Edward Sapir

<h1 id="firstHeading" class="firstHeading">Edward Sapir</h1>

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<th colspan="2" class="fn" ><b>Edward Sapir</b></th>

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Edward Sapir (about 1910)</td>

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<td class="" >January 26, 1884

<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C4%99bork" title="Lębork">Lauenburg</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prussia" title="Prussia">Prussia</a></td>

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<td class="" >February 4, 1939 (aged 55)

<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Haven,_Connecticut" title="New Haven, Connecticut">New Haven, CT</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States" title="United States">United States</a></td>

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<th scope="row" >Citizenship</th>

<td class="" ><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States" title="United States">American</a></td>

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<th scope="row" >Fields</th>

<td class="category" ><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistics" title="Linguistics">Linguistics</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropology" title="Anthropology">Anthropology</a></td>

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<th scope="row" >Institutions</th>

<td class="" ><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Chicago" title="University of Chicago">University of Chicago</a>

<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Museum_of_Civilization" title="Canadian Museum of Civilization">Canadian Museum of Civilization</a>

<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbia_University" title="Columbia University">Columbia University</a>

<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yale_University" title="Yale University">Yale University</a></td>

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<th scope="row" ><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alma_mater" title="Alma mater">Alma mater</a></th>

<td class="" ><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbia_University" title="Columbia University">Columbia University</a></td>

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<th scope="row" ><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctoral_advisor" title="Doctoral advisor">Doctoral advisor</a></th>

<td class="" ><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Boas" title="Franz Boas">Franz Boas</a></td>

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<th scope="row" >Doctoral students</th>

<td class="" ><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Haas" title="Mary Haas">Mary Haas</a> - <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morris_Swadesh" title="Morris Swadesh">Morris Swadesh</a> - <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Hoijer" title="Harry Hoijer">Harry Hoijer</a> - <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_Newman" title="Stanley Newman">Stanley Newman</a></td>

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<th scope="row" >Known for</th>

<td class="" ><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classification_schemes_for_indigenous_languages_of_the_Americas" title="Classification schemes for indigenous languages of the Americas">Classification of Native American languages</a>

<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity" title="Linguistic relativity">Sapir–Whorf hypothesis</a>

<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropological_linguistics" title="Anthropological linguistics">Anthropological linguistics</a></td>

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<p><b>Edward Sapir</b> (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:IPA_for_English" title="Wikipedia:IPA for English">/</a><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:IPA_for_English#Key" title="Wikipedia:IPA for English">səˈpɪər</a><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:IPA_for_English" title="Wikipedia:IPA for English">/</a>; 1884–1939) was an <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States" title="United States">American</a> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropologist" title="Anthropologist" class="mw-redirect">anthropologist</a>-<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistics" title="Linguistics">linguist</a>, widely considered to be one of the most important figures in the early development of the discipline of linguistics.<sup id="cite_ref-0" class="reference"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Sapir#cite_note-0">[1]</a></sup><sup id="cite_ref-1" class="reference"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Sapir#cite_note-1">[2]</a></sup>

Born in German Pomerania, his parents emigrated to America when Sapir was a child. He studied Germanic linguistics at <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbia_University" title="Columbia University">Columbia</a>, where he came under the influence of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Boas" title="Franz Boas">Franz Boas</a> who inspired him to work on <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_languages_of_the_Americas" title="Indigenous languages of the Americas">Native American languages</a>. While finishing his PhD he went to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_California,_Berkeley" title="University of California, Berkeley">California</a> to work with <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Kroeber" title="Alfred Kroeber" class="mw-redirect">Alfred Kroeber</a> documenting the indigenous languages there. He was employed by the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geological_Survey_of_Canada" title="Geological Survey of Canada">Geological Survey of Canada</a> for fifteen years, where he came into his own as one of the most influential and important linguists in North America. He was offered a professorship at the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Chicago" title="University of Chicago">University of Chicago</a>, and stayed for several years continuing to work for the professionalization of the discipline of linguistics. By the end of his life he was Professor of Anthropology at <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yale_University" title="Yale University">Yale</a>, where he never really fit in. Among his many students were the linguists <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Haas" title="Mary Haas">Mary Haas</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morris_Swadesh" title="Morris Swadesh">Morris Swadesh</a>, and anthropologists such as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Eggan" title="Fred Eggan">Fred Eggan</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hortense_Powdermaker" title="Hortense Powdermaker">Hortense Powdermaker</a>.

With his solid linguistic background, Sapir became the one student of Boas to develop most completely the relationship between linguistics and anthropology. Sapir studied the ways in which language and culture influence each other, and he was interested in the relation between linguistic differences, and differences in cultural world views. This part of his thinking was developed by his student <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Lee_Whorf" title="Benjamin Lee Whorf">Benjamin Lee Whorf</a> into the principle of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity" title="Linguistic relativity">linguistic relativity</a> or the "Sapir-Whorf" hypothesis. In anthropology Sapir is known as an early proponent of the importance of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychology" title="Psychology">psychology</a> to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropology" title="Anthropology">anthropology</a>, maintaining that studying the nature of relationships between different individual personalities is important for the ways in ways in which culture and society develop.

