László Antal

László Antal was a Hungarian linguist, structuralist, Doctor of Science, and Professor of Linguistics. He was considered the sole representative of structural linguistics in America in Hungary. He adapted American structuralism to the Hungarian language. He was a lone wolf in Hungarian linguistics.

Life Antal was born in Szob, Hungary on 25 June 1930. In 1962, he was awarded a Ford Scholarship to the United States in the academic years of 1964–1965. He was a visiting professor in Berlin between 1981 and 1986. He left Hungary first for Germany then for the United States in 1985 when he was appointed to the head of the General Linguistics Department in ELTE in Budapest. He settled in Manassas, Virginia. He was a professor in the Foreign Service Institute and an advisor at the Jamestown Foundation. He died in Washington, D.C., of a heart attack, in 1993. He spoke several languages, such as English, German, Russian, French, Albanian, Arabic, and Indonesian, fluently.