Edward Sapir

Edward Sapir (born January 26, 1884 – died February 4, 1939) was an American anthropologist-linguist, a leader in American structural linguistics, and one of the creators of what is now called the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. He is arguably the most influential figure in American linguistics, influencing even Noam Chomsky.

Life

Edward Sapir was born in Lauenburg, Prussia, (now Lębork in Poland) to an orthodox Jewish family of Lithuanian origins. His parents, Jacob David and Eva Seagal Sapir spoke Yiddish amongst themselves, so Edward learned both German and the language of his parents. When he was six years old his family immigrated to United States, and eventually settled on the Lower East Side of New York City. After a death of his younger brother Max and numerous problems, Sapir’s parents divorced in 1910.

Sapir entered Columbia University in 1901, on a Pulitzer scholarship he won three years earlier. He was an extremely bright young man, and many professors saw great potential in him. At Columbia he studied German philology and Indo-European linguistics. In 1904 he graduated with a B.A. degree, one year earlier than normal. In 1905 he received his M.A., also in German. However, Sapir’s linguistic interests proved to be much broader. In the next two years he took up projects studying the Wishram and Takelma languages. He earned his Ph.D. in anthropology in 1909 with a dissertation on the Takelma language of southwestern Oregon.

While at Columbia Sapir met his mentor, anthropologist Franz Boas, who was probably the person who provided the most initial impetus for Sapir's study of American languages. Boas invoked the urgency in Sapir to study and record endangered languages before they become lost forever. Boas arranged Sapir's employment in 1907-08 researching the nearly extinct Yana language of northern California.

Sapir’s first professional appointment was in 1907 at the University of California, Barkley, after which he moved in 1908 to the University of Pennsylvania, where he taught until 1910. At the same time he conducted several field trips and studied Ute language, Southern Paiute, and Hopi. In 1915 Sapir continued to work with Ishi, the monolingual last surviving speaker of Yahi - (southern Yana) language.

In the years 1910-1925 he built and directed the Anthropological Division in the Geological Survey of Canada, in Ottawa. When he was first hired, he and Marius Barbeau were the only two, and the first two, full-time anthropologists in Canada. Among the many accomplishments of this very productive period are a substantial series of publications on Nootka and other languages, and his seminal book Language (1921), still important today and eminently readable..

Sapir married in 1910 to Florence Delson, but the marriage suffered from the very beginning. Florence developed series of mental and physical ailments and eventually died in 1924. Sapir’s mother helped in raising his three children. During those depressing years Sapir dove into his inner self, starting to write poetry, compose music, and study psychology. He missed research and teaching, which he could not do in Canada. Then in 1925 he received a call from the University of Chicago.

As he was leaving for a teaching position at the University of Chicago, one of very few research universities then in the United States, he enabled Leonard Bloomfield to obtain support from Ottawa to do fieldwork on Cree, essential to his project of historical reconstruction in Algonkian. In Chicago Sapir could satisfy his intellectual hunger. His collaboration with interactional psychiatrist Harry Stack Sullivan and political scientist Harold D. Lasswell was particularly notable. Sapir’s sphere of interest widened from solely linguistics to cultural studies, psychology, politics, methodology, etc. He remarried in 1927, to Jean McClenaghan, who was a student at the university at the time. They had two children.

From 1931 to his death Sapir spent at the Yale University, where he became the head of the Department of Anthropology. He also opened there the first Yale school of linguistics. However, he also encountered numerous problems in his work. The economic effects of Depression which limited funding and the anti-Semitic currents at Yale were among the most obvious ones. Sapir’s health suffered the most.

Sapir died of heart problems in 1939, at age 55.

Work

Sapir’s special focus among American languages was on the Athabaskan languages, a family he was especially fascinated by: "Dene is probably the son-of-a-bitchiest language in America to actually know...most fascinating of all languages ever invented" (Krauss 1986:157). Among the languages and cultures studied by Sapir are Wishram Chinook, Navajo, Nootka, Paiute, Takelma, and Yana. Although noted for his work on American linguistics, he was also prolific in linguistics in general, as depicted by his book Language, which provides everything from a grammar-typological classification of languages (with examples ranging from Chinese to Nootka) to speculation on the phenomenon on language drift and the arbitrariness of associations between language, race, and culture. He was also at least a minor participant in the international auxiliary language movement. Sapir argued for the benefits of a regular grammar and advocated a critical focus on the fundamentals of language unbiased by the idiosyncrasies of national languages in the choice of an international auxiliary language.

