MEILLET, Paul Jules Antoine. Moulins (Allier) 11.11.1866 — Châteaumeillant (Cher) 12.9.1936. French Linguist. Professor in Paris. Lost his mother when 11. Spent his childhood in Moulins (home of his grandparents) and Châteaumeillant,where his father worked as notary. After Lycée Banville of Moulins he came to Paris in 1884 intending to become a teacher. After a while at Lycée Louis-le-Grand started 1885 studies at Sorbonne and, attending the teaching of Havet, Darmesteter, Bergaigne and Henry, soon dropped the idea of a teacher’s career and turned to scholarship. He also listened Bréal at Collège de France and Lévi et al. at E.P.H.E. He was deeply influenced by F. de Saussure, and started his own teaching as his deputy. In 1887 he visited Armenia studying both spoken language and manuscripts. Aggregation 1889. Ph.D. 1897 Sorbonne. In 1894 he succeeded Darmesteter at E.P.H.E. where he taught Old Iranian and comparative linguistics. In 1899-1900 deputy of Bréal at Collège de France, and in 1902-06 taught Armenian at E.L.O.V. In 1902 second visit to Armenia for study of manuscripts and of living language. In 1905 he succeeded Bréal as Professeur de grammaire comparée at Collège de France (and gave up his chair at E.L.O.V.). In 1927 he retired from E.P.H.E. (successor Benveniste) but continued his teaching there until 1931 and at Collège de France until his death. His good health was broken in an accident in 1932 and his sight started to deteriorate. In his last years he used a reader in order to continue research and teaching.
Meillet was a social and popular person with wide knowledge beside his scholarship. He was much interested in art and played piano. His marriage 1916 was a failure. He travelled much in Europe, but never in Asia beyond Armenia. Beside A.I.B.L. (1924) he was member of 19 foreign academies and societies, and had honorary doctorates from Berlin (1910), Padova (1922), Dublin (Trinity College, 1928), Oxford (1928), and Brussels (Université libre 1932). He was very popular as academic teacher. Among his numerous students were Lacôte, Gauthiot, J. Bloch, Ernout, Cuny, M. Cohen, Vendryes, Przyluski, Demiéville, Dumézil, Renou, Chantraine, Benveniste, Minard, M. Lejeune, Willman-Grabowska, Kuryłowicz, V. S. Ghate, M. Dillon, R. Fohalle and many well known classical, Romance and Slavic scholars (e.g. the famous Homer scholar Milman Parry).
The life of Meillet extended over the vigorous growth of IE linguistics in which he himself very actively participated. In his research he always laid main emphasis on comparison, but was also a good scholar of Greek, Iranian and Armenian. His own main languages were Sanskrit, Avestan, Latin, Irish, Church Slavonic, and especially Armenian, but in addition to IE he was also much interested in comparative Romance studies. Even though himself mainly a linguist, he emphasized the importance of philology for understanding the material. He was among the first to understand the importance of phonetics for historical and comparative linguistics. He founded sociological linguistics, gave important contributions in comparative syntax and was much interested in geolinguistics, language contacts and creolisation. Together with Lévi he deciphered Tocharian B. He was very productive author whose bibliography includes 24 books, 540 articles (first 1888) and long reviews, and numerous brief notes and reviews.
Publications: Diss. I. Recherches sur l’emploi du génitif-accusatif en vieux-slave. 198 p. Paris 1897; diss. II. De indo-europaea radice *men- “mente agitera”. 61 p. P. 1897.
– “De quelques difficultés de la théorie des gutturales indo-européennes”, MSL 8, 1894, 277-304; “La phrase nominale en indo-européen”, MSL 14, 1906-08, 1-27.
– “Indo-Iranica”, MSL 9, 1896, 365-380; “La déclinaison et l’accent de l’intensité en perse”, JA 1900:1, 254-277; “Persica”, MSL 16, 1910, 306-317; “Observations critiques sur le texte de l’Avesta”, JA 1917:2, 183-214; “Sur le texte de l’Avesta”, JA 1920:1, 187-202; “Notes iraniennes”, MSL 22, 1922, 100-110.
– “De la partie commune des pâdas de 11 et 12 syllabes dans le maṇḍala III du Rigveda”, JA 9:10, 1897, 266-300; “Les nominatifs sanskrits en -ṭ”, IF 18, 1905, 417-421; “Le dieu indo-iranien Mitra”, JA 10:10, 1907, 143-159; “Les consonnes intervocaliques en védique”, IF 31, 1912, 120-125; “Sur le rythme quantitatif de la langue védique”, MSL 21, 1919, 193-217.
