Antoine Meillet

Paul Jules Antoine Meillet (; 11 November 1866 – 21 September 1936) was one of the most important French linguists of the early 20th century. He began his studies at the Sorbonne University, where he was influenced by Michel Bréal, the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, and the members of the . In 1890 he was part of a research trip to the Caucasus, where he studied the Armenian language. After his return, de Saussure had gone back to Geneva, so Meillet continued the series of lectures on comparative linguistics that de Saussure had given.

In 1897 Meillet completed his doctorate, ''Research on the Use of the Genitive-Accusative in Old Slavonic''. In 1902 he took a chair in Armenian at the and took under his wing Hrachia Adjarian, who would become the founder of modern Armenian dialectology. In 1905 Meillet was elected to the , where he taught on the history and structure of Indo-European languages. One of his most-quoted statements is that "anyone wishing to hear how Indo-Europeans spoke should come and listen to a Lithuanian peasant." He worked closely with linguists Paul Pelliot and Robert Gauthiot.

Today Meillet is remembered as the mentor of an entire generation of linguists and philologists who would become central to French linguistics in the twentieth century, such as Émile Benveniste, Georges Dumézil, and André Martinet.

In 1921, with the help of linguists Paul Boyer and , he founded the .

Historical linguistics

Today, Meillet is known for his contribution to historical linguistics. He is notable for having coined and formalized the concept of '' grammaticalisation'' (influential but still controversial today) to denote what he viewed as the process of innovation by which autonomous words ended up as "grammatical agents". Subsequent to the further development and popularization of the concept by Jerzy Kuryłowicz and further development in the late 20th century, it would become a significant element of functionalist linguistics.

Homeric studies

At the Sorbonne, from 1924, Meillet supervised Milman Parry. In 1923, a year before Parry began his studies with Meillet, the latter wrote the following (which, in the first of his two French theses, Parry quotes):

Meillet offered the opinion that oral-formulaic composition might be a distinctive feature of orally transmitted epics (which the ''Iliad'' was said to be). He suggested to Parry that he observe the mechanics of a living oral tradition to confirm whether that suggestion was valid; he also introduced Parry to the Slovenian scholar Matija Murko, who had written extensively about the heroic epic tradition in Serbo-Croatian and particularly in Bosnia with the help of phonograph recordings. From Parry's resulting research in Bosnia, the records of which are now housed at Harvard University, he and his student Albert Lord revolutionized Homeric scholarship.

Language controversies

Meillet has been accused of meddling politics with his observation of languages. He had negative views on German and especially on Hungarian. Hungarian, he claimed, was too difficult a language full of loanwords and not capable of being a culture bearer (in a way that he claimed other Finno-Ugric languages were unable to become such). His views on Hungarian provoked a critical response from the Hungarian writer Dezső Kosztolányi.

International languages

Meillet supported the use of an international auxiliary language. In his book ('The Pursuit of the Perfect Language in the Culture of Europe'), Umberto Eco cites Meillet as saying: "Any kind of theoretical discussion is useless, Esperanto is functioning". In addition, Meillet was a consultant with the International Auxiliary Language Association, which presented Interlingua in 1951.

Works

*1902-05: . Paris, Bouillon.
*1903: .
*1903: .
*1908: .
*1913: .
*1913: .
*1917: . (rev. edn. 1949)
*1921: .
*1923: .
*1924: (co-editor with Marcel Cohen). (Collection linguistique, 16.) Paris: Champion. (2nd edn. 1952)
*1924:
*1928: .
*1925: . ('The comparative method in historical linguistics' translated by Gordon B. Ford Jr., 1966)
*1932: .

See also

* Meillet's law
* Pierre Chantraine

References

Sources

*

External links

*

{{DEFAULTSORT:Meillet, Antoine
Balticists
1866 births
1936 deaths
Writers from Moulins, Allier
French philologists
Indo-Europeanists
Linguists of Germanic languages
Linguists of Indo-European languages
Linguists from France
University of Paris alumni
Academic staff of the University of Paris
Linguists of Slavic languages
Armenian studies scholars
Scholars of Ancient Greek
Members of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres
Academic staff of the Collège de France