Charles Bally (; 4 February 1865 – 10 April 1947) was a Swiss

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 ...

who was a representative of the Geneva School of linguistics. In addition to his edition of

Ferdinand de Saussure Ferdinand Mongin de Saussure (; ; 26 November 185722 February 1913) was a Swiss linguist, semiotician and philosopher. His ideas laid a foundation for many significant developments in both linguistics and semiotics in the 20th century. He is wi ...

's lectures '' Course in General Linguistics'' (co-edited by Albert Sechehaye), Charles Bally also played an important role in linguistics.

Biography

Bally was born in 1865 in

Geneva Geneva ( , ; ) ; ; . is the List of cities in Switzerland, second-most populous city in Switzerland and the most populous in French-speaking Romandy. Situated in the southwest of the country, where the Rhône exits Lake Geneva, it is the ca ...

. His parents were Jean Gabriel, a teacher, and Henriette, the owner of a clothing store. From 1883 to 1885, he studied

classical literature Classics, also classical studies or Ancient Greek and Roman studies, is the study of classical antiquity. In the Western world, ''classics'' traditionally refers to the study of Ancient Greek and Roman literature and their original languages, ...

at the

University of Geneva The University of Geneva (French: ''Université de Genève'') is a public university, public research university located in Geneva, Switzerland. It was founded in 1559 by French theologian John Calvin as a Theology, theological seminary. It rema ...

. He continued his studies from 1886 to 1889 at the Royal Friedrich Wilhelm University of Berlin where he was awarded a Ph.D. After his studies, he worked as a private teacher for the

Greek royal family The Greek royal family () was the ruling family of the Kingdom of Greece from 1863 to 1924 and again from 1935 to 1973. The Greek royal family is a branch of the Danish royal family, itself a cadet branch of the House of Glücksburg. The famil ...

from 1889 to 1893. Bally returned to Geneva and taught at a business school from 1893 on, and moved to the Progymnasium, a grammar school, from 1913 to 1939. He also worked as PD at the University of Geneva from 1893 to 1913. From 1913 to 1939, he had a professorship for general linguistic and comparative

Indo-European studies Indo-European studies () is a field of linguistics and an interdisciplinary field of study dealing with Indo-European languages, both current and extinct. The goal of those engaged in these studies is to amass information about the hypothetical p ...

, which he took over from

. Besides his works about subjecthood in 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 ...

, he also wrote about the crisis in the French language and language classes. He was active in

interlinguistics Interlinguistics, also known as cosmoglottics, is the science of planned languages that has existed for more than a century. Formalised by Otto Jespersen in 1931 as the science of interlanguages, in more recent times, the field has been more fo ...

, serving as a consultant to the research association that presented

Interlingua Interlingua (, ) is an international auxiliary language (IAL) developed between 1937 and 1951 by the American International Auxiliary Language Association (IALA). It is a constructed language of the "naturalistic" variety, whose vocabulary, ...

in 1951. Today Charles Bally is regarded as the founding father of linguistic

stylistics Stylistics, a branch of applied linguistics, is the study and interpretation of texts of all types, but particularly literary texts, and spoken language with regard to their linguistic and tonal style, where style is the particular variety of l ...

and much honored for his theories of

phraseology In linguistics, phraseology is the study of set or fixed expressions, such as idioms, phrasal verbs, and other types of multi-word lexical units (often collectively referred to as ''phrasemes''), in which the component parts of the expression tak ...

.Amacker (1995: 240) In terms of modern stylistics he dealt with the expressive function of signs. Bally was married three times: first to Valentine Leirens, followed by Irma Baptistine Doutre, who was sent into a

mental institution A psychiatric hospital, also known as a mental health hospital, a behavioral health hospital, or an asylum is a specialized medical facility that focuses on the treatment of severe mental disorders. These institutions cater to patients with ...

in 1915, and finally to Alice Bellicot. He died in Geneva in 1947.

Works

* ''Traité de stylistique française'' (1909) *
Le style indirect libre en français moderne I & II
(Free indirect style in Modern French), ''Germanisch-Romanische Monatsschrift'', 1912. * ''Le Langage et la Vie'' (1913) * ''La pensée et la langue'', Bulletin de la société linguistique de Paris 22-23 (1922) * ''La Crise du français, notre langue maternelle à l'école'' (1930) * ''Linguistique générale et linguistique française'' (1932) * ''L’arbitraire du signe. Valeur et signification'' (1940) * ''Le langage et la vie'' (troisième édition 1977)

References

Sources

* Amacker, René (1995), "Geneva School, after Saussure", in Koerner, E. F. K. & Asher, R. E. (eds.), ''Concise History of the Language Sciences'', Oxford: Pergamon, pp. 239–243. * Esterhill, F., ''Interlingua Institute: A History'', Interlingua Institute (2000).

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Bally, Charles Linguists from Switzerland Structuralists Writers from Geneva 1865 births 1947 deaths

Biography

Works

References

Sources

Further reading

External links