Antoine Meillet

Antoine Meillet (born Paul-Jules-Antoine Meillet, 11 November 1866 - 21 Septembre 1936) was one of the most important French linguists of the early 20th Century. Meillet began his studies at the Sorbonne, where he was influenced by Michel Bréal, Ferdinand de Saussure, and the members of the Annee Sociologique. In 1890 he was part of a research trip to the Caucasus, where he studied Armenian. After his return he continued his studies with Saussure.

Meillet completed his doctorat - 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, where he taught on the history and structure of Indo-European languages.

Today Meillet is remembered as the mentor of an entire generation of linguists and philologists who would become central to French linguistics in the twentieth century, such as Émile Benveniste, Georges Dumézil, and André Martinet.