Synopsis
Edward Sapir was one of those men, rare among scientists and scholars, who are spoken of by their colleagues in terms of genius. His writings on frontier problems in cultural anthropology, psychology, and linguistics are outstanding for their provocative insights and remarkable control of factual data. His long essay on language, his principal field of study, is an illuminating exploration of various aspects of the subject. His stress on the fact that language is a cultural or social product helped to make linguistics an integral part of the study of man. The interplay of culture and personality was a field where Sapir was a pioneer and many of his essays have become classics in the social sciences. The nine contributions brought together in this volume well show the distinction and lasting quality of Sapir's work. They include "Culture, Genuine and Spurious," "The Meaning of Religion," "Language," "Cultural Anthropology and Psychiatry," and "The Statue of Linguistics as a Science."
Présentation de l'éditeur
Sapir was one of those rare men among scientists and scholars who are spoken of by their colleagues in terms of genius. The papers selected for this volume give only part of the reason for that judgment, for there was an uncommon quality of the man himself which attracted and stimulated inspired may not be too strong a word many of those who knew him. His talents were manifest in many fields, in none more brilliantly and effectively than in linguistics. He had a truly phenomenal knowledge of languages; linguists have commented that his command of the facts, of specific linguistic phenomena, was unsurpassed among linguistic scientists. Sapir began his hnguistic studies in the field of Germanics while he was still an undergraduate. Early in his graduate work he undertook the recording and analysis of an American Indian language, Takelma, and throughout his professional career he carried on intensive work within the various families of American Indian languages. When a speaker of theW est African language Jabo (G weabo) was found working in aC hicago bowling alley, Sapir availed himself of the opportunity to extend his hnguistic knowledge of the African field. In later years, his interests turned again to problems in the I ndo-E uropean group and he found time to continue work on languages of theS initic andS emitic stocks as well. In all his work on these diverse tongues, Sapir showed a sure grasp of the basic form and the interlocking elements of the structure of each language. The Sanskrit scholar, Franklin Edgerton, has put it thus: He seemed able to meet every one of us on our own grounds, to see the minutiae of many provinces as with a magnifying glass, and at the same time effortlessly to survey the whole terrain. And his ability to view the whole scope of language extended beyond the sheerly formal aspects of speech. Formal linguistic descriptions and a
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