Besides pure linguistics, Sapir was also interested in cultural behaviorism and development of personality. He searched for the connection between personality, verbal expression and socially determined behavior. He saw language as a verbal symbol in human relations. Sapir believed that language shapes human perception and directs our behavior. Understanding one culture thus is impossible without understanding historical development of that culture’s language. Sapir thought that language is not static, but that it constantly changes. Sapir called that change The Language Drift. Some parts of language change more quickly, some are much slower. The reality changes, so does the language. But also due to the change in language, the reality changes as well. We think, hear, see, and behave through our language. Language serves as a certain filter through which we experience and interpret reality. Every culture has its own language, or a set of filters through which it predisposes its members to certain kind of experience and thinking. Without language it is difficult to imagine life at all.

Some suggestions of Sapir about the influence of language on the ways in which people think were adopted and developed by Whorf, initially while he was substitute teaching in the classroom during Sapir's illness. During the 1940s and later this became known as the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis.

Legacy

Sapir was one of the first who explored the relations between language and anthropology. His students include Fang-kuei Li, Benjamin Whorf, Mary Haas, and Harry Hoijer, but it was one not formally his student who he came to regard as his intellectual heir, a young Semiticist named Zellig Harris (who for a time dated his daughter).

Sapir was extremely adored scientist. His way of expression was simple and easy to understand, and he had rather modest personality. He above all wanted to pass his love to linguistics and anthropology to others, and abstained from seeking of personal glory. His students thus liked him and, after his death, put numerous collections of their own essays, dedicating them to him.

Bibliography

• Sapir, Edward. 1911. The problem of noun incorporation in American languages. American Anthropology. 13, 250-82

• Sapir, Edward. 1916. Time Perspective in Aboriginal American Culture: A Study in Method. Canada Department of Mines, Geological Survey, Memoir 90. Anthropological Series, 13.

• Sapir, Edward. 1924. The grammarian and his language. American Mercury, 1, 149-155.

• Sapir, Edward. 1925. The Function of an International Auxiliary Language. Romanic Review, July 1925.

• Sapir, Edward. 1925. Sound patterns in language. Language, 1, 37-51

• Sapir, Edward. 1933. La réalité psychologique des phonèmes [The psychological reality of phonemes]. Journal de Psychologie Normale et Pathologique, 30, 247-265

• Sapir, Edward. 1944. Grading, a study in Semantics. Philosophy of Science, 11(2), 93-116

• Sapir, Edward. 1955. (original published in 1921). Language: An Introduction to the Study of Speech. Harvest Books. ISBN 015-648-2339

• Sapir, Edward (Ed.). 1974. (original published in 1939). Nootka texts: Tales and Ethnological Narratives with Grammatical Notes and Lexical Materials. AMS Press Inc. ISBN 0404118933

• Sapir, Edward. 1974. (original published in 1909). Wishram Texts. AMS Press Inc. ISBN 0404581528

• Sapir, Edward; Darnell, Regna; Irvine, Judith T.; & Handler, Richard (Eds.). 1999. The Collected Works of Edward Sapir: Culture. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. ISBN 3110126397

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Koerner, Konrad & E. F. K. Koerner. (Eds.). 1985. Edward Sapir: Appraisals of His Life and Work. Philadelphia: John Benjamins. ISBN 9027245185

• Mandelbaum, David G. (Ed.). 1986. Selected Writings of Edward Sapir in Language, Culture, and Personality. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-01115-5.

• Darnell Regna. 1989. Edward Sapir: Linguist, Anthropologist, Humanist.. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. ISBN 0520066782

• Lucy, John Arthur. 1992. Language Diversity and Thought: A Reformulation of the Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis (Studies in the Social and Cultural Foundations of Language, No. 12). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521387973

• Cowan, William & Foster, Michael K. (Eds.). 1986. New perspectives in language, culture, and personality. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. ISBN 9027245223

• Michael E. Krauss. 1986. Edward Sapir and Athabaskan linguistics, with preliminary annotated bibliography of Sapir's work on Athabaskan and Na-Dene. In W. Cowan, M. K. Foster, & K. Koerner, New perspectives in language, culture, and personality. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. ISBN 9027245223

External links

• Language: An introduction to the study of speech – Full text

• Biography of E. Sapir - National Academy of Sciences

• E. Sapir – Short biography

• Selected works – Some full texts articles by Sapir

• Edward Sapir: Biography – Biography

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