Abel Hovelacque
# Abel Hovelacque

Abel Hovelacque (14 November 1843 – 22 February 1896) was a 19th-century French linguist, anthropologist and politician.

## Biography

Abel Hovelacque was a representative of the naturalistic and anthropological linguistics. He studied languages with Honoré Chavée and comparative anatomy with Paul Broca. He was a founder of the École d'anthropologie [fr], in which he was made professor of linguistic ethnography, and of which, after the death of Jules Gavarret, he became director (1890). He was a member of the Society of Anthropology of Paris. In 1886 Hovelacque and Chavée founded the Revue de Linguistique. That same year, he was elected as a member to the American Philosophical Society.

He was also interested in politics. He served on the Conseil municipal de Paris [fr] which he presided in 1887–1888. He became MP for Paris (13th) from 1889 to 1894. He was an extreme Republican.

The rue Abel-Hovelacque [fr] in Paris was named after him as well as two others in Lille and Saint Etienne. The anatomist André Hovelacque (1880-1939) was his son.

## Publications

* Grammaire de la langue zende, Maisonneuve, 1868 Ré-edition Hachette BnF, 2013
* La Linguistique, Reinwald, 1877
* Notre ancêtre, recherches d'anatomie et d'ethnologie sur le précurseur de l'homme, Leroux, 1878
* Études de linguistique et d'ethnographie, Reinwald, 1878
* Les débuts de l'humanité : L'homme primitif contemporain, Doin, 1881
* Les Races humaines, Cerf, 1882

## Sources

* Piet Desmet, La linguistique naturaliste en France (1867-1922). Nature, origine et évolution du langage, Louvain, 1994, p. 224-287. Read online.
