How to use this website

^{version en français}

This page is meant to provide you with a global view of the scope of the ARBRES website, and help you to fully use its functionality.

the Breton grammar on-line

This website contains a full descriptive and formal grammar of the Breton language in all its dialectal varieties.

It can be used like a classical printed grammar, by browsing the table of contents, or by clicking directly on one of its major sections:

 1. Morphology 
 2. Constituents
 3. Syntax of the sentence
 4. Information structure
 5. Discourse

These five major sections will remain accessible during your entire navigation, on the left pane of the screen, Under Grammaire du breton.

Like a regular printed grammar, one can also browse it at random, by clicking on article au hasard.

It can also be searched through the search box in the upper right corner of the screen.

There is a glossary of the technical terms used, in Français or in English. Every word leads toward a definition page, with glossed and translated illustrations from Breton.

Upon arriving at the article you want to consult, you will find first a brief summary with illustrative examples, followed by a table of contents for the page. A typical article appears as follows:

 1. Morphology
 1.1. accentuation
 1.2. consonant mutations
 1.3. gender, number, person 
 2. Syntax
 2.1. properties
 2.2. distribution
 2.3. associated elements
 3. Semantics 
 4. Diachrony 
 5. Typology
 6. Terminology
 7. Bibliography

examples

Every example is numbered. The first line is in Breton. Below are glosses in French. Most glosses are active links, each leading to a full article with description and analysis. Glosses contain some syntactic annotation such as constituency. Superscripted numbrs are also active links: they indicate the different consonnant mutations (lenition in 1) that affect the initial consonnants in Breton. Separate glosses are provided for affixes.

(1)	Sevel a reas	ar paotr	e zaoulagad …
	lever R fit	le garçon [VP _	son1 2.œil ]
	'Le garçon leva les yeux.'					Standard, Drezen (1990:23)

The example ends with a global translation for the Breton sentence. Sometimes, when relevant, an alternative translation in the dialectal French of Low Brittany is provided above the translation in standard French.

(1)	Me am-eus c'hoant	da lavared	penaoz	ema ar wirionez	gant ar skolaer!	Breton trégorrois
	moi R.1SG a envie	de dire	que	est le vérité	avec le instituteur
	'Moi, j'ai envie de dire que la vérité est avec l'instituteur.					Français du Trégor, Gros (1984:176)
	'Moi, je prétends que l'instituteur a raison.'					Français standard

When available, an IPA transcription is also given, in green.

(4)	[ wa kOmâsǝd	ǝ rEzistâs		nEm fòrmo ]
	Oa komañset	ar Rezistañs	[ SC	en em furmañ ].
	était commencé	le résistance		se former
	'La résistance avait commencé à se former.'							Haute-Cornouaille (Lanvenegen),	Evenou (1987:627)

All examples end by indicating the dialectal variety (in italics), and a reference indicating the source including page number. The reference is an active link, and directs to a separate bibliographic reference page, here the unpublished thesis of Evenou (1987).

reference pages

This website countains more than 150 articles of references for corpora of written and spoken Breton, and more than 200 articles of references for research works, books and articles, about the language. Each reference is associated with (when available):

• complete bibliographical information
• an active link toward the URL address of the reference
• information about the publication of the work
• an abstract or summary
• reviews
• indication of the dialectal of the author
• erratum list
• active links toward articles on this site citing the reference

A useful feature allows you to see exactly where a given reference has been cited within the website. On the page of the reference, in the Outils [tools] box, click on pages liées [linked pages]. You will get the list of items linking to the reference.

Explore a topic

After you have read an article, several options help you go further.

• Try the clickable links inside the article and explore the associated pages.

• Look for bibliographical help:

If an article, a thesis or a book has been written on the topic, it should appear at the bottom of the page, in "bibliographie". If this work has not been mentioned (yet), go to the general bibliography page in the ressource center.

• Look for pages of the same category

Each article is ranked in one or more category. For example, the article on kalz, 'lot (of)', is ranked in the categories determiner, adverb, quantifieur et indefinite. These are listed with links at the very bottom of the page.

Clicking on a given category gives you the list of all the pages from the same category.

• Leave comments or questions on the "discussion" page associated with each article:

I answer comments and questions in a timely manner. I correct the website accordingly, provide explanations or develop new tools.

How to use the Ressources center

The Ressource center is meant to provide any type of information for research. It is always accessible via the left column on your screen.

It provides very classic tool, and some less classic so, due to the choice of numeric media and the one of open science.

classical tools

• a general bibliography

The bibliography, morpho-syntax exhaustive and up-to-date, gives complete bibliographical references for the descriptive and scientific production about the breton language. Active links toward the documents are made available to documents on-line. One sees in a glimpse what references are used on this website (and what others should be integrated).

Specialized revues like Hor Yezh or La Bretagne Linguistique have a dedicated page listing their production.

• a glossary of more than 200 technical terms used in formal grammar, and its version version in French

In order to know the French translation of a term, follow the links in the English glossary - you will arrive in an article whose titl is the French translation (or appearing in bold letters at the beginning of the article). For translation from French, search for the terminologie [terminology] subpart of the articles.

• a list of technical abreviations, as well as traditional acronyms for old corpuses and gloses.

what is new?

This website is evolutive, and can be used for news about the syntax of Breton, internally or externally to the website.

• a news page

I refer there to call for papers, conferences, important publications, news about the Breton language and also the lastest works on the website.

• It is also possible to follow the genesis history of one page in particular, or check the latest modifications operated on the website under "modifications récentes".

• a page of usefull external links:

In English, Breton, French, différent links to explore the study of Breton, electronic ressources on Breton, the Celtic languages or minority languages in general.

This is a participative website: one can post informations in the news page, add new references in the bibliography, or enrich the links pages.

Find out more about a particular dialect

The tools of the ressource center are meant to help you.

• find the adequate corpora or reference

The works of the general bibliography have been geographically localized on a googlemap. This allows one to visualize the geographical repartition of the works produced on different varieties of Breton.

A grammar proposes a special rule for a dialect and you would want to check it with the facts? The map helps you find the corpus references the closest to this place.

• Consult the list of native Breton speakers having produced corpora, with their dialectal typification.

This list is of course far from exhaustive, but allows you to choose an author in being informed of the type of language you would be studying.

• Consult the list of different usable corpora in the ressource center.

Provides you with references for audio transcripts, written, glossed, IPA transcripted corpora, etc.)

utilisation for teaching

The are multiple funny clever ways to use this website in order to construct pedagogical contents :

• There exists a page called "Catégorie:Désambiguïsations". Its regroups a cliquable list of ambiguous morphemes, that can have in Breton more than one meaning. This could provide for a good quizz material.

• specific maps of the Linguistic Atlas of Low-Brittany have been integrated inside the articles, making it easy to build cartographic representations for a given topic.

• Why not propose a collaboration project with this website?

Open science

This website ARBRES is since 2009 an experimentation of open and participative science. This is an open research notebook. I have detailed this experimentation in an article: Jouitteau (2013b).

open access

Open access means that the results of research are to be made available at the end of the process of research.

The Breton grammar on this website is freely accessible, and the links toward other works made available on the web are also here collected.Some articles are available for download directly from this website.

research on the making

Research is at heart a process, a methodology accessible to anyone. One can see here research on the doing, with corrections, discussions, new hypotheses and perseverance.

• The tracability of this work is complete. Each page is associated with the history of any single modification brought ti it since its creation. One can go see in live how is science done, how new data or new publications change our hypotheses on the language.

• The raw results of elicitations are available in the elicitation center.

science 2.0

passive crowdsourcing

This website is provided with internal statistical tools and with google analytics. This allows for a quite precise statistical representation of the way this website is been used. This anonymized data, a flow of about 50 human visits a day, provides a first mean of feedback.

active crowdsourcing

The new numeric tools allow for both cumulative collaboration (massive aggregate of small contributions into the right architecture), and a distributive collaboration (with differenciated tasks).

This website adresses you the question of your location in the process. You can help the project at different many levels. Will you do it?

science for citizens

The object of science is not reducible to its civic and social impact: science has its own internal legitimate goals. But when science can flourish in this civic and social dimension, why go without it?

• at the end of 2013, the organisation of the "race for the Breton language", Redadeg 2014, asked for the translation of I speak Breton, what about you? in as many languages as possible. Within a few days, linguists from the entire world jumped in with great joy and build the page I speak Breton, what about you?, gathering linguistic information from more than 77 languages. The self-portraits of Breton speakers are now to be found here.

Le projet ARBRES d'Atlas

Le cartouche projet ARBRES décrit le projet d'Atlas de la variation syntaxique des dialectes de la langue bretonne. Vous y trouverez une description générale du projet d'atlas, une fiche qui explique comment participer au projet, et une liste des prévisions de collecte.

Ces fiches thématiques concernent toutes un redoublement de marques grammaticales, et sont renseignées à but de collecte systématique sur le domaine parlant. Le collectage des marques de redoublement à travers les langues d'Europe est un projet Edisyn.