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Antoine Meillet (Paul-Jules-Antoine Meillet, November 11, 1866 - September 21, 1936), was one of the most important French linguists of the early 20th century. Meillet began his studies at the Sorbonne
University of Paris

The historic University of Paris first appeared in the 12th century. In 1970 it was reorganized as 13 autonomous university . The university is often referred to as the Sorbonne or La Sorbonne after the collegiate institution founded about 1257 by Robert de Sorbon....
, where he was influenced by Michel Bréal
Michel Bréal

Michel Jules Alfred Br?al , France philologist, was born at Landau in Rhenish Bavaria, of French-Jewish parents. He is often identified as a founder of modern semantics....
, Ferdinand de Saussure
Ferdinand de Saussure

Ferdinand de Saussure was a Switzerland linguistics whose ideas laid a foundation for many significant developments in linguistics in the 20th century....
, and the members of the Année Sociologique. In 1890 he was part of a research trip to the Caucasus
Caucasus

The Caucasus or Caucas is a geopolitical region located between Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. It is home to Europe's highest mountain ....
, where he studied Armenian
Armenian language

The 'Armenian language' is an Indo-European language spoken by the Armenians. It is the official language of the Armenia as well as in the region of Nagorno-Karabakh....
. After his return, since de Saussure had gone back to Geneva
Geneva

Geneva is the second-most-populous city in Switzerland and is the most populous city of Romandie . Situated where the Rh?ne River exits Lake Geneva , it is the capital of the Canton of Geneva....
, he continued the series of lectures on comparative grammar that the Swiss linguist had formerly given.

Meillet completed his doctorate - Research on the Use of the Genitive-Accusative in Old Slavonic in 1897.






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Antoine Meillet (Paul-Jules-Antoine Meillet, November 11, 1866 - September 21, 1936), was one of the most important French linguists of the early 20th century. Meillet began his studies at the Sorbonne
University of Paris

The historic University of Paris first appeared in the 12th century. In 1970 it was reorganized as 13 autonomous university . The university is often referred to as the Sorbonne or La Sorbonne after the collegiate institution founded about 1257 by Robert de Sorbon....
, where he was influenced by Michel Bréal
Michel Bréal

Michel Jules Alfred Br?al , France philologist, was born at Landau in Rhenish Bavaria, of French-Jewish parents. He is often identified as a founder of modern semantics....
, Ferdinand de Saussure
Ferdinand de Saussure

Ferdinand de Saussure was a Switzerland linguistics whose ideas laid a foundation for many significant developments in linguistics in the 20th century....
, and the members of the Année Sociologique. In 1890 he was part of a research trip to the Caucasus
Caucasus

The Caucasus or Caucas is a geopolitical region located between Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. It is home to Europe's highest mountain ....
, where he studied Armenian
Armenian language

The 'Armenian language' is an Indo-European language spoken by the Armenians. It is the official language of the Armenia as well as in the region of Nagorno-Karabakh....
. After his return, since de Saussure had gone back to Geneva
Geneva

Geneva is the second-most-populous city in Switzerland and is the most populous city of Romandie . Situated where the Rh?ne River exits Lake Geneva , it is the capital of the Canton of Geneva....
, he continued the series of lectures on comparative grammar that the Swiss linguist had formerly given.

Meillet completed his doctorate - Research on the Use of the Genitive-Accusative in Old Slavonic in 1897. In 1902 he took a chair in Armenian at the École des Langues Orientales. In 1905 he was elected to the College de France
Collège de France

The Coll?ge de France is a higher education and research establishment located in Paris, France, in the 5th arrondissement, or Latin Quarter, across the street from the historical campus of La Sorbonne at the intersection of Rue Saint-Jacques and Rue des Ecoles....
, where he taught on the history and structure of Indo-European languages
Indo-European languages

The Indo-European languages are a Language family of several hundred related languages and dialects, including most major languages of Europe, the Iranian plateau , Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent ....
. He worked closely with noted linguists Paul Pelliot
Paul Pelliot

Paul Pelliot was a France sinologist and explorer of Central Asia. Initially intending to enter the foreign service, Pelliot took up the study of Chinese and became a pupil of Sylvain L?vi and ?douard Chavannes....
 and Robert Gauthiot.

Today Meillet is remembered as the mentor of an entire generation of linguists and philologists
Philology

Philology, derived from the Greek language considers both morphology and Meaning in linguistic expression, combining linguistics and literary studies....
 who would become central to French linguistics in the twentieth century, such as Émile Benveniste
Émile Benveniste

?mile Benveniste was a France Structuralism linguistics, an apprentice of A. Meillet and his successor, who, in his later years, became enlightened by the structural view of language through the work of Ferdinand de Saussure, although he was unwilling to grasp it at first, being a convinced follower of the sociological stance of his teacher....
, Georges Dumézil
Georges Dumézil

Georges Dum?zil was a French comparative philologist best known for his analysis of sovereignty and power in Proto-Indo-European religion and Proto-Indo-European society....
, and André Martinet
André Martinet

Andr? Martinet was a French linguistics, influential by his work on structuralism linguistics. His wife, Jeanne Martinet, is a recognized semiotics....
.

Antoine Meillet and Homeric Studies


At the Sorbonne, beginning in 1924, Meillet supervised Milman Parry
Milman Parry

Milman Parry was a scholar of epic poetry and the founder of the discipline of oral tradition.He studied at the University of California, Berkeley and at the University of Paris ....
. In 1923, a year before Milman Parry began his studies with Meillet, Meillet wrote the following (which, in the first of his two French theses, Parry quotes):
Homeric epic is entirely composed of formulae handed down from poet to poet. An examination of any passage will quickly reveal that it is made up of lines and fragments of lines which are reproduced word for word in one or several other passages. Even those lines of which the parts happen not to recur in any other passage have the same formulaic character, and it is doubtless pure chance that they are not attested elsewhere.
Meillet offered the opinion that this pattern (the so-called Oral Formulaic Hypothesis) 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
Oral tradition

Oral tradition, oral culture and oral lore are messages or testimony transmitted orally from one generation to another. The messages or testimony are verbally transmitted in speech or song and may take the form, for example, of folktales, sayings, ballads, songs, or chants....
 to confirm whether this suggestion was valid; he also introduced Parry to the Slovene scholar Matija Murko
Matija Murko

Matija Murko also known as Mathias Murko was a Slovenes scholar, known mostly for his work on oral epic traditions in the Serbo-Croatian language ....
, who had written extensively about the heroic epic tradition in Serbo-Croat and particularly in Bosnia
Bosnia and Herzegovina

Bosnia and Herzegovina is a country on the Balkans peninsula of South Eastern Europe with an area of 51,129 square kilometres . Bordered by Croatia to the north, west and south, Serbia to the east, and Montenegro to the south, Bosnia and Herzegovina is Landlocked#Nearly landlocked, except for 26 kilometres of the Adriatic Sea coas...
 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
Albert Lord

Albert Bates Lord was a Professor of Slavic and Comparative Literature at Harvard who, after the untimely death of Milman Parry, carried on that scholar's research into Epic poetry literature....
 revolutionized Homeric studies.

Meillet and international languages


Meillet supported the use of an international auxiliary language. In his book The Search for the Perfect Language, Umberto Eco cites Meillet as saying, "Any kind of theoretical discussion is useless, Esperanto
Esperanto

is the most widely spoken constructed language international auxiliary language in the world. Its name derives from Doktoro Esperanto, the pseudonym under which L....
 is functioning". In addition, Meillet was a consultant with the International Auxiliary Language Association
International Auxiliary Language Association

The International Auxiliary Language Association was founded in 1924 to "promote widespread study, discussion and publicity of all questions involved in the establishment of an international auxiliary language, together with research and experiment that may hasten such establishment in an intelligent manner and on stable foundations."...
, which presented Interlingua
Interlingua

Interlingua is an international auxiliary language , developed between 1937 and 1951 by the International Auxiliary Language Association . It is the second or third most widely used IAL and the most widely used International auxiliary language#Classification IAL: in other words, its vocabulary, grammar and other characteristics are largely...
 in 1951.

See also

  • Meillet's law
    Meillet's law

    Meillet's law is a Common Slavic accent law, named after French Indo-Europeanist Antoine Meillet who discovered it.According to the law, Slavic words have circumflex on the root vowel with Balto-Slavic acute, if that word had mobile accent in paradigm in Proto-Slavic and Proto-Balto-Slavic....


Publications

  • 1903: Esquisse d'une grammaire comparée de l'arménien classique.
  • 1903: Introduction à l'étude comparative des langues indo-européennes.
  • 1908: Les dialectes indo-européens.
  • 1913: Aperçu d'une histoire de la langue grecque.
  • 1913: Altarmenisches Elementarbuch.
  • 1921: Linguistique historique et linguistique générale.
  • 1923: Les origines indo-européennes des mètres grecs.
  • 1928: Esquisse d'une histoire de la langue latine.
  • 1928: La méthode comparative en linguistique historique (The comparative method in historical linguistics translated by Gordon B. Ford, Jr., 1966)
  • 1932: Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue latine.