Dyula is a language of the Mande language family spoken mainly in Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast and Mali, and also in some other countries, including Ghana, Guinea and Guinea-Bissau. It is one of the Manding languages and is most closely related to Bambara, being mutually intelligible with Bambara as well as Malinke. It is a trade language in West Africa and is spoken by millions of people, either as a first or second language. Similar to the other Mande languages, it uses tones. It may be written in the Latin, Arabic or N'Ko scripts.
Paul Jules Antoine Meillet was one of the most important French linguists of the early 20th century. He began his studies at the Sorbonne University, where he was influenced by Michel Bréal, the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, and the members of the L'Année sociologique. In 1890 he was part of a research trip to the Caucasus, where he studied the Armenian language. After his return, de Saussure had gone back to Geneva, so Meillet continued the series of lectures on comparative linguistics that de Saussure had given.
André Martinet was a French linguist, influential due to his work on structural linguistics. In linguistic theory, Martinet is known especially for his studies on linguistic economy and double articulation.
The Prague school or Prague linguistic circle is a language and literature society. It started in 1926 as a group of linguists, philologists and literary critics in Prague. Its proponents developed methods of structuralist literary analysis and a theory of the standard language and of language cultivation from 1928 to 1939. The linguistic circle was founded in the Café Derby in Prague, which is also where meetings took place during its first years.
Théophile Obenga is professor emeritus in the Africana Studies Center at San Francisco State University. He is a politically active proponent of Pan-Africanism. Obenga is an Egyptologist, linguist, and historian.
Charles Bally was a Swiss linguist who was a representative of the Geneva School of linguistics.
Henri Wittmann is a Canadian linguist from Quebec. He is best known for his work on Quebec French.
Métis French is one of the traditional languages of the Métis people along with Michif and Bungi, and is the French-dialect source of Michif.
Dangaléat is an Afro-Asiatic language spoken in central Chad. Speakers make up the majority of the population of Migami Canton in Mongo, Chad.
Marcel Samuel Raphaël Cohen was a French linguist. He was an important scholar of Semitic languages and especially of Ethiopian languages. He studied the French language and contributed much to general linguistics.
Robert Nicolaï is a French linguist specializing in the Songhay languages, professor at the University of Nice Sophia Antipolis.
Jean-Claude Milner is a linguist, philosopher and essayist. His specialist fields of endeavour are linguistics and psychoanalysis. In 1971, Milner was at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he translated Noam Chomsky's Aspects of the Theory of Syntax into French. His work helped to establish the terminology of theory of syntax in the French school of generative grammar. Milner is now a professor at the University Paris Diderot and lives in Paris.
Georges-Jean Pinault is a French linguist who is professor of linguistics at the École pratique des hautes études. He is one of the leading experts on Tocharian languages and has published more than two hundred articles on Indo-European linguistics. He is one of the editors of the journal Tocharian and Indo-European Studies.
France Martineau is a professor and a Canadian linguist. Martineau is an expert in Canadian French linguistics and considered a leader in historical sociolinguistics as well as a pioneer in the digital humanities. Martineau presently holds the University of Ottawa Research Chair Le français en mouvement: Frontières, réseaux et contacts en Amérique française.
Michel Ferlus was a French linguist who specialized in the historical phonology of languages of Southeast Asia. In addition to phonological systems, he also studied writing systems, in particular the evolution of Indic scripts in Southeast Asia.
Mitsou Ronat was a French poet, linguist, and specialist of literary theory.
Panchronic phonology is an approach to historical phonology. Its aim is to formulate generalizations about sound changes that are independent of any particular language or language group.
Albert Dauzat was a French linguist specializing in toponymy and onomastics.
Henriëtte Elisabeth de Swart is a Dutch linguist.
Christiane Marchello-Nizia is a French linguist who specializes in the history of the French language. She was professor at the École normale supérieure de Lyon and Director of the Institute for French Linguistics until her retirement in 2006.
