Meillet, Antoine

Antoine Meillet, (born Nov. 11, 1866, Moulins, Fr.—died Sept. 21, 1936, Châteaumeillant), one of the most influential comparative linguists of his time. Using a comparative method of utmost precision, he clearly explained the early Indo-European linguistic system and traced its history. He steadily emphasized that any attempt to account for linguistic change must recognize that language is a social phenomenon. He also explored the psychological factors in sound changes.

In 1891 Meillet became director of comparative Indo-European studies at the School of Advanced Studies in Paris and taught Armenian from 1902 until 1906, when he was appointed a professor at the Collège de France. In 1903 he published what is generally considered his most important work, Introduction à l’étude comparative des langues indo-européennes (“Introduction to the Comparative Study of the Indo-European Languages”), which explained the relationships of the languages to one another and to the parent Indo-European tongue. Advancing a theory of linguistic differentiation, he suggested that languages that developed farther away from a centre of common origin are less disturbed by changes initiated at the point of origin and may retain archaic characteristics in common. Around the early 1900s he produced his authoritative Esquisse de la grammaire comparée de l’arménien classique (1902; “Outline of a Comparative Grammar of Classical Armenian”) and also made the first of his notable contributions to Slavic studies. Part of his prodigious effort went into studies of the Germanic, Baltic, and Celtic languages; he made fundamental contributions to Old Iranian, notably with a grammar (1915), and produced two outstanding works (1913 and 1928) on the historical contexts and significance of Greek and Latin. In a number of articles he related sociological factors to changes in word meanings and other linguistic phenomena.