X-Nico

4 unusual facts about Edward Sapir


Areal feature

Edward Sapir notably used evidence of contact and diffusion as a negative tool for genetic reconstruction, treating it as a subject in its own right only at the end of his career (e.g., for the influence of Tibetan on Tocharian).

Diamond Jenness

In 1926, Jenness succeeded Canada's first Chief Anthropologist, Dr. Edward Sapir, as Chief of Anthropology at the National Museum of Canada, a position he retained until his retirement in 1948.

Marius Barbeau

In 1911, Barbeau joined the National Museum of Canada (then part of the Geological Survey of Canada) as an anthropologist under Edward Sapir; he worked there for his entire career, retiring in 1949.

Regna Darnell

Her publications include biographies of the linguistic anthropologist Edward Sapir and of the ethnologist Daniel Garrison Brinton.


Alexander Francis Chamberlain

Boas's obituary for him (one of a number he had to write for younger colleagues including Pliny Earle Goddard and Edward Sapir) recalls him as a genuinely good person.

Leslie White

Thus, contrary to Alfred L. Kroeber, Kluckhohn, and Edward Sapir, White saw the delineation of the object of study not as a cognitive accomplishment of the anthropologist, but as a recognition of the actually existing and delineated phenomena which comprise the world.

Tlingit language

Edward Sapir (1915) argued for its inclusion in the Na-Dené family, a claim which was subsequently debated by Franz Boas (1917), P.E. Goddard (1920), and many other prominent linguists of the time.


see also