Edward Sapir: Appraisals of His Life and Work

253 Pages·1984·13.2 MB·English

by  E.F.K. Koerner

EDWARD SAPIR — LIFE & WORK
AMSTERDAM STUDIES IN THE THEORY AND
HISTORY OF LINGUISTIC SCIENCE
General Editor
E.F. KONRAD KOERNER
(University of Ottawa)
Series III - STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF THE LANGUAGE SCIENCES
Advisory Editorial Board
Ranko Bugarski (Belgrade); Jean-Claude Chevalier (Paris)
H.H. Christmann (Tübingen); Boyd H. Davis (Charlotte, N.C.)
Rudolf Engler (Bern); Hans-Josef Niederehe (Trier)
R.H. Robins (London); Rosane Rocher (Philadelphia)
Aldo Scaglione (Chapel Hill)
Volume 36
Konrad Koerner (ed.)
Edward Sapir: Appraisals of his life and work
EDWARD SAPIR
APPRAISALS OF HIS LIFE AND WORK
Edited with an Introduction
by
KONRAD KOERNER
University of Ottawa
JOHN BENJAMINS PUBLISHING COMPANY
AMSTERDAM/PHILADELPHIA
1984
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Main entry under title:
Edward Sapir, appraisals of his life and work.
(Amsterdam studies in the theory and history of linguistic science. Series III, Studies in
the history of the language science, ISSN 0304-0720; v. 36)
Bibliography
1. Sapir, Edward, 1884-1939 — Addresses, essays, lectures. 2. Linguists - United States
~ Biography -- Addresses, essays, lectures. 3. Anthropologists - United States - Biog­
raphy ~ Addresses, essays, lectures. I. Koerner, E. F. K. II. Series.
P85.S14E4 1984 410'.92'4 [B] 84-24347
ISBN 90-272-4518-5 (hb.)
ISBN 90-272-4519-3 (pb.)
© Copyright 1984 - John Benjamins B.V.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or
any other means, without written permission from the publisher.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This volume is, like the special 1984 issue of Historiographia Linguistica, but
a modest contribution leading to an important event honouring one of this
century's modern masters in linguistic science, the Edward Sapir Centenary
Conference, Victoria Memorial Museum, Ottawa, 1-3 October 1984. Unlike the
special HL issue, the present venture is more clearly devoted to Edward Sapir,
his career, his contribution to the study of language (with side-lights cast on an­
thropological subjects), and his personality.
This volume could not have materialized in its present form without the
collaboration of a number of individuals. The regular copyright acknowledge­
ments are made at the bottom of the first page of each item here reproduced
from their early place of publication, and in the case of other items permission
has been obtained for (re-)publication from their authors or copyright holders
wherever this was possible to obtain. These acknowledgements need not be
repeated here.
Expressions of thanks are due to the following individuals for useful com­
ments on the original outline of this volume and/or advice at various stages of
its development: William Cowan (Ottawa), Regna Darnell (Edmonton), Michael
K. Foster (Ottawa), Victor Golla (Washington, D.C.), Tetsuro Hayashi (Fukuo-
ka), Charles F. Hockett (Ithaca, N.Y.), Stephen 0. Murray (San Francisco),
Yoshio Nagashima (Tokyo), Richard J. Preston (Hamilton, Ont.), and Philip
Sapir (Bethesda, Md.). In fact, no other person has taken a more active interest
in this project (as well as others pertaining to his father) than Philip Sapir,
Edward Sapir's second Ottawa-born son. Apart from offering a number of
useful suggestions, Mr Sapir kindly sent me copies of various materials, including
transcripts of personal letters from distinguished scholars addressed to Edward
Sapir and photocopies of a number of reviews, several of which would otherwise
have escaped my attention. Perhaps even more importantly, Mr Sapir has
provided the organizers of the Sapir Conference and myself with negatives as
well as prints of a variety of pictures of his father, the Sapir family, and others
related to Edward Sapir's personal and scholarly life, several of which have been
included here.
I also wish to record my thanks to the following for graciously waiving copy­
right fees: William Bright, Editor of Language, and Victoria A. Fromkin, former
vi EDWARD SAPIR LIFE AND WORK
Secretary-Treasurer of the Linguistic Society of America, for items previously
published in Language; Edward J. Lehman, Executive Director of the American
Anthropological Association, for reviews and notes which appeared in the
American Anthropologist, and Alexander G. McKay, President of The Royal
Society of Canada, for an obituary published in the Society's Proceedings.
I would like especially to mention the support received from Richard J.
Preston, who sent copies of various papers and supplied the transcript of
Kroeber's 1959 talk published here for the first time. I would also like to
acknowledge the help obtained from various staff members of the Canadian
National Museum, Ottawa, in particular Louise Dallaire of the Ethnological
Division Archive, who patiently responded to various queries and provided
useful information, including copies of unpublished papers.
Ottawa, July 1984 Konrad Koerner
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements v
Introduction xi
PART I: Obituaries and Biographical Sketches, 1939-1952
Franz Boas (1858-1942): Edward Sapir [1939] 3
Franklin Edgerton (1885-1963): Edward Sapir (1884-1939) 5
Diamond Jenness (1886-1969): Edward Sapir (1884-1939) 9
Harry Stack Sullivan (1892-1949): Edward Sapir, Ph.D., SC.D., 1884-1939 . 12
Leslie Spier (1893-1961): Edward Sapir [excerpt] 13
Ruth Fulton Benedict (1887-1948): Edward Sapir [1939] 15
Morris Swadesh (1909-1967): Edward Sapir [1939] 19
David Goodman Mandelbaum (b.1911): Edward Sapir [1941] 23
Charles Frederick Voegelin (b.1906): Edward Sapir [1952] 33
PART II: Comments on Sapir's Work, 1919-1953
Robert Harry Lowie (1883-1957): Review of Time Perspective in Abori­
ginal American Culture (1916) 39
Idem: Review of Language: An introduction to the study of speech (1921) . 43
Leonard Bloomfield (1887-1949): Review of Language (1921) 47
Alfred Louis Kroeber (1876-1960): A Study of Language [excerpt] 51
Harry Hoijer (1904-1976): Review of Selected Writings of Edward Sapir
in Language, Culture and Personality (1949) 53
Stanley Stewart Newman (1905-1984): Review of Selected Writings (1949) . 59
Joseph Harold Greenberg (b.1915): Review of Selected Writings (1949) . . . 66
Zellig Sabbettai Harris (b.1909): Review article on Selected Writings (1949). 69
Mary Rosamond Haas (b.1910): Edward Sapir and the Training of
Anthropological Linguists [1953] 115
PART III: Appraisals of Sapir's Life and Work, 1956-1980
Robert Harry Lowie (1883-1957): Comments on Edward Sapir, his
Personality and Scholarship [1956] 121
Alfred Louis Kroeber (1876-1960): Reflections on Edward Sapir, Scholar
and Man [1959] . 131
Morris Swadesh (1909-1967): The Culture Historic Implications of Sapir's
Linguistic Classification (1961) 141
James David McCawley (b.1938): Sapir's Phonologic Representation (1967) . 153
viii EDWARD SAPIR LIFE AND WORK
Regna Diebold Darnell (b.1943): The Sapir Years at the Canadian National
Museum in Ottawa (1976) 159
Richard Joseph Preston (b.1931): Reflections on Sapir's Anthropology in
Canada(1980) 179
PART IV: Bibliography of Edward Sapir's Publications in Linguistics,
Anthropology, and other Behavioral and Social Sciences
Edward Sapir (1884-1939): Scientific Papers and Prose Writings (revised
by Leslie Spier and updated by David Mandelbaum), 1906-1944 197
Konrad Koerner (b.1939): Addenda to Sapir's Scientific Bibliography .... 211
Index of Names 219
LOCATION OF PICTURES AND ILLUSTRATIONS
Edward Sapir (Chicago, ca.1930) x
Edward Sapir (New Haven, ca.1936) 2
Edward Sapir, his wife Florence, née Delson(d. 21 April 1924), and their
first-born son, Michael, in front of 357 Elgin Street (Ottawa, Summer
1913) 8
Edward Sapir (Ottawa, ca.1913) 38
Facsimile of'Time Perspective' (1916) 42
Facsimile of 'Language: An introduction to the study of speech' (1921) ... 50
Facsimile of'Selected Writings of Edward Sapir in Language, Culture and
Personality' (1949) 52
Sapir's residence during the years 1915-16 at 67 Aylmer Street, Ottawa,
Canada. (Picture taken in 1983, with William Cowan and Konrad Koerner
in the foreground.) 58
Sapir's residence during the years 1917-20 at 1 Findlay Avenue, Ottawa,
Canada. (Picture dating from summer 1983.) 58
Thomas Talbot Waterman (1885-1936), Paul Radin (1883-1959), Ishi (d.
1916), Robert Harry Lowie (1883-1957), and Sapir (Berkeley, California,
August 1915) 120
Paul Sidney Martin (1899-1874), Fay-Cooper Cole (1881-1961), and Sapir
(departure for a field trip to the Southwest, Chicago, ca.1926) 120
Edward Sapir's first classification of North American Indian languages as
published in Science N.S. vol.54, No.1400, p.408 (1921) 140
Facsimile of title and copyright statement of Shin-ichi Kurokawa's trans­
lation of "Sound Patterns in Language" and "The Psychological
Reality of Phonemes" (Tokyo: Taishukan, 1958) 196
Facsimile of the title page of the Japanese translation by Mikio
Hirabayashi of major portions from 'Selected Writings of Edward
Sapir' (Tokyo: Hokuseido, 1983) 210
PUBLISHED ON THE OCCASION OF THE
EDWARD SAPIR CENTENARY CONFERENCE
VICTORIA MEMORIAL MUSEUM BUILDING
NATIONAL MUSEUM OF MAN
OTTAWA, CANADA
1-3 OCTOBER 1984