Remarques relatives à la morphologie et à l’emploi des formes du verbe «être» dans le breton de l’île de Sein

Abstract

Remarks about the morphology and use of the forms of the verb “ to be” in the Breton dialect of the island of Sein. The morphological richness of the verb “ to be” in the Brythonic languages, and especially in Breton, aroused the interest of a wide range of grammarians and linguists. This article suggests a few remarks and hypotheses, of heuristic value, about the distribution of the forms of the verb bea “ to be” and about the competition between these in the progressive, in the contemporary dialect of the island of Sein. My research focuses on the Breton dialect of the island of Sein, in which I put together an extensive corpus of conversation. Thanks to these data, I was able to undertake a thorough study of the forms of the verb bea (bezañ) “ to be” in this dialect, supported by various remarks and requests : does one given form appear in one grammatical context or another, what forms are common, which ones are rare or unattested, etc. The remarks I am doing in this paper have heuristic values and will need to be confirmed by a much thorougher study of my corpus.