GRANDGENT, CHARLES HALL

born Nov. 14, 1862, Dorchester, Mass., U.S. died Sept. 11, 1939, Cambridge, Mass. American linguist who was a principal authority on Vulgar Latin. He was also noted for his scholarship on Dante. Grandgent was a professor at Harvard University from 1896 to 1932, lecturing on Dante as well as on Romance linguistics and phonetics. In addition to French and Italian grammars and a work on Old Provenal, he wrote an important Introduction to Vulgar Latin (1907) and From Latin to Italian: An Historical Outline of the Phonology and Morphology of the Italian Language (1927). In the area of Dante scholarship, Grandgent produced an edition of Dante's Divina Commedia (1909) among other works.