Biographical Memoirs Volume 71 (1997) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
EDWARD SAPIR
EDWARD SAPIR
Pages 281-300
The Chapter Skim interface presents what we've algorithmically identified as the most significant single chunk of text within every page in the chapter.
Select key terms on the right to highlight them within pages of the chapter.
From page 281... ...
with intuitive insight into grammatical patterning en c! historical relationships of linguistic families, Sapir contributes!
|
From page 282... ...
He was one of the bright stars among the immigrant children of the city, and higher education was his prize. Entering Columbia in 1901, Sapir concentrated on Germanic philology while gaining formal training in Inclo-European linguistics.
|
From page 283... ...
the functional equivalence of all human languages, explicitly inclucling those of "primitive" peoples. But his real apprenticeship as a field linguist, in the anthropological tradition, began in ~ 905 when Boas sent him to the Yakima Reservation in Washington to work on Wasco en c!
|
From page 284... ...
With his ethnologist colleague Frank Speck, another former Boas student, Sapir worker! on Catawba.
|
From page 285... ...
administrative responsibility macle summer fieldwork more clifficult, Sapir worker! with speakers of various northwest coast languages when their speakers visitor!
|
From page 286... ...
It was shortly after his arrival in Chicago that Sapir renewoc! an acquaintance with Jean McClenaghan, then a social work student on a practicum at the Chicago Institute for Juvenile Research.
|
From page 287... ...
on his own teaching in anthropolOo~y and linguistics. , O In 1937, while teaching at the Linguistic Society of America Summer Institute at Ann Arbor, Michigan, Sapir sufferer!
|
From page 288... ...
of historical inference implicit in the Boasian reconstruction of the history of cultures and languages. (At the time, direct archaeological evidence of American prehistory was scanty, en c!
|
From page 289... ...
Some of Sapir's most famous contributions to linguistic theory lie in phonology, the stucly of sounc! systems.
|
From page 290... ...
American linguistics, was clerivec! from fielcIwork with aboriginal languages independently of parallel work on phonemic moclels by the Prague School of linguists in Europe.
|
From page 291... ...
by his work in linguistics. Language was, for him, the cultural phenomenon par excellence.
|
From page 292... ...
by his collaboration with Harry Stack Sullivan, Sapir began to Took to the analysis of social interaction as the locus of cultural dynamics. Sapir's writings on culture have sometimes been seen as falling into an extreme methoclological inclivicluaTism, but this view distorts his position.
|
From page 293... ...
Yale, an honorary degree from Columbia, elections to the presidencies of the American Anthropological Association en c! the Linguistic Society of America, his membership in the National Academy of Sciences, the memorial volume (originally planned as a festschrift)
|
From page 294... ...
In the late 1940s and 1950s the "culture and personality" school associated with the work of Margaret Mead and Ruth Benedict in anthropology and the structuralist school of Leonard Bloomfield and his students in linguistics took positions opposed to Sapir's and temporarily dominated the fields in which he had principally worked. Nonetheless, the continuities were there, and they have emerged in the responsiveness to Sapir common among students of the students of his students.
|
From page 295... ...
EDWARD SAPIR 295 human languages. These are icleas en c!
|
From page 296... ...
Collected by Jeremiah Curtin. American Ethnological Society Publications II.
|
From page 297... ...
New York: Harcourt Brace. A bird's eye view of American languages north of Mexico.
|
From page 298... ...
65~1~:1-296; (2~:297536; (3~:537-730. 1931 The concept of phonetic law as tested in primitive languages by Leonard Bloomfield.
|
From page 299... ...
1-14. 1949 Selected Writings of Edward Sapir in Language, Culture and Personality, ed.
|
Key Terms
This material may be derived from roughly machine-read images, and so is provided only to facilitate research.
More
information on Chapter Skim is available.