Description lexicographique du vocable breton KEUZ ‘regret’

The paper proposes a lexicographic description of the polysemous word keuz ‘≈ regret’, from the Vannetais dialect of Breton. Our description is based both on written and oral usage, the latter being mostly that of the Pontivy region, in the North of the Department of Morbihan. Some of the wordsenses, not represented in the existing dictionaries of Breton, are described here for the first time. The theoretical frame of reference adopted is the Explanatory-Combinatorial Lexicology (ECL) of the Meaning-Text theory, a cutting-edge lexicological theory applied here for the very first time to a description of Breton data. An ECL-style lexicographic description, which, on the one hand, strives to make available to speakers all linguistic means necessary for an idomatic use of lexical units and, on the other hand, obeys formal descriptive principles, is not readily accessible to a non-initiated user. Therefore, the first part of the paper is dedicated to an explanation of the notions necessary for the comprehension of the lexicographic description proper.