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Edward Sapir

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Edward Sapir ( / s ə ˈ p ɪər / ; 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 development of the discipline of linguistics in the United States.

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153-541: Sapir was born in German Pomerania , in what is now northern Poland. His family emigrated to the 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

306-890: A "very extended study of all the various existing stocks of languages, in order to determine the most fundamental properties of language" – almost a program statement for the modern study of linguistic typology , and a very Boasian approach. In 1906 he finished his coursework, having focused the last year on courses in anthropology and taking seminars such as Primitive Culture with Farrand, Ethnology with Boas, Archaeology and courses in Chinese language and culture with Berthold Laufer . He also maintained his Indo-European studies with courses in Celtic , Old Saxon, Swedish, and Sanskrit. Having finished his coursework, Sapir moved on to his doctoral fieldwork, spending several years in short-term appointments while working on his dissertation. Sapir's first fieldwork

459-473: A 1933 article which would become influential in the characterization of the phoneme . Although noted for his work on American linguistics, Sapir wrote prolifically in linguistics in general. His book Language provides everything from a grammar-typological classification of languages (with examples ranging from Chinese to Nootka) to speculation on the phenomenon of language drift , and the arbitrariness of associations between language, race, and culture. Sapir

612-457: A German chemical works. Bismarck stubbornly refused to listen to Georg Herbert Münster , ambassador to France, who reported back that the French were not seeking a revanchist war and were desperate for peace at all costs. Bismarck and most of his contemporaries were conservative-minded and focused their foreign policy attention on Germany's neighboring states. In 1914, 60% of German foreign investment

765-575: A degree, still exist in Germany today. Bