Achille Emile Meeussen, also spelled Achiel Emiel Meeussen,
[Swiggers (2009).][Universiteit Leiden website]
or simply A.E. Meeussen (as he generally signed his articles) (19121978) was a distinguished Belgian specialist in
Bantu languages
The Bantu languages (English: , Proto-Bantu language, Proto-Bantu: *bantʊ̀), or Ntu languages are a language family of about 600 languages of Central Africa, Central, Southern Africa, Southern, East Africa, Eastern and Southeast Africa, South ...
, particularly those of the
Belgian Congo
The Belgian Congo (, ; ) was a Belgian colonial empire, Belgian colony in Central Africa from 1908 until independence in 1960 and became the Republic of the Congo (Léopoldville). The former colony adopted its present name, the Democratic Repu ...
,
Rwanda
Rwanda, officially the Republic of Rwanda, is a landlocked country in the Great Rift Valley of East Africa, where the African Great Lakes region and Southeast Africa converge. Located a few degrees south of the Equator, Rwanda is bordered by ...
and
Burundi
Burundi, officially the Republic of Burundi, is a landlocked country in East Africa. It is located in the Great Rift Valley at the junction between the African Great Lakes region and Southeast Africa, with a population of over 14 million peop ...
. Together with the British scholar
Malcolm Guthrie (19031972) he is regarded as one of the two leading experts in Bantu languages in the second half of the 20th century.
[Bostoen & Bastin (2016).]
Meeussen was born at
Sint-Pieters-Jette, Belgium on April 6, 1912, and died at
Louvain on February 8, 1978, at the age of 65.
Education and career
A. E. Meeussen studied classical philology at the
Catholic University of Louvain (
Leuven
Leuven (, , ), also called Louvain (, , ), is the capital and largest City status in Belgium, city of the Provinces of Belgium, province of Flemish Brabant in the Flemish Region of Belgium. It is located about east of Brussels. The municipalit ...
) in Belgium, where he submitted his PhD thesis on
Indo-European ablaut
In linguistics, the Indo-European ablaut ( , from Standard High German, German ) is a system of apophony (regular vowel variations) in the Proto-Indo-European language (PIE).
An example of ablaut in English is the Germanic strong verb, strong ...
in 1938. After studying at the
School of Oriental and African Studies in London, in 1950 he was appointed to the staff of the
Royal Museum for Central Africa
The Royal Museum for Central Africa (RMCA) (; ; ), communicating under the name AfricaMuseum since 2018, is an ethnography and natural history museum situated in Tervuren in Flemish Brabant, Belgium, just outside Brussels. It was originally b ...
in
Tervuren, Belgium; he was director of the linguistics department of the museum from 195877.
He was also professor of African linguistics at the University of Louvain from 1952–62 and later professor at
Leiden University
Leiden University (abbreviated as ''LEI''; ) is a Public university, public research university in Leiden, Netherlands. Established in 1575 by William the Silent, William, Prince of Orange as a Protestantism, Protestant institution, it holds the d ...
in the Netherlands from 196477.
Research
Languages studied
Among the Bantu languages which Meeussen described or studied were
Luba-Kasayi (1951),
Ombo (1952),
Kirundi
Kirundi (), also known as Rundi, is a Bantu language and the national language of Burundi. It is mutually intelligible with Kinyarwanda, the national language of Rwanda, and the two form parts of the Rwanda-Rundi dialect continuum spoken in Buru ...
(1952),
Laadi (1953),
Bangubangu (1954),
Bemba (1954),
Luganda
Ganda or Luganda ( ; ) is a Bantu language spoken in the African Great Lakes region. It is one of the major languages in Uganda and is spoken by more than 5.56 million Ganda people, Baganda and other people principally in central Uganda, includ ...
(1955),
Shambala (1955),
Sotho (1958),
Lega (1962),
Tonga
Tonga, officially the Kingdom of Tonga, is an island country in Polynesia, part of Oceania. The country has 171 islands, of which 45 are inhabited. Its total surface area is about , scattered over in the southern Pacific Ocean. accordin ...
(1963), and
Yao (1971). His descriptions of the grammar of Ombo, Bangubangu, and Rundi were written as a result of fieldwork notes which he made on a visit to Rwanda-Urundi and
Maniema
Maniema Province (''Jimbo la Maniema'', in Swahili) is one of 26 provinces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Its capital is Kindu. The 2020 population was estimated to be 2,856,300.
Toponymy
Henry Morton Stanley explored the area ...
district of the Belgian Congo in 1950-51; the information on Lega was obtained from visitors to the Museum.
[Coupez (1980).] He also wrote articles on other languages, including the American Indian languages
Cheyenne and
Cree
The Cree, or nehinaw (, ), are a Indigenous peoples of the Americas, North American Indigenous people, numbering more than 350,000 in Canada, where they form one of the country's largest First Nations in Canada, First Nations. They live prim ...
(1962).
