From mihi est to'have' across Breton dialects

Abstract

In this paper, we turn to the variation of „have‟ across Breton dialects, which goes far beyond the morphological regularization note in J&R and indicated in Table 1d. The variation instantiates key points in the development from the analytic construction of the other Celtic languages to a fully transitive „have‟ where full assimilation to regular transitive verbs has taken place, tracing an evolutionary path in UG parameter space. We follow this route, noting that it maps reasonably onto a procession among Breton dialects from the conservative peripheral regions to the innovative centre.