Alexandre François is a French

linguist Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), Morphology (linguistics), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds ...

specialising in the

description Description is any type of communication that aims to make vivid a place, object, person, group, or other physical entity. It is one of four rhetorical modes (also known as ''modes of discourse''), along with exposition, argumentation, and narr ...

and study of the indigenous languages of

Melanesia Melanesia (, ) is a subregion of Oceania in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It extends from New Guinea in the west to the Fiji Islands in the east, and includes the Arafura Sea. The region includes the four independent countries of Fiji, Vanu ...

. He belongs t
''Lattice''
a research centre of the

CNRS The French National Centre for Scientific Research (, , CNRS) is the French state research organisation and is the largest fundamental science agency in Europe. In 2016, it employed 31,637 staff, including 11,137 tenured researchers, 13,415 eng ...

and dedicated to linguistics.

Research

Language description and documentation

François has done linguistic fieldwork in

Vanuatu Vanuatu ( or ; ), officially the Republic of Vanuatu (; ), is an island country in Melanesia located in the South Pacific Ocean. The archipelago, which is of volcanic origin, is east of northern Australia, northeast of New Caledonia, east o ...

and the

Solomon Islands Solomon Islands, also known simply as the Solomons,John Prados, ''Islands of Destiny'', Dutton Caliber, 2012, p,20 and passim is an island country consisting of six major islands and over 1000 smaller islands in Melanesia, part of Oceania, t ...

. In 2002, he published a grammatical description of

Araki Araki may refer to: People * Araki (surname) (荒木) * Hirohiko Araki (荒木飛呂彦), a Japanese manga artist, fashion designer and illustrator * Nobuyoshi Araki (荒木経惟), a Japanese photographer and contemporary artist also known by t ...

, a language spoken by a handful of speakers on an islet south of

Espiritu Santo Espiritu Santo (, ; ) is the largest island in the nation of Vanuatu, with an area of and a population of around 40,000 according to the 2009 census. Geography The island belongs to the archipelago of the New Hebrides in the Pacific region ...

(Vanuatu). Most of his research focuses on the northern islands of Vanuatu, known as the Torres and Banks Islands, an area where sixteen out of seventeen languages are still spoken: Hiw, Lo-Toga, Lehali, Löyöp, Mwotlap, Volow (extinct), Lemerig, Vera'a, Vurës, Mwesen, Mota, Nume, Dorig, Koro, Olrat, Lakon, Mwerlap - all descended from the Proto-Torres–Banks language, which was also reconstructed by him. After describing Mwotlap, the language with most speakers in that area, he has published articles comparing the languages of the area more generally – both from a

synchronic Synchronic may refer to: * ''Synchronic'' (film), a 2019 American science fiction film starring Anthony Mackie and Jamie Dornan *Synchronic analysis, the analysis of a language at a specific point of time *Synchronicity, the experience of two or m ...

and

historical History is the systematic study of the past, focusing primarily on the human past. As an academic discipline, it analyses and interprets evidence to construct narratives about what happened and explain why it happened. Some theorists categ ...

perspectives. He has described the

sociolinguistic Sociolinguistics is the descriptive, scientific study of how language is shaped by, and used differently within, any given society. The field largely looks at how a language changes between distinct social groups, as well as how it varies unde ...

profile of this area as one of "egalitarian

multilingualism Multilingualism is the use of more than one language, either by an individual speaker or by a group of speakers. When the languages are just two, it is usually called bilingualism. It is believed that multilingual speakers outnumber monolin ...

". In 2005, François took part in a scientific expedition to

Vanikoro Vanikoro (sometimes wrongly named ''Vanikolo'') is an island in the Santa Cruz Islands, Santa Cruz group, located to the Southeast of the main Santa Cruz group. It is part of the Temotu Province of Solomon Islands. The name ''Vanikoro'' is alway ...

(

), whose objective was to understand the wreckage of the French navigator La Pérouse in 1788. As a member of a multidisciplinary team, he recorded the oral tradition of the Melanesian and Polynesian populations of this island, concerning popular representations of this historical event. On that occasion, he also documented the three languages spoken on Vanikoro – Teanu, Lovono and Tanema – two of which are highly

endangered An endangered species is a species that is very likely to become extinct in the near future, either worldwide or in a particular political jurisdiction. Endangered species may be at risk due to factors such as habitat loss, poaching, inv ...

. In 2015, he coauthored with Jean-Michel Charpentier the ''Linguistic Atlas of French Polynesia'', an

atlas An atlas is a collection of maps; it is typically a bundle of world map, maps of Earth or of a continent or region of Earth. Advances in astronomy have also resulted in atlases of the celestial sphere or of other planets. Atlases have traditio ...

showcasing the internal linguistic diversity of

French Polynesia French Polynesia ( ; ; ) is an overseas collectivity of France and its sole #Governance, overseas country. It comprises 121 geographically dispersed islands and atolls stretching over more than in the Pacific Ocean, South Pacific Ocean. The t ...

. In 2020, he was elected a member of the

Academia Europaea The Academia Europaea is a pan-European Academy of humanities, letters, law, and sciences. The Academia was founded in 1988 as a functioning Europe-wide Academy that encompasses all fields of scholarly inquiry. It acts as co-ordinator of Europe ...

Documentation of languages and cultures in Melanesia

François recorded texts from the

oral literature Oral literature, orature, or folk literature is a genre of literature that is spoken or sung in contrast to that which is written, though much oral literature has been transcribed. There is no standard definition, as anthropologists have used v ...

– myths, legends, folktales – in various language communities of Vanuatu and the Solomons. He provided local communities with various books in their languages, in the perspective of promoting the use of vernacular languages in writing. Together with ethnomusicologist Monika Stern and anthropologist Éric Wittersheim, he ran a multidisciplinary project on traditional

music Music is the arrangement of sound to create some combination of Musical form, form, harmony, melody, rhythm, or otherwise Musical expression, expressive content. Music is generally agreed to be a cultural universal that is present in all hum ...

and poetry in Vanuatu. This led to the publication of ''Music of Vanuatu: Celebrations and Mysteries'', a CD album of songs and dances recorded during social events in the field.

Contribution to linguistic typology and theory

François coined the term " colexification". This term, used in lexical typology, captures the fact that certain concepts, which some languages distinguish in their lexicons, are encoded in the same way ("colexified") in other languages. Together with Siva Kalyan (ANU), he also developed

historical glottometry Historical glottometry is a method used in historical linguistics. It is a quantitative, non-cladistic approach to language subgrouping. The aim of historical glottometry (HG) is to address the limitations of the tree model when applied to diale ...

, a non-cladistic approach to language genealogy, inspired by the

wave model In historical linguistics, the wave model or wave theory () is a model of language change in which a new language feature (innovation) or a new combination of language features spreads from its region of origin, being adopted by a gradually expa ...

. François (2014), Kalyan & François (2018).

References

;Notes ;Sources * * * * * * * . * * . * * *

External links

''A linguist in Melanesia'', personal website

Professional page
(Lattice-CNRS).
Access to François' fieldwork archives
on 23 languages of Island Melanesia. {{DEFAULTSORT:Francois, Alexandre Living people Year of birth missing (living people) Linguists of Austronesian languages Linguists of Oceanic languages Members of Academia Europaea French National Centre for Scientific Research scientists 21st-century French linguists