Hilaire de Barenton, born Étienne Boulé (28 February 1864 in
Barenton
Barenton () is a commune in the Manche department in the Normandy region in northwestern France.
See also
*Communes of the Manche department
*Parc naturel régional Normandie-Maine
Normandie-Maine Regional Natural Park ( Fr.: ''Parc naturel r ...
– 24 February 1946 in
Paris
Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...
), was a
friar
A friar is a member of one of the mendicant orders founded in the twelfth or thirteenth century; the term distinguishes the mendicants' itinerant apostolic character, exercised broadly under the jurisdiction of a superior general, from the ol ...
, linguist and historian of Middle Eastern languages.
His name is often misspelled as ''Baranton''.
Life
Ordained a Catholic priest in 1887, he joined the
Capuchins, under the name of ''Father Hilaire'', on 2 August 1889 and lectured in Turkey.
Back in France, he taught science, philosophy and dogmatic theology. Soon, he acquired a reputation as a linguist, and he participated in 1936 in the Third International Congress of Linguistics.
Works
* ''La langue étrusque, dialecte de l'ancien égyptien'', Paris 1920
* ''L'origine des grammaires, leur source dans le sumérien et l'égyptien'', Paris 1925
* ''L'origine des langues, des religions et des peuples''
Legacy
His theories enjoyed a certain celebrity in their time but have since been criticised. Albeit intriguing to the ear, they are no longer considered worthy of deeper scholarly scrutiny in most of contemporary linguistic research centres and communities. They were popular among Turkish nationalists under
Atatürk in the 1930s:
[Geoffrey Lewis]
''The Turkish Language Reform: A Catastrophic Success'', p. 59
the
Sun Language Theory
The Sun Language Theory ( tr, Güneş Dil Teorisi) was a Turkish ultranationalist, racist, pseudolinguistic, and pseudoscientific hypothesis developed in Turkey in the 1930s that proposed that all human languages are descendants of one proto-T ...
(Güneş Dil Teorisi), based on ''L'origine des langues, des religions et des peuples'', claimed that all languages were derived from a common
Central Asian
Central Asia, also known as Middle Asia, is a region of Asia that stretches from the Caspian Sea in the west to western China and Mongolia in the east, and from Afghanistan and Iran in the south to Russia in the north. It includes the former S ...
root, a paleontological "proto-language" that can be established only hypothetically. Not only the
Turkic languages
The Turkic languages are a language family of over 35 documented languages, spoken by the Turkic peoples of Eurasia from Eastern Europe and Southern Europe to Central Asia, East Asia, North Asia (Siberia), and Western Asia. The Turkic languag ...
, spoken in Central Asia and Turkey today, but also the
Maya
Maya may refer to:
Civilizations
* Maya peoples, of southern Mexico and northern Central America
** Maya civilization, the historical civilization of the Maya peoples
** Maya language, the languages of the Maya peoples
* Maya (Ethiopia), a populat ...
(in
Mesoamerica
Mesoamerica is a historical region and cultural area in southern North America and most of Central America. It extends from approximately central Mexico through Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and northern Costa Rica. W ...
) and the extinct
Sumerian
Sumerian or Sumerians may refer to:
*Sumer, an ancient civilization
**Sumerian language
**Sumerian art
**Sumerian architecture
**Sumerian literature
**Cuneiform script, used in Sumerian writing
*Sumerian Records, an American record label based in ...
(as seen on tablets excavated in
Mesopotamia
Mesopotamia ''Mesopotamíā''; ar, بِلَاد ٱلرَّافِدَيْن or ; syc, ܐܪܡ ܢܗܪ̈ܝܢ, or , ) is a historical region of Western Asia situated within the Tigris–Euphrates river system, in the northern part of the F ...
, in the
Middle East
The Middle East ( ar, الشرق الأوسط, ISO 233: ) is a geopolitical region commonly encompassing Arabian Peninsula, Arabia (including the Arabian Peninsula and Bahrain), Anatolia, Asia Minor (Asian part of Turkey except Hatay Pro ...
) would be related.
See also
*
Adamic language
The Adamic language, according to Jewish tradition (as recorded in the ''midrashim'') and some Christians, is the language spoken by Adam (and possibly Eve) in the Garden of Eden. It is variously interpreted as either the language used by God t ...
*
Evolutionary linguistics
Evolutionary linguistics or Darwinian linguistics is a sociobiological approach to the study of language. Evolutionary linguists consider linguistics as a subfield of sociobiology and evolutionary psychology. The approach is also closely linked ...
*
History of linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of language, involving analysis of language form, language meaning, and language in context.
Language use was first systematically documented in Mesopotamia, with extant lexical lists of the 3rd to the 2nd M ...
*
Origin of language
The origin of language (spoken and signed, as well as language-related technological systems such as writing), its relationship with human evolution, and its consequences have been subjects of study for centuries. Scholars wishing to study th ...
*
Proto-language
In the tree model of historical linguistics, a proto-language is a postulated ancestral language from which a number of attested languages are believed to have descended by evolution, forming a language family. Proto-languages are usually unattest ...
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hilaire De Barenton
1864 births
1942 deaths
Linguists from France
20th-century linguists
Capuchins