Marcel Samuel Raphaël Cohen (February 6, 1884 – November 5, 1974) was a French

linguist Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), Morphology (linguistics), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds ...

. He was an important scholar of

Semitic languages The Semitic languages are a branch of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family. They include Arabic, Amharic, Tigrinya language, Tigrinya, Aramaic, Hebrew language, Hebrew, Maltese language, Maltese, Modern South Arabian language ...

and especially of Ethiopian languages. He studied the

French language French ( or ) is a Romance languages, Romance language of the Indo-European languages, Indo-European family. Like all other Romance languages, it descended from the Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire. French evolved from Northern Old Gallo-R ...

and contributed much to general linguistics.

Life

Marcel Cohen was born in

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

. He studied at the

Lycée Condorcet The Lycée Condorcet () is a secondary school in Paris, France, located at 8, rue du Havre, in the city's 9th arrondissement. Founded in 1803, it is one of the four oldest high schools in Paris and also one of the most prestigious. Since its inc ...

. He attended

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 l ...

's lectures at the

Collège de France The (), formerly known as the or as the ''Collège impérial'' founded in 1530 by François I, is a higher education and research establishment () in France. It is located in Paris near La Sorbonne. The has been considered to be France's most ...

and the

École pratique des hautes études The (), abbreviated EPHE, is a French postgraduate top level educational institution, a . EPHE is a constituent college of the Université PSL (together with ENS Ulm, Paris Dauphine or Ecole des Mines). The college is closely linked to É ...

. In 1905 he registered at the

École des langues orientales Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales (; ), abbreviated as INALCO, is a French Grand Etablissement with a specializing in the teaching of languages and cultures from the world. Its coverage spans languages of Central Europ ...

and graduated in 1909. He Studied

Amharic Amharic is an Ethio-Semitic language, which is a subgrouping within the Semitic branch of the Afroasiatic languages. It is spoken as a first language by the Amhara people, and also serves as a lingua franca for all other metropolitan populati ...

(under Mondon-Vidailhet), French linguistics,

Sanskrit Sanskrit (; stem form ; nominal singular , ,) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in northwest South Asia after its predecessor languages had Trans-cultural ...

, Ge'ez and South Arabian. He wrote his thesis on the

Arabic Arabic (, , or , ) is a Central Semitic languages, Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) assigns lang ...

dialect A dialect is a Variety (linguistics), variety of language spoken by a particular group of people. This may include dominant and standard language, standardized varieties as well as Vernacular language, vernacular, unwritten, or non-standardize ...

of the Jews of Algiers (''Le parler arabe des juifs d'Alger'').See Strelcyn 1975, p. 615. Between March 1910 and June 1911, he undertook a journey to

Ethiopia Ethiopia, officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country located in the Horn of Africa region of East Africa. It shares borders with Eritrea to the north, Djibouti to the northeast, Somalia to the east, Ken ...

in which he collected much material on Ethiopian languages.An account of this journey was written by him under the title: ''Rapport sur une mission linguistique en Abyssinie 1910-1911'' (Paris 1912). He succeeded Mondon-Vidailhet, who had just died, as ''chargé de cours d'Abyssin'' at the École des langues orientales.See Rouaud 2003, p. 766b. In 1916 he became Assistant Professor and in 1926 a full Professor. In 1919 he also became professor of Ethiopic at the École pratique des hautes études.See Strelcyn 1975, p. 616. He had several students who became distinguished ''éthiopisants'', such as: Wolf Leslau, Stefan Strelcyn and Joseph Tubiana.

Works

* 1912: ''Le parler arabe des Juifs d'Alger''. Paris: Champion. * 1912: ''Rapport sur une mission linguistique en Abyssinie (1910-1911)''. Paris: Imprimerie Nationale. * 1920: ''Documents ethnographiques d'Abyssinie''. Paris: Leroux. * 1921: "La prononciation traditionelle du Guèze (éthiopien classique)", in: ''Journal asiatique'' Sér. 11 / T. 18
electronic version
in Gallica digital library of the

Bibliothèque nationale de France The (; BnF) is the national library of France, located in Paris on two main sites, ''Richelieu'' and ''François-Mitterrand''. It is the national repository of all that is published in France. Some of its extensive collections, including bo ...

PDF Portable document format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe Inc., Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, computer hardware, ...

). * 1924: ''Couplets amhariques du Choa''. Paris: Imprimerie Nationale. * 1924: ''Le système verbal sémitique et l'expression du temps''. Paris: Leroux. * 1924: (with

) ''Les langues du monde''. Paris: Champion. (2nd ed. 1952) * 1931: ''Etudes d'éthiopien méridional''. Paris: Geuthner. * 1934: ''Documents sudarabiques''. Paris: dépôt chez Adrien Maisonneuve. * 1936: ''Traité de langue amharique''. Paris: Institut d'Ethnographie. (reprinted: 1970, 1995 ) * 1939: ''Nouvelles études d'éthiopien meridional''. Paris: Champion. * 1947: ''Essai comparatif sur le vocabulaire et la phonétique chamito-sémitique''. Paris: Champion. * 1947: ''Histoire d'une langue: le français''. Paris: Editions Réunis. (4th ed., Editions Sociales 1974) * 1950: ''Regards sur la langue française''. Paris: Editions Sociales. * 1950: ''Le langage: structure et évolution''. Paris: Editions Sociales. * 1954: ''Grammaire et style''. * 1958: ''La grande invention de l'écriture et son évolution''. Paris: Klincksieck. * 1962: ''Etudes sur le langage de l'enfant''. Paris: Editions du Scarabée. * 1963: ''Nouveaux regards sur la langue française''. * 1963: ''Encore des regards sur la langue française''. * 1970: ''Toujours des regards sur la langue française''. * 1972: ''Une fois de plus des regards sur la langue française''. Paris: Editions Sociales.

References

* Bert, Jean-François (2015)
« Sociologie et linguistique. Penser la relation entre langue et société »
in Christine Laurière (dir.), ''1913. La recomposition de la science de l’Homme'', Les Carnets de Bérose n°7, Paris, BEROSE - International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology, pp. 167–176. *Cohen, David (ed.) (1970). ''Mélanges Marcel Cohen: études de linguistique, ethnographie et sciences connexes offertes par ses amis et ses élèves à l'occasion de son 80ème anniversaire; avec des articles et études inédits de Marcel Cohen''. The Hague: Mouton. * Imprimerie Nationale (1955; ed.), ''Cinquante années de recherches linguistiques, ethnographiques, sociologiques, critiques et pédagogiques''. Paris. * Lentin, Irène (December 1984). "Marcel Cohen", in: ''Bulletin de l'Association des anciens élèves'', pp. 64–68. * Rouaud, Alain (1995), "Marcel Cohen", in: Pierre Labrousses, ''Deux siècles d'histoire de l'École des Langues orientales'' (Paris), pp. 363–367. * Rouaud, Alain (2003), "Cohen, Marcel", in: S. Uhlig et al. (eds.), ''

Encyclopaedia Aethiopica The ''Encyclopaedia Aethiopica'' (''EAe'') is a basic English-language encyclopaedia for Ethiopian and Eritrean studies. The ''Encyclopaedia Aethiopica'' provides information in all fields of the discipline, i.e. anthropology, archaeology, ethn ...

'' Vol. 1: A-C (Wiesbadn: Harrassowitz), pp. 766a-766b. *Strelcyn, S. (1975). "Obituary: Marcel Cohen", in: ''Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies'' 38/3, pp. 615–622. * Union Française Universitaire (1985; ed.), ''Hommage à Marcel Cohen''. Paris.

Life

Works

See also

References

References

External links