Tonal theory
Meeussen was especially interested in the
tones of the Bantu languages, and is famous for his discovery of
Meeussen's rule, which describes how in some circumstances a sequence of two High tones (HH) in a word changes to High + Low (HL). He is said to have had an exceptional ability to hear and reproduce the sounds of the languages he studied.
Historical linguistics
In addition to studying individual languages, Meeussen also made major contributions to the comparative study of Bantu and to the reconstruction of the phonemes, grammar, and vocabulary of
Proto-Bantu.
His 40-page article "Bantu Grammatical Reconstructions" of 1967 succinctly outlines the main facts of Proto-Bantu grammar as they were known at that time. In 1969 he was responsible for founding the database "Bantu Lexical Reconstructions" still maintained today by the Tervuren museum.
[See External links.]
Works
*Meeussen, Achille E. (1943). "Syntaxis van het Tshiluba". ''Kongo-Overzee'' 9 (1-3): 81-263.
*Meeussen, Achille E. (1948). "Guthrie, M. The classification of the Bantu languages (review)". ''Kongo-Overzee'' 14 (5): 314-318.
*Meeussen, Achille E. (1950). "De tonen van de imperatief in het Ciluba (Kasayi)". ''Kongo-Overzee'' 16 (2-3): 110-111.
*Meeussen, Achille E. (1951). "Tooncontractie in het Ciluba (Kasayi)". ''Kongo-Overzee'' 17 (4-5): 289-291.
*Meeussen, Achille E. (1952). "Notes de grammaire rundi". Unpublished.
*Meeussen, Achille E. (1952). ''Esquisse de la langue ombo.'' MRAC, Annales du Musée royal du Congo belge 4, Tervuren.
*Meeussen, Achille E. (1952). "La voyelle des radicaux CV en bantou commun". ''Africa'' 22, 367-713
*Meeussen, Achille E. (1953). "Rundi-teksten van André Barumwete". ''Kongo-Overzee'' 19: 420-427.
*Meeussen, Achille E. (1953). "Notes sur la tonalité du nom en laadi". ''Etudes bantoues II'' 79-86.
*Meeussen, Achille E. (1953). "De talen van Maniema (Belgisch-Kongo)". ''Kongo-Overzee'' 19 (5): 385-390.
*Meeussen, Achille E. (1954). "Werkwoordafleiding in Mongo en Oerbantoe". ''Aequatoria'' 27 (3): 81-86.
*Meeussen, Achille E. (1954). "Klinkerlengte in het Oerbantoe". ''Kongo-Overzee'' 20:423–31. Translated a
"Vowel Length in Proto-Bantu" ''Journal of African Languages and Linguistics'' 1(1): 1-8 · January 1979.
*Meeussen, Achille E. (1954). "Linguïstische schets van het Bangubangu". Tervuren, 1954, 53 p.
*Meeussen, Achille E. (1954). "The tones of prefixes in common Bantu." ''Africa'' 24 (1): 48-53.
*Meeussen, Achille E. (1954). "Le ton des extensions verbales en bantu." ''Orbis'' 10 (2): 424-427.
*Meeussen, Achille E. & Biebuyck, Daniel (1954). "Bembe-tekst". ''Kongo-Overzee'' 20 (1): 74-77.
*Meeussen, Achille E. (1955). "Tonunterschiede als Reflexe von Quantitätsunderschieden im Shambala". In Lukas J. (ed.) ''Afrikanistische Studien Diedriech Westermann zum 80. Geburtstag gewindet'', 154-156.
*Meeussen, Achille E. (1955). "Les phonèmes du ganda et du bantu commun". ''Africa'' 25 (2): 170-180.
*Sharman, J.C. & Meeussen, A.E. (1955). "The representation of structural tones, with special reference to the tonal behaviour of the verb, in Bemba, Northern Rhodesia". ''Africa'', 25, 393-404.
*Meeussen, Achille E. (1958). "Morphotonologie de la conjugaison en sotho". Unpublished.
*Meeussen, Achille E. (1958). "Morfotonologie van de vervoeging in het Suthu". ''Zaïre'' 12 (4): 383-392.
*Meeussen, Achille E. (1959). "Essai de grammaire rundi". Tervuren.
*Meeussen, Achille E. (1962). "Lega-teksten". ''Africana Linguistica'' 1: 75-97.
*Meeussen, Achille E. (1962). "De tonen van subjunktief en imperatief in het Bantoe." ''Africana Linguistica'' 1: 57-74.
*Meeussen, Achille E. (1962). "The independent order in Cheyenne". ''Orbis'', 11: 260-288.
*Meeussen, Achille E. (1962). "The independent indicative in Mistassinl Crée". ''Studies in Linguistics'', 1: 73-76.
*Meeussen, Achille E. (1963). "Meinhof's rule in Bantu." ''African Language Studies'' 3:25-29.
*Meeussen, Achille E. (1963). "Morphotonology of the Tonga verb". ''Journal of African Languages'', 2.72–92.
*Meeussen, Achille E. (1964). "Notes suku". Unpublished, Tervuren.