Among his major contributions to linguistics is his <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classification_schemes_for_indigenous_languages_of_the_Americas" title="Classification schemes for indigenous languages of the Americas">classification of Indigenous languages of the Americas</a>, which he elaborated for most of his professional life. He played an important role in developing the modern concept of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoneme" title="Phoneme">phoneme</a>, greatly advancing the understanding of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonology" title="Phonology">phonology</a>. Before Sapir it was generally considered impossible to apply the methods of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_linguistics" title="Historical linguistics">historical linguistics</a> to languages of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_peoples" title="Indigenous peoples">indigenous peoples</a> because they were believed to be more primitive than the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-European_languages" title="Indo-European languages">Indo-European languages</a>. Sapir was the first to prove that the methods of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_linguistics" title="Comparative linguistics">comparative linguistics</a> were equally valid when applied to indigenous languages. In the 1929 edition of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclopedia_Britannica" title="Encyclopedia Britannica" class="mw-redirect">Encyclopedia Britannica</a> he published what was then the most authoritative classification of Native American languages, and the first based on evidence from modern comparative linguistics. He was the first to produce evidence for the classification of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algic_languages" title="Algic languages">Algic</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uto-Aztecan_languages" title="Uto-Aztecan languages">Uto-Aztecan</a>, and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Na-Dene_languages" title="Na-Dene languages">Na-Dene languages</a>. And he proposed some <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_family" title="Language family">language families</a> that are not considered to have been adequately demonstrated, but which continue to generate investigation such as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hokan_languages" title="Hokan languages">Hokan</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penutian_languages" title="Penutian languages">Penutian</a>. He specialized in the study of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athabascan_languages" title="Athabascan languages" class="mw-redirect">Athabascan languages</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinookan_languages" title="Chinookan languages">Chinookan languages</a> and Uto-Aztecan languages, producing important grammatical descriptions of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Takelma_language" title="Takelma language">Takelma</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wasco-Wishram_language" title="Wasco-Wishram language" class="mw-redirect">Wishram</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Paiute_language" title="Southern Paiute language" class="mw-redirect">Southern Paiute</a>. Later in his career he also worked with <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yiddish" title="Yiddish" class="mw-redirect">Yiddish</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebrew_language" title="Hebrew language">Hebrew</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_language" title="Chinese language">Chinese</a>, as well as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanic_languages" title="Germanic languages">Germanic languages</a>, and he was also invested in the development of an <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Auxiliary_Language" title="International Auxiliary Language" class="mw-redirect">International Auxiliary Language</a>.</p>

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<h3>Childhood and Youth</h3>

"The Stuy" - Stuyvesant Highschool as it looked in 1909 a few years after Sapir attended</div>

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<p>Sapir was born into a family of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithuanian_Jews" title="Lithuanian Jews">Lithuanian Jews</a> in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lauenburg" title="Lauenburg" class="mw-redirect">Lauenburg</a> in the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Province_of_Pomerania%281815%E2%80%931945%29" title="Province of Pomerania (1815–1945)">Province of Pomerania</a> where his father, Jacob David Sapir, worked as a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hazzan" title="Hazzan">cantor</a>. The family was not <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthodox_Judaism" title="Orthodox Judaism">orthodox</a>, and his father maintained his ties to Judaism through its music. The Sapir family did not stay long in Pomerania and never accepted German as a nationality. Edward Sapir's first language was <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yiddish" title="Yiddish" class="mw-redirect">Yiddish</a>,<sup id="cite_ref-Darnell1_2-0" class="reference"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Sapir#cite_note-Darnell1-2">[3]</a></sup> and later English. In 1888, when he was four years old, the family moved to Liverpool, England, and in 1890 to the United States, to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richmond,Virginia" title="Richmond, Virginia">Richmond</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia" title="Virginia">Virginia</a>. Here Edward Sapir lost his younger brother Max to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typhoid_fever" title="Typhoid fever">typhoid fever</a>. His father had difficultly keeping a job in a synagogue and finally settled in New York on the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lower_East_Side" title="Lower East Side">Lower East Side</a>, where the family lived in poverty. As Jacob Sapir could not provide for his family, Sapir's mother, Eva Seagal Sapir, opened a shop to supply the basic necessities. They formally divorced in 1910. After settling in New York Edward Sapir was raised mostly by his mother, who stressed the importance of education for the upwardly social mobile, and turned the family increasingly away from Judaism. Even though Eva Sapir was an important influence, Sapir received his lust for knowledge and interest in scholarship, aesthetics and music from his father. At age 14 Sapir won a Pulitzer scholarship to the prestigious Horace Mann high school, but he chose not to attend the school which he found too posh, going instead to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuyvesant_High_School" title="Stuyvesant High School">Peter Stuyvesant High School</a>, and saving the scholarship money for his college education. Through the scholarship Sapir supplemented his mother's meager earnings.<sup id="cite_ref-Darnell1_2-1" class="reference"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Sapir#cite_note-Darnell1-2">[3]</a></sup></p>

