Introduire le comparatisme en France : les “Introductions” de M. Bréal à la Grammaire comparée de F. Bopp

From 1866 to 1872, the French translation of the second edition of F. Bopp's Vergleichende Grammatik was published. M. Breal, who was entrusted with its implementation by decision of the Ministry of Public Instruction, preceded each of the four volumes with a detailed "introduction". While the first of these presentations is primarily intended to introduce the reader to a new way of doing linguistics (the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes was created in 1868), the next three are rather a summary of the book's content. After a reminder of the conditions under which comparisons were received in France in the second half of the 19th century, we try to show how Breal's work was part of a broader project: to create a Parisian school of historical linguistics that would be able to compete - peacefully - with Germany. In his comments, he points out the difficulties raised by Bopp's proposals, particularly in the phonetic analysis of the data. The example of the discussion between Bopp and Grimm (about the relationship between vocalism and morphology) and the analyses developed by Breal will illustrate this point.