Bréal, Michel

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BRÉAL, MICHEL

BRÉAL, MICHEL (Jules-Alfred; 1832–1915), French linguist and educator. A student of F. Bopp, one of the founders of comparative linguistics, Bréal taught comparative grammar at the Collège de France from 1864. From 1879 to 1888 he was inspector general of secondary schools. Bréal was a pioneer in the field of semantics on which he wrote his Essai de sémantique (1897; Semantics: Studies in the Science of Meaning, 1900). He also published papers on a variety of general linguistic and Indo-European topics.

bibliography:

Dictionnaire de Biographie Française, 7 (1956), s.v.; je, s.v.

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