Edward Sapir

Edward Sapir
Edward Sapir (about 1910)
Born	(1884-01-26)January 26, 1884 Lauenburg, Prussia (now Lębork, Poland)
Died	February 4, 1939(1939-02-04) (aged 55) New Haven, Connecticut
Citizenship	American
Fields	Linguistics, Anthropology
Institutions	University of Chicago Canadian Museum of Civilization Columbia University Yale University
Alma mater	Columbia University
Thesis	The Takelma language of southwestern Oregon (1909)
Doctoral advisor	Franz Boas
Doctoral students	Li Fang-Kuei - Mary Haas - Morris Swadesh - Harry Hoijer - Stanley Newman
Known for	Classification of Native American languages Sapir–Whorf hypothesis Anthropological linguistics

Edward Sapir (/səˈpɪər/; January 26, 1884 – February 4, 1939) was an American anthropologist-linguist, who is widely considered to be one of the most important figures in the early development of the discipline of linguistics.

Sapir was born in German Pomerania; his parents emigrated to United States of America when he was a child. He studied Germanic linguistics at Columbia, where he came under the influence of Franz Boas who inspired him to work on Native American languages. While finishing his Ph.D. he went to California to work with Alfred Kroeber documenting the indigenous languages there. He was employed by the Geological Survey of Canada for fifteen years, where he came into his own as one of the most significant linguists in North America, the other being Leonard Bloomfield. He was offered a professorship at the University of Chicago, and stayed for several years continuing to work for the professionalization of the discipline of linguistics. By the end of his life he was professor of anthropology at Yale, where he never really fit in. Among his many students were the linguists Mary Haas and Morris Swadesh, and anthropologists such as Fred Eggan and Hortense Powdermaker.

With his linguistic background, Sapir became the one student of Boas to develop most completely the relationship between linguistics and anthropology. Sapir studied the ways in which language and culture influence each other, and he was interested in the relation between linguistic differences, and differences in cultural world views. This part of his thinking was developed by his student Benjamin Lee Whorf into the principle of linguistic relativity or the "Sapir-Whorf" hypothesis. In anthropology Sapir is known as an early proponent of the importance of psychology to anthropology, maintaining that studying the nature of relationships between different individual personalities is important for the ways in which culture and society develop.