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Michel Ferlus

Portrait of Michel   Ferlus

Michel Ferlus (1935 — 11 March 2024, France) was a French linguist who studied the historical phonology of languages of Southeast Asia. In addition to phonological systems, he also studied writing systems, in particular the evolution of Indic scripts in Southeast Asia.

After following classes in ethnology and prehistory taught by André Leroi-Gourhan; in ​‘primitive religions’ by Roger Bastide; in linguistics by André Martinet; and in Southeast Asian languages and history by George Cœdès, Ferlus worked in Laos as a teacher from 1961 to 1968. There, he did fieldwork on languages such as Hmong and Yao (Hmong-Mien family), Khmu/​Khamou and Lamet (Austroasiatic/Mon-Khmer), as well as Phu Noi/Phou-Noy (Sino-Tibetan).

A researcher with Centre National de la Recherché Scientifique (CNRS) since 1968, he studied in Thailand and Burma (Myanmar) in the 1980s Wa, Lawa, Palaung, Mon and Nyah Kur languages; Viet-Muong languages and local Tai langugages and writing systems in Vietnam and Laos in the 1990s.

According to several specialists, Michel Ferlus’s main discoveries relate to the effects of monosyllabicization on the phonological structure of Southeast Asian languages. Tonogenesis (the development of lexical tones), registrogenesis (the development of lexically contrastive phonation-type registers), the evolution of vowel systems all partake in a general (panchronic) model of evolution.

Publications

  1. “La langue souei : mutations consonantiques et bipartition du système vocalique,” Bull. Société Linguist. Paris, vol. 66, no. 1, pp. 378 – 388, 1971.
  2. “Spirantisation des obstruantes médiales et formation du système consonantique du vietnamien”, Cahiers de Linguistique Asie Orientale, 11 (1): 83 – 106 [doi:10.3406/clao.1982.1105], 1982.
  3. Sur l’origine géographique des langues Viet-muong, Mon-Khmer Studies 18 – 19, p 52 – 59, 1992.
  4. “Essai de phonétique historique du khmer (du milieu du premier millénaire de notre ère à l’époque actuelle)”, Mon-Khmer Studies 21, p 57 – 89, 1992.
  5. “Remarques sur le consonantisme du proto kam-sui”, Cahiers de Linguistique Asie Orientale, 25 (2): 235 – 278, [doi:10.3406/clao.1996.1451], 1996.
  6. “Les disharmonies tonales en Viet-Muong et leurs implications historiques”, Cahiers de Linguistique Asie Orientale 28(1): 83 – 100, 1999.
  7. “On borrowing from Middle Chinese into Proto-Tibetan: a new look at the problem of the relationship between Chinese and Tibetan,” in Language variation: papers on variation and change in the Sinosphere and the Indosphere in honour of James A. Matisoff, ed. D. Bradley, R. LaPolla, B. Michailovsky, and G. Thurgood, Canberra, Pacific Linguistics, 2003, pp. 263 – 275.
  8. “Sur l’origine de la dénomination « Siam »”, Aséanie 18: 107 – 117, 2006.
  9. “What were the four divisions of Middle Chinese?,” Diachronica vol. 26 – 2, pp. 184 – 213, 2009. 
  10. “L’intérêt linguistique des transcriptions chinoises concernant le Cambodge ancien (Fou-nan et Tchen-la)”, Dix-neuvièmes journées de linguistique de l’Asie Orientale, CRLAO (EHESS-CNRS), 30 June – 1st Jul. 2005; repub. Bulletin de l’AEFEK 15, Jan. 2009.
  11. “What were the four Divisions of Middle Chinese?”, Diachronica 26 (2): 184 – 213, 2009.
  12. “A possible origin of rāmaña- “(country of the) Mon”, Fourth International Conference on Austroasiatic Linguistics, Salaya, Mahidol University, October 29 – 30 2009.
  13. “Glissements sémantiques en chaîne dans le Cambodge préangkorien: de ​‘canal’ à ​‘rivière’, puis de ​‘rizière’ à ​‘rivière’”, 22emes Journées de Linguistique Asie Orientale. Paris, CRLAO (EHESS CNRS), 9 – 10 juin 2008 ; repub. Bulletin de l’AEFEK 16, Jan. 2010.
  14. “Localisation, identité et origine du javā de Jayavarma II”, Aséanie 26: 65 – 81, 2012.
  15. “Origine des noms anciens du Cambodge: Fou-nan et Tchen-la. L’interprétation des transcriptions chinoises”, Péninsule 65 (2), pp.47 – 64, 2012.

Photo: Depeche du Midi / Marie-Paule Rabez.