Bloch, Jules

views updated

BLOCH, JULES

BLOCH, JULES (1880–1953), French philologist, specialist in Indic languages. Bloch taught in Paris at the École Pratique des Hautes Études and the École des Langues Orientales Vivantes. His work covered the entire range of Indic languages, ancient, medieval, and – especially – modern. Bloch's main research was into the Indo-European languages of India, on which he wrote La formation de la langue marathe (1915) and L'Indo-Aryen du Véda aux temps modernes (1934; Indo-Aryan from the Vedas to Modern Times, 1965). He also published an important book on Dravidian languages, Structure grammaticale des langues dravidiennes (1946; The Grammatical Structure of Dravidian Languages, 1954).

[Herbert H. Paper]