E. Sapir and Comparative Language Studies.

Edward Sapir, — one of the foremost American linguists and anthropologists of his
time, most widely known for his contributions to the study of North American Indian
languages. A founder of ethnolinguistics, which considers the relationship of culture
to language, he was also a principal developer of the American (descriptive) school
of structural linguistics.

Edward Sapir studied anthropology under Franz Boas, and became the leading
exponent of linguistic anthropology in the first half of the twentieth century. He
carried out important work on the descriptive linguistics of North American Indian
languages, including definitive studies of Takelma, Southern Paiute, Nootka, and the
Athabaskan languages. He was also deeply concerned with exploring historical links
among American Indian languages, and made significant contributions to the
comparative linguistics of the Uto-Aztecan, Athabaskan, Hokan, and Penutian
families. His career until 1925 was almost entirely devoted to this research, but from
then until his death he taught at the University of Chicago and at Yale, where he had
considerable influence in establishing the paradigm for twentieth-century linguistic
research and in training the first generation of American structural linguists. He was
also involved deeply in the development of a psychologically sophisticated model of
social research, both within anthropology (where he helped create the Personality
and Culture school) and in interdisciplinary collaboration, in particular with the
psychiatrist Harry Stack Sullivan. A gifted teacher and lucid writer, Sapir was a major
intellectual figure in the 1920s and 1930s.
Sapir suggested that man perceives the world principally through language. He
wrote many articles on the relationship of language to culture. A thorough
description of a linguistic structure and its function in speech might, he wrote in
1931, provide insight into man’s perceptive and cognitive faculties and help explain
the diverse behaviour among peoples of different cultural backgrounds. He also did
considerable research in comparative and historical linguistics. A poet, an essayist,
and a composer, as well as a brilliant scholar, Sapir wrote in a crisp and lucid fashion
that earned him considerable literary repute.
His publications included Language (1921), which was most influential, was read
widely and is still in print., and a collection of essays, Selected Writings of Edward
Sapir in Language, Culture, and Personality (1949).