<h3>Education at Columbia</h3>

<p>Sapir entered Columbia in 1901, still paying with the Pulitzer scholarship. Columbia at this time was one of the only elite private universities that did not limit admission of Jewish applicants with implicit quotas around 12%. Approximately 40% of incoming students at Columbia were Jewish. Sapir earned both a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bachelor_of_Arts" title="Bachelor of Arts">B.A.</a> (1904) and an <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_of_Arts_%28postgraduate%29" title="Master of Arts (postgraduate)" class="mw-redirect">M.A.</a> (1905) in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanic_philology" title="Germanic philology">Germanic philology</a> from <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbia_College_of_Columbia_University" title="Columbia College of Columbia University" class="mw-redirect">Columbia</a>, before embarking on his <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_of_Philosophy" title="Doctor of Philosophy">PhD</a> in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropology" title="Anthropology">Anthropology</a> which he completed in 1908.</p>

<h4>College</h4>

Columbia University library in 1903</div>

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<p>Sapir emphasized language study in his college years at Columbia, studying Latin, Greek and French for eight semesters. From his sophomore year he additionally began to focus on Germanic languages completing coursework in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gothic_language" title="Gothic language">Gothic</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_High_German" title="Old High German">Old High German</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Saxon" title="Old Saxon">Old Saxon</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icelandic_language" title="Icelandic language">Icelandic</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_language" title="Dutch language">Dutch</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_language" title="Swedish language">Swedish</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danish_language" title="Danish language">Danish</a>. The professor of Germanic linguistics, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Henry_Carpenter_%28philologist%29" title="William Henry Carpenter (philologist)">William Carpenter</a> based the study of Germanic languages on the methods of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_linguistics" title="Comparative linguistics">comparative linguistics</a> that were being developed into a more scientific framework, than the traditional philological approach. He also took courses in Sanskrit. Complementing his language studies, Sapir studied music in the department of the famous composer <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_MacDowell" title="Edward MacDowell">Edward MacDowell</a>, though it is uncertain if Sapir studied with MacDowell, or with other faculty. In his last year in college Sapir enrolled in the course "Introduction to Anthropology", with Professor <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Livingston_Farrand" title="Livingston Farrand">Livingston Farrand</a>, who taught Boas' four field approach to anthropology. He also enrolled in an advanced anthropology seminar taught by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Boas" title="Franz Boas">Franz Boas</a> himself, a course that would completely change the direction of his career.</p>

<h4>Boas' influence</h4>

Franz Boas</div>

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<p>Although still in college, Sapir was allowed to participate in Boas' graduate seminar on American Languages which included translations of Native American and Inuit myths collected by Boas. In this way Sapir was introduced to Indigenous American languages while he kept working on his M.A. in Germanic linguistics. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Lowie" title="Robert Lowie">Robert Lowie</a> later said that Sapir's fascination with indigenous languages stemmed from the seminar with Boas in which Boas used examples from Native American languages to disprove all of Sapir's common-sense assumptions about the basic nature of Language. Sapir's 1905 Master's thesis was an analysis of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Gottfried_Herder" title="Johann Gottfried Herder">Johann Gottfried Herder</a>'s <i>Treatise on the Origin of Language</i>, and included examples from Inuit and Native American languages, not at all familiar to a Germanicist. The thesis criticized Herder for retaining a Biblical chronology, too shallow to allow for the observable diversification of languages. But he also argued with Herder that all of the world's languages have equal aesthetic potentials and grammatical complexity. He ended the paper by calling for a "very extended study of all the various existing stocks of languages, in order to determine the most fundamental properties of language" - almost a program statement for the modern study of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_typology" title="Linguistic typology">linguistic typology</a>, and a very Boasian approach.<sup id="cite_ref-3" class="reference"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Sapir#cite_note-3">[4]</a></sup>

In 1906 he finished his coursework, having focused the last year on courses in anthropology and taking seminars such as Primitive Culture with Farrand, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnology" title="Ethnology">Ethnology</a> with Boas, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaeology" title="Archaeology">Archaeology</a> and courses in Chinese language and culture with <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berthold_Laufer" title="Berthold Laufer">Berthold Laufer</a>. He also maintained his Indo-European studies with courses in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celtic_languages" title="Celtic languages">Celtic</a>, Old Saxon, Swedish and Sanskrit. Having finished his coursework, Sapir moved on to his doctoral fieldwork, spending several years in short term appointments while working on his dissertation.</p>

<h4>Early fieldwork</h4>

Edward Sapir

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