Michel Contini (

Cagliari Cagliari (, also , , ; sc, Casteddu ; lat, Caralis) is an Italian municipality and the capital of the island of Sardinia, an autonomous region of Italy. Cagliari's Sardinian name ''Casteddu'' means ''castle''. It has about 155,000 inhabitan ...

1937 Events January * January 1 – Anastasio Somoza García becomes President of Nicaragua. * January 5 – Water levels begin to rise in the Ohio River in the United States, leading to the Ohio River flood of 1937, which continues into Febr ...

) is a Sardinian, naturalized French

linguist Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Lingui ...

researcher Research is "creative and systematic work undertaken to increase the stock of knowledge". It involves the collection, organization and analysis of evidence to increase understanding of a topic, characterized by a particular attentiveness t ...

and

academic An academy (Attic Greek: Ἀκαδήμεια; Koine Greek Ἀκαδημία) is an institution of secondary or tertiary higher learning (and generally also research or honorary membership). The name traces back to Plato's school of philosophy, f ...

Biography

Born in Cagliari, he completed elementary school in

Oristano Oristano (; sc, Aristanis ) is an Italian city and ''comune'', and capital of the Province of Oristano in the central-western part of the island of Sardinia. It is located on the northern part of the Campidano plain. It was established as the ...

, middle school in Cagliari, and obtained a scientific high school diploma in

Sassari Sassari (, ; sdc, Sàssari ; sc, Tàtari, ) is an Italian city and the second-largest of Sardinia in terms of population with 127,525 inhabitants, and a Functional Urban Area of about 260,000 inhabitants. One of the oldest cities on the island, ...

. In 1958 he began living in

Grenoble lat, Gratianopolis , commune status = Prefecture and commune , image = Panorama grenoble.png , image size = , caption = From upper left: Panorama of the city, Grenoble’s cable cars, place Saint- ...

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. Its metropolitan ar ...

, where he graduated in Languages in 1964, and in 1965 he obtained the

French citizenship French nationality law is historically based on the principles of ''jus soli'' (Latin for "right of soil") and ''jus sanguinis'', according to Ernest Renan's definition, in opposition to the German definition of nationality, ''jus sanguinis'' ( ...

. After graduating, he began to publish his first studies about the

Sardinian language Sardinian or Sard ( , or ) is a Romance languages, Romance language spoken by the Sardinians on the Western Mediterranean island of Sardinia. Many Romance linguists consider it the language that is closest to Latin among all its genealogica ...

, during his doctorate. The first one, published for the 3rd-cycle Doctorate, was a phonetic and phonological study of the dialect of

Nughedu San Nicolò Nughedu San Nicolò ( sc, Nughedu Santu Nigola) is a ''comune'' (municipality) in the Province of Sassari in the Italian region Sardinia, located about northwest of Cagliari and about southeast of Sassari. Nughedu San Nicolò borders the follow ...

, and he later made many other ones during his three years of work (1967-1970) as a researcher at the

CNRS The French National Centre for Scientific Research (french: link=no, Centre national de la recherche scientifique, CNRS) is the French state research organisation and is the largest fundamental science agency in Europe. In 2016, it employed 31,63 ...

, studying Sardinian, French and

Italian Italian(s) may refer to: * Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries ** Italians, an ethnic group or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom ** Italian language, a Romance language *** Regional Ita ...

. Regarding Sardinian, his studies have come to analyze the variants of 214 Sardinian languages, and thanks to this work he obtained the

State Doctorate Habilitation is the highest university degree, or the procedure by which it is achieved, in many European countries. The candidate fulfills a university's set criteria of excellence in research, teaching and further education, usually including a ...

( Strasbourg, 1983) with his thesis ''Etude de geographie phonetique et de phonetique instrumentale du sarde (''Study of phonetic geography and instrumental phonetics of Sardinian), published in 1987 by the publisher Edizioni dell'Orso. Later, he became full professor of

Geolinguistics Geolinguistics has been identified by some as being a branch of linguistics and by others as being an offshoot of language geography which is further defined in terms of being a branch of human geography. When seen as a branch of linguistics, geoli ...

and

Phonetics Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that studies how humans produce and perceive sounds, or in the case of sign languages, the equivalent aspects of sign. Linguists who specialize in studying the physical properties of speech are phoneticians. ...

and Director of the Center for Dialectology at the

Stendhal University Stendhal University (french: Université Stendhal, also known as Grenoble III) was a university located in the outskirts of Grenoble, France that offered courses in foreign languages and cultures, ancient and modern literature, language and commun ...

, and became director of the European Project for the Romance Linguistic Atlas of the State Mint and Polygraphic Institute of

Rome , established_title = Founded , established_date = 753 BC , founder = King Romulus ( legendary) , image_map = Map of comune of Rome (metropolitan city of Capital Rome, region Lazio, Italy).svg , map_caption ...

, a collaborative project of 85 universities and 31 researchers from all over the

Romance Romance (from Vulgar Latin , "in the Roman language", i.e., "Latin") may refer to: Common meanings * Romance (love), emotional attraction towards another person and the courtship behaviors undertaken to express the feelings * Romance languages, ...

-speaking countries. In 2006 he was part of the commission for the creation of the

Limba Sarda Comuna (LSC) is an orthography for the Sardinian language, created with the aim of transcribing the many variants of spoken Sardinian, with their distinctive characteristics, in the same way, and adopted experimentally in 2006 by the Autonomous Region of ...

, together with Giulio Angioni, Roberto Bolognesi, Manlio Brigaglia, Diego Corràine, Giovanni Lupinu, Anna Oppo, Giulio Paulis, Maria Teresa Pinna Catte and Mario Puddu, and since then he has always declared himself in favor of its use, considering the use of a single orthography tas something necessary to save the language from extinction. In 2011 he started working at the ALiMuS, Multimedia Linguistic Atlas of

Sardinia Sardinia ( ; it, Sardegna, label= Italian, Corsican and Tabarchino ; sc, Sardigna , sdc, Sardhigna; french: Sardaigne; sdn, Saldigna; ca, Sardenya, label= Algherese and Catalan) is the second-largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, af ...

, a work that was stopped in 2014. Following his retirement, he continued to work on the ''Atlas Linguistique Roman'' (ALIR) and the

Atlas Linguarum Europae The ''Atlas Linguarum Europae'' (literally ''Atlas of the Languages of Europe'', ALE in acronym) is a linguistic atlas project launched in 1970 with the help of UNESCO, and published from 1975 to 2007. The ALE used its own phonetic transcription sy ...

(ALE)''.''

Publications

This is a partial list of Michel Contini's publications during the years. It does not include most of them. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Contini, Michel Linguists from Italy People from Sardinia Linguists from France 1937 births Living people