Louis Alibert


Louis Alibert was a French linguist.

Biography

Alibert was born in Bram in the Aude, in Lauragais, on 12 October 1884, to a family of peasants who spoke Occitan.
He completed his studies in pharmacy, philology and history. He graduated from méridional and history studies.
He dedicated his career to the restoration and normalization of the modern Occitan language. He was secretary general of the Societat d'Estudis Occitans, created in Toulouse in 1930, and followed the methods of the Institut d'Estudis Catalans.
In 1935, the Office of Southern Relations of the Generalitat of Catalonia published in Barcelona his work Gramatica occitana segon los parlars lengadocians, dedicated exclusively to the speakers of Languedoc, which served as the base for the purification of the rest of the Occitan dialects.
He also worked toward the creation of a common literary language, a goal partially reached after the Second World War by the new Institut d'Estudis Occitans, successor to the Societat. In his later years he recompiled materials for an Occitan dictionary, destined to end with the fragmentation of the literary language and the Frankification of the vocabulary, orthography, and syntax. He died before completing this work, which was published posthumously.

Works