– Études sur l’étymologie et le vocabulaire du vieux-slave. P.1902-05; Le slave commun. P. 1924, 2nd ed. by Vaillant. 19+538 p. P. 1934; with Willman-Grabowska: Grammaire de la langue polonaise. 222 p. P. 1921; with Vaillant: Grammaire de la langue serbo-croate. 8+302 p. P.1924.
– Esquisse d’une grammaire comparée de l’arménien classique. Vienna 1903, 2nd ed. 205 p. Vienna 1936; Altarmenisches Elementarbuch. 10+212 p. Idg. Bibl. Heidelberg 1913.
– Introduction à l’étude comparative des langues indo-européennes. P. 1903, 7th ed. 14+514 p. P. 1934; Les dialectes indo-européennes. P. 1908, 2nd ed. 1922.
– Aperçu d’une histoire de la langue grecque. P. 1913, 4th ed. 1935; Les origines indo-européennes des mètres grecs. 8+78 p. P. 1923; La méthode comparative en linguistique historique. 8+116 p. Oslo 1925; Esquisse d’une histoire de la langue latine. 8+286 p. P. 1928, 3rd ed. 1933; with Vendryes: Traité de grammaire comparée des langues classiques. 771 p. P. 1925, 2nd ed. 1927; with Ernout: Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue latine. 19+1108 p. P. 1932, 4th ed. 1967.
– “Remarques linguistiques”, JA 1911:1, 449-464; “Les noms de nombre en tokharien B”, MSL 17, 1912, 281-294; with Lévi: “Remarques sur les formes grammaticales de quelques textes en tokharien B”, MSL 17, 1912, 1-33, 18, 1913, 381-423 & 19, 1915, 158-162.
– Grammaire du vieux-perse. P. 1915, 2nd rev. & enl. ed. by E. Benveniste. 34+266 p. Coll. linguistique 34. P. 1931.
– Caractères généraux des langues germaniques. 16+222 p. P. 1917, 4th ed. 1930; Les langues dans l’Europe nouvelle. 340 p. P. 1918, 2nd ed. 1928; La méthode comparative en linguistique historique. 8+116 p. Oslo & Paris 1925.
– With M. Cohen: Les langues du monde. 16+811 p. 18 maps. Coll. linguistique 16. P. 1924, end ed. 1952.
– Trois conférences sur les Gâthâs de l’Avesta. 72 p. P. 1925.
– Numerous articles in MSL, BSL, RPh, JA, Banaser, IF, Scientia, REA, RESI, CRAI, etc., a selection publ. as: Linguistique historique et linguistique générale. 1-2. Lisbon & Louvain 1921-36; also Études de linguistique et de philologie arméniennes. 1-2. Lisbon & Louvain 1962-77.
Sources: *G. Bergounioux & Ch. de Lamberterie, Meillet aujourd’hui. Louvain & P. 2006; *N.B. Jopson, The Slavonic and East European Review 15:44, 1937, 442-445; *G. Jucquois, “La théorie de la racine chez A.M.”, Le Muséon 85, 1972, 281-287; K. Krippes, “Meillet, the Researcher and the Teacher”, Histoire Épistémologie Langage 10, 1988, 277-283; *A. Merlin, CRAI 1952, 572-683; A. Montaut, D.O.L.F. 672f.; R. Schmitt, Encyclop. Iranica 2002 (online); A. Sommerfelt, “A.M., the Scholar and the Man”, *Diachronic and synchronic aspects of language. the Hague 1962, 379-385 (republ. in Sebeok 1966:2, 241-249); *P. Swiggers, “La linguistique historico-comparative d’A.M.: théorie et méthode”, Cahiers F. de Saussure 29, 1985, 181-195; *P. Swiggers, Lex. gramm. 1996, 622-624; J. Vendryes, BSL 38, 1937, 1-42 (republ. in Sebeok 1966:2, 201-240), with photo and bibliography by Benveniste, 43-68, the same without bibliography in Annuaire d’É.P.H.É. 70, 1937, 5-37; Wikipedia with photo (more in French version); photo in Pedersen 1959, 76 (from Archiv f. slav. Phil. 25, 1903).
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