Antoine Meillet mentored a generation of influential twentieth-century linguists and philologists, including Émile Benveniste, Georges Dumézil, and André Martinet. One of the most influential comparative linguists of his time, he recognised that language is a social phenomenon, influenced by sociological factors. Originally published in 1933, this third edition of his 1928 history of Latin was the last to be published during his lifetime. In it, Meillet explores the historical context and significance of Latin. He describes how it developed from Indo-European and evolved according to the fluctuating fortunes of the Roman empire, imitating and borrowing from Greek in many ways but unified by the centralising influence of Rome. As the empire declined, the regional dialects of Latin began to develop into the modern Romance languages, with religion, philosophy and science ensuring the survival of Latin itself into the modern period.
The distinguished French linguist Antoine Meillet (1866–1936) was a pupil of Saussure and one of the most important researchers and teachers of the twentieth century in the field of Indo-European languages, counting among his own pupils Benveniste, Dumézil and Martinet. In this book, first published in 1917, Meillet shows the unique features which mark out the Germanic languages (including English) from the rest of the Indo-European family. Acknowledging that the earliest written examples become available only long after 'proto-Germanic' had split into its various successor languages, he nonetheless supplies evidence both for the original language and for the developments which led to that splitting. His conclusion is that although the Germanic languages are indisputably Indo-European, even the most conservative (modern German) has moved a long way from its roots, and that English - both in grammar and in vocabulary - has moved furthest of all.
The echoes of Greek are heard in many modern languages. For example, the abstract vocabulary of the modern European languages derives largely from the vocabulary of the Greek philosophers and scholars, whether directly or via Latin writers who were educated according to the Greek tradition. First published in 1913, Antoine Meillet's history of Greek shows how the language, derived originally from Indo-European, developed over time in response to sociological and geographical factors. Meillet argues that its complexity is due to the constant borrowing of vocabulary and grammar from contemporary languages and regional dialects. Despite - or because of - its flexible and ever-changing nature, and the lack of consistency in usage between individual city states, Greek eventually became the language of great works of literature, philosophy and science.
First published in 1903, Antoine Meillet's Introduction a l'Étude comparative des langues Indo-Européennes exemplifies the key methodologies and insights of early twentieth-century comparative linguistics. Its primary aim, as Meillet states, was 'très limité': to provide a brief but comprehensive overview of the Indo-European languages and their shared linguistic structures. He accomplished this object and more in his Introduction, outlining a theory of language change that would influence a generation of linguists, including his students Émile Benveniste and André Martinet. Meillet's debt to his own mentor, Ferdinand de Saussure, is evident in his conception of language as simultaneously social and structural, a lived reality and a constantly evolving grammatical system. This second edition (1908) includes Meillet's extensive revisions and a new chapter on the development of Indo-European dialects. It remains a valuable introduction to the phonology, morphology, and grammar of the
