Letters from bloomfield to Michelson and Sapir

1987 ◽  
Vol 14 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 39-60 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. F. Hockett
Keyword(s):  
American Indian ◽  
Linguistic Theory ◽  
Personal Life ◽  
Indian Languages ◽  
Field Worker ◽  
Edward Sapir

Summary Between 1919 and 1930, Leonard Bloomfield corresponded with the anthropologist Truman Michelson (1879–1938) concerning Algonquian linguistics, and between 1924 and 1925 with Edward Sapir (1884–1939), with regard to American Indian languages, linguistic theory, and Bloomfield’s appointment as field-worker for the Canadian Bureau of Mines. The surviving letters are enumerated and discussed, and non-technical portions of them are reproduced, for the light which they shed on three of Bloomfield’s professional concerns: his work in Algonquian; his move from Illinois to Ohio State in 1921 ; and the planning and founding of the Linguistic Society of America in 1924–25. They also afford a few glimpses of his (in general little known) personal life and attitudes.

American Indian Languages and linguistic Theory Symposium

1975 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-72
Author(s):  
Paul Friedrich ◽  
Margaret Langdon
Keyword(s):  
American Indian ◽  
Linguistic Theory ◽  
Indian Languages

The Collected Works of Edward Sapir. Volume V: American Indian Languages I

1992 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 566
Author(s):  
Margaret Langdon ◽  
William Bright ◽  
Edward Sapir
Keyword(s):  
American Indian ◽  
Indian Languages ◽  
Edward Sapir

Introduction to Handbook of American Indian Languages

Language ◽  
1967 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 584
Author(s):  
William Bright ◽  
Franz Boas ◽  
J. W. Powell ◽  
Preston Holder ◽  
James Constantine Pilling ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
American Indian ◽  
Indian Languages

Of Two Minds About Minding Language in Culture

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Silverstein
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
American Indian ◽  
Historical Linguistics ◽  
Comparative Method ◽  
Indian Languages ◽  
Universal Truth

Analyzing Franz Boas's critically new insights under the lens of philology, this chapter redefines Boasian linguistics as a globalizing mode of mutual enlightenment through the exchange of grammatical concepts between selves across borders of sound and sense—a process he calls “comparative calibrationism,” the asymptotic pursuit of the always-inaccessible yet ever-closer universal truth. It focuses on the Handbook of American Indian Languages, where Boas dismantled every plank in the language-focused platform on which inferences of evolutionary primitivism stand. Boas also went after the very applicability to American languages of the comparative method of historical linguistics, from which inferences of so-called linguistic families descended from single proto-languages emerged in the nineteenth century.

Southern Wakashan: Descriptive and Theoretical Perspectives

2007 ◽  
Vol 52 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Henry Davis ◽  
Rachel Wojdak
Keyword(s):  
British Columbia ◽  
Vancouver Island ◽  
Washington State ◽  
Linguistic Theory ◽  
Special Volume ◽  
Theoretical Perspectives ◽  
Foundational Work ◽  
Edward Sapir

This special volume of CJL/RCL is the first collection of papers devoted specifically to the Southern Wakashan languages Makah, Ditidaht (also known as Nitinat), and Nuu-chah-nulth (also known as Nootka). These three closely related languages form a continuum stretching from the northwest tip of Washington State to northwest Vancouver Island in British Columbia. The Southern Wakashan languages are remarkable for the typologically unusual traits they exhibit in virtually all areas of their grammars. These properties were first illuminated by Edward Sapir in his foundational work on Nuu-chah-nulth (1911, 1915, 1921; Sapir and Swadesh 1939), which helped thrust Wakashan to the forefront of early Amerindian scholarship. The papers brought together in this volume reflect a recent resurgence of interest in Southern Wakashan, and highlight the potential of lesser-studied languages to contribute to linguistic theory, as well as the range of insights that theoretically informed perspectives can bring to the grammatical description of these languages.

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