Borsley (1990)

De Arbres
  • Borsley, R. 1990. 'A GPSG Approach to Breton Word Order', Randall Hendrick (ed.), Syntax and Semantics 23: The Syntax of the Modern Celtic Languages, 81–95, Academic Press, New York.


histoire éditoriale

Borsley (1988), Bangor Research Papers in Linguistics, porte le même titre.


à propos

  • Sproat, Richard. 1992. 'Review of The syntax of the modern Celtic languages ', Lingua 87(4), 347–370. doi:10.1016/0024-3841(92)90018-e.


 Sproat (1992):
 "Breton is an unusual language in that it is VSO while at the same time in most cases prohibiting finite verbs from occuring in absolute sentence initial position in clauses. Borsley provides a solution to the dilemma posed here, along with an account of some other facts of Breton word order, within the GPSG framework. The basic issues covered are as follows:
 - the impossibility of finite verbs in matrix sentence-initial position: why must a finite verb in a subordinate clause occur initially in that clause, whereas a finite verb in a matrix clause must be preceded by some element, such as a topicalized constituent or the negative particle ne ?
 - the analysis of PARTICIPLE + AUXILIARY (endevout 'have') and AUXILIARY+PARTICIPLE sentences.
 - the distribution of the auxiliary ober 'do'. 
 
 […]
 Short work is made of a suggestion by Anderson that such participles are topics: unlike topics, initial participles cannot be 'extracted' out of a subordinate clause; with topics, evidence from coordination suggests that the material following the topic is a constituent, whereas with initial participles this is not the case; topics can precede the negative particle ne, whereas sentence-initial participles cannot. Borsley proposes instead that a participle + auxiliary sequence such as lennet en deus 'have read' is really a complex verb. The participle (e.g., lennet) is the head of this complex verb and thus the latter inherits the subcategorization properties of the former. […]"