*Meeussen, Achille E. (1965). "A preliminary tonal analysis of Ganda verb forms". ''Journal of African Languages'' 4 (2): 107-113.
*Meeussen, Achille E. (1966). "Syntactic tones of nouns in Ganda : a preliminary synthesis". In Lebrun Yvan (ed.) ''Recherches linguistiques en Belgique'', 77-86.
*Meeussen, Achille E. (1967). "Notes on Swahili prosody". - ''Swahili'', 37: 166-170.
*Meeussen, Achille E. (1967)
"Bantu grammatical reconstructions."''Africana Linguistica'' 3: 79-121.
*Meeussen, Achille E. (1969). "Bemerkungen über die Zahlwörter von sechs bis zehn in Bantusprachen". In ''Kalima na Dimi... .'' Stuttgart, 11-18.
*Meeussen, Achille E. (1970). "Tone typologies for West African languages". ''African Language Studies'', 11: 266-271 .
*Meeussen, Achille E. (1971). "Notes on conjugation and tone in Yao." ''Africana Linguistica'' 5: 197-203.
*Meeussen, Achille E. (1971). ''Eléments de grammaire lega.'' Tervuren.
*Meeussen, Achille E. (1972). "Japanese accentuation as a restricted tone system". ''Japanese Linguistics'' 1: 267-270.
*Meeussen, Achille E. (1973). "Comparative Bantu: Test cases for method." ''African Language Studies'' 14: 6-18.
*Meeussen, Achille E. (1974). "Notes on tone in Ganda." ''Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies'' 37 (1): 148-156.
*Meeussen, Achille E. (1974). "A note on global rules in Bangubangu tone". ''Studies in African Linguistics'' 5 (1): 95-99.
*Meeussen, Achille E. (1975). "Possible linguistic Africanisms." ''Language Sciences'' 35: 1-5
*Meeussen, Achille E. (1976). "Notes sur la tonalité du nom en laadi". ''Etudes Bantoues'' 2: 79-86.
*Meeussen, Achille E. (1977). "Trois pronominaux du mbala". ''Africana Linguistica'' 7: 359-374.
*Meeussen, Achille E. (1977). "Aspects préliminaires de l'étude du Punu (Guthrie B43)". Unpublished.
*Meeussen, Achille E. (1978). "Relative structures in Bantu". In Baumbach, E. J. M. (ed). ''Proceedings of the 2nd Africa Languages Congress''. University of South Africa: 98-104.
*Meeussen, Achille E. (1980). ''Bantu Lexical Reconstructions''. Tervuren: Musée Royal de l'Afrique Centrale. (Reprint of Meeussen's unpublished manuscript of 1969.)
*Meeussen, Achille E. (1980). "Le cas du mbagani. Mbagani et Lwalwa : deux anciens membres du complexe kongo au Kasayi?" In Bouquiaux, Luc (ed.) ''L'expansion bantue. - Actes du Colloque International du CNRS, Viviers (France), 4-16 avril 1977'': 443-445.
*Meeussen, Achille E. (1980). "Problèmes spécifiques du grammaire comparé du bantou: exposé introductif". In Bouquiaux, Luc (ed.) ''L'expansion bantue. - Actes du Colloque International du CNRS, Viviers (France), 4-16 avril 1977'': 457ff.
*Meeussen, Achille E. (1980). "Degrés d'archaïsme en bantou." - Communication faite au Colloque de Viviers (1977). - In Bouquiaux, Luc (ed.) ''L'Expansion bantoue: actes du Colloque international du CNRS, Viviers (France), 4-16 avril 1977'': 595-600.
References
Bibliography
*Bostoen, Koen; Bastin, Yvonne (2016)
"Bantu Lexical Reconstructions".Oxford Handbooks online.
*Coupez, A. (1979)
"In Memoriam A. E. Meeussen 1912-1978" ''African Studies'' 38 (2): 231-232.
*Coupez, A. (1980)
"Hommage à A. Meeussen (1912-1978)".''Africana Linguistica'' 8 (1): 1-22. (In French).
*Swiggers, Pierre (2006). "Meeussen, Achille Emile (1912-1978)". In Brown, E. K.; Asher, R. E.; Simpson, J. M. Y. (eds.) ''Encyclopedia of Language & Linguistics'' (2nd edition). Elsevier, pp. 759–760.
*Swiggers, Pierre (2009
"Meeussen, Achiel Emiel" In Stammerjohann, H. (ed). ''Lexicon grammaticorum. A Bio-Bibliographical Companion to the History of Linguistics'', vol. 2: 993-994.
External links
"Bantu Grammatical Reconstructions" ''Africana Linguistica'' 3, 1967. pp. 79–121.
"Bantu Lexical Reconstructions 3".Royal Museum for Central Africa, Tervuren.
Achille Meeussen Royal Museum for Central Africa
{{DEFAULTSORT:Meeussen, Achille Emile
Phonologists
Linguists from Belgium
Linguists of Bantu languages
Belgian philologists
1912 births
1978 deaths
20th-century linguists
20th-century philologists
Academic staff of Leiden University