressources

• Wikidata:Lexicographical coverage/br/Statistics (see also: Wikidata:Lexicographical data/Statistics)

These statistics use corpus data from the Leipzig Corpora Collection.

Forms in Wikidata: 8,703 Forms in Wikipedia: 9,552 Tokens: 1,459,030 Covered forms: 1,719 (18.0%) Missing forms: 7,833 (82.0%) Covered tokens: 1,021,384 (70.0%) Missing tokens: 437,646 (30.0%) Most frequent missing forms

• Last edits (month) on Lexemes in Breton
• Ordia
• Publications about Breton (Q12107) in Scholia
• Publications in Breton (Q12107) (SPARQL query).