Paul Levy (linguist)

See also: Levy, Paul Levy

Paul Levy (1887 - 1962), linguist and historian French.

He makes his studies at the same time in Germany, and France, where he obtains an arts doctorate. Professor with the college Kléber of arts Strasbourg and doctor, he is the author of the linguistic Histoire of Alsace and Lorraine (1929), his thesis of Doctorat, constant with the Faculty of Arts of the University of Strasbourg. On this date, it was drawn only to a one thousand from specimens by the Company of the Beautiful Letters, perhaps whereas the number of people able to read such a work completely did not reach this figure - the historians often missing essential knowledge of languages, the linguists not having the historical references necessary. That a historian falls on the paragraphs where the author asks if the limit between the francique one and the Germanic one must correspond to the appearance of diphthongization known as Bavarian, or must be deferred more to north, where the second consonant shift of “p did not take place” , and it is probable that it will turn the page. Conversely, it is rare that a linguist can replace in a precise context the events to which Paul Levy refers.

All the quoted texts are in the original language and without translation, were they in German, English, Latin dialect, , Greek, etc Voilà perhaps the reason for which Paul Levy does not appear in the Nouveau dictionary of Alsatian biographies (NDBA) whereas more obscure characters there are found.

As the great objectivity of the author always led it to expose for and against, it is understood that, in the mass of the facts that it pays, too polemists dishonest persons took thereafter only what arranged them. Thus separatists pro-German, in order to denounce the French perfidy, quote to finish moreover it projects which date from Convention and where one proposed to off-set inside France all the Alsatian population which ignored French. A more attentive reading of the book shows immediately:

that these extravagances are narrowly dated in the time, during the thirteen months which goes from the fall of Of Gironde to that of Robespierre;
that they are only speeches made with the Convention or in the popular Companies by private individuals, and by no means of laws. The advanced ideas thus never had the least beginning of execution.

The interest is thus seen that there is to refer to the text even without being impressed by handled quotations - what a recent republication in two volumes allows:

“Of the origins to the French revolution”;
“Of the French revolution at 1918”.

Works

linguistic History of Alsace and Lorraine , 2nd edition, Manucius editions, Coals, 2004;
the German language in France , IAC, Lyon, 1950.

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