mechanics of a living oral tradition to confirm whether that suggestion was valid; he also introduced Parry to the Slovenian scholar Matija Murko, who had written extensively about the heroic epic tradition in Serbo-Croatian and particularly in Bosnia 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 revolutionized Homeric scholarship. Language controversies Meillet has been accused of meddling politics with his observation of languages. He had negative views on German and especially on Hungarian. Hungarian, he claimed, was too difficult a language full of loanwords and not capable of being a culture bearer (in a way that he claimed other Finno-Ugric languages were unable to become such). His views on Hungarian provoked a critical response from the Hungarian writer Dezső Kosztolányi. International languages Meillet supported the use of an international auxiliary language. In his book La Ricerca della Lingua Perfetta nella Cultura Europea ("The Pursuit of the Perfect Language in the Culture of Europe"), Umberto Eco cites Meillet as saying, "Any kind of theoretical discussion is useless, Esperanto is functioning". In addition, Meillet was a consultant with the International Auxiliary Language Association, which presented Interlingua in 1951. Works 1902-05: Études sur l'étymologie et le vocabulaire du vieux slave. Paris, Bouillon. 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. 1917: Caractères généraux des langues germaniques (rev. edn. 1949) 1921: Linguistique historique et linguistique générale. 1923: Les origines indo-européennes des mètres grecs. 1924: Les langues du monde (co-editor with Marcel Cohen). (Collection linguistique, 16.) Paris: Champion. (2nd edn. 1952) 1924: Le slave commun 1928: Esquisse d'une histoire de la langue latine. 1925: 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. See also Meillet's law Pierre Chantraine References Bibliography External links Balticists 1866 births 1936 deaths Writers from Moulins, Allier French philologists Indo-Europeanists Linguists of Germanic languages Linguists of Indo-European languages Linguists from France University of Paris alumni Academic staff of the University of Paris Slavists Armenian studies scholars Scholars of Ancient Greek Members of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres Academic staff of the Collège de France