Edward Sapir

Edward Sapir ( IPA: [/ səpɪər / ] ) (. * January 26, 1884 i in Lauenburg Pom, † February 4, 1939 in New Haven ) was an American anthropologist, linguist, and a representative of the American structuralism.

Life

Sapir son litauischstämmiger Jews who emigrated to the USA in 1889. From 1901 he studied German and Indo-European Studies at Columbia University in New York and completed his studies with a Master's degree. He dedicated his final work of Johann Gottfried Herder's theory of the origin of language. During this time he met his future teacher, the anthropologist Franz Boas know who brought him to the indigenous languages ​​of North America in contact. The encounter resulted in numerous field research visits Sapir, inter alia, the Chinook languages ​​, Takelma and Chasta Costa.

From the fact that Boaz was mainly anthropologist, a close link between the linguistic studies with observations on culture and lifestyle of each language community could arise for Sapir. Because of his language studies, an activity. Two years later developed as an assistant in the anthropological institute of the University of California anthropologist Alfred Kroeber in 1907, 1909, Sapir received his PhD with a thesis on the grammar of the Takelma from.

From 1910 to 1925 Sapir was director of the anthropology department of the Canadian National Museum in Ottawa, conducting his field research activities on North American languages, while this time va on the Wakashan languages, continued. From 1925 to 1931 he was professor of anthropology at the University of Chicago. Then he took over the Sterling Professor of Anthropology and Linguistics at Yale University. In 1937, he suffered a heart attack, from which his health no longer fully recovered.

Position

In addition to Leonard Bloomfield, Edward Sapir considered the founder of modern American linguistics as a Varariante of structuralism. He was one of the first scientists to explore the relationships between the study of language and anthropology, especially the languages ​​of the Native Americans. He proposed in 1921 for an alternative view, a linguistic relativity principle to the language. Once adopted, the language affects the way in which people think. Sapir's influence on linguistics results from its numerous publications and through his students. Among them were:

• Benjamin Whorf
• Mary Haas
• Morris Swadesh.

His students have developed over the following years, the development of the discipline prevail. Especially Sapir Whorf has adopted and refined ideas. They have become known as the Sapir -Whorf hypothesis.

Publications

• Herder's " origin of language ", in: Modern Philology, Volume 5, in 1907.
• Wishram Texts, together with Wasco Tales and Myths. Collected by Jeremiah Curtin. In: American Ethnological Society, ed. by Franz Boas. Brill, 1909.
• Notes on Phonology and Morphology Chasta Costa. University Museum Publications, 1914.
• Language. An Introduction to the Study of Speech. Harcourt Brace, New York, 1921. German translation: the language. An introduction to the nature of language. Hueber, Munich, 1961.