Edward Sapir
Edward Sapir (pronunciation: suh PEER), (1884-1939) was an American anthropologist-linguist, a leader in
American structural linguistics, and one of the creators of what is now called the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. He was born in Lauenburg, Germany. He was the pupil of Franz Boas, teacher of Benjamin Whorf.
He taught at the university of Chicago and later at the university of Yale. He was one of the first who explored the relations between language studies and anthropology.
Sapir proposed an alternative view of language in 1921, asserting that language influences the ways in which people think. Sapir's idea was adopted and developed during the 1940s by Whorf and eventually became the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis.
Among the languages and cultures studied by Sapir are several
Athabaskan languages, Chinook, Navajo, Nootka, Paiute, Takelma,
Wishram, and Yana.
Books
- Language: An introduction to the study of speech (1921) ()
Essays and articles
- The Function of an International Auxiliary Language ()
