Excerpt from The Collected Works of Edward Sapir, Vol. 1
Edward Sapir (1884-1939) has been referred to as one of the most brilliant scholars in linguistics and anthropology in our country (Franz Boas) and as one of the greatest figures in American humanistic scholarship (Franklin Edgerton). His classic book, Language(1921), is still in use, and many of his papers in general linguistics, such as Sound Patterns in Language and The Psychological Reality of Phonemes, stand also as classics. The development of the American descriptive school of structural linguistics, including the adoption of phonemic principles in the study of non-literary languages, was primarily due to him.
The large body of work he carried out on Native American languages has been called ground-breaking and monumental and includes descriptive, historical, and comparative studies. They are of continuing importance and relevance to today's scholars.
Not to be ignored are his studies in Indo-European, Semitic, and African languages, which have been characterized as "masterpieces of brilliant association" (Zellig Harris). Further, he is recognized as a forefather of ethnolinguistic and sociolinguistic studies.
In anthropology Sapir contributed the classic statement on the theory and methodology of the American school of Franz Boas in his monograph, "Time Perspective in Aboriginal American Culture"(1916). His major contribution, however, was as a pioneer and proponent for studies on the interrelation of culture and personality, of society and the individual, providing the theoretical basis for what is known today as humanistic anthropology.
He was, in addition, a poet, and contributed papers on aesthetics, literature, music, and social criticism.
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