Edward Sapir

Sapir, Edward - səpērˈ, 1884–1939, American linguist and anthropologist, b. Pomerania. Sapir was brought to the United States in 1889. After teaching at the Univ. of California and the Univ. of Pennsylvania, he served (1910–25) as chief of the division of anthropology of the Canadian National Museum. He was professor of anthropology at the Univ. of Chicago (1925–31), and of anthropology and linguistics at Yale from 1931 until his death. With his student Benjamin Lee Whorf (1897–1941) he developed the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, arguing that the limits of language restrict the scope of possible thought and that every language recognizes peculiar sets of distinctions—e.g., Eskimo and its rich vocabulary for different kinds of snow. The theory has been enormously influential but has for the most part been superseded by subsequent research. Sapir's studies on the ethnology and linguistics of various Native American groups of the United States contributed greatly to the development of descriptive linguistics. Among his books are Wishram Texts (1909), Time Perspective in Aboriginal American Culture (1916), Language: An Introduction to the Study of Speech (1921), and Nootka Texts (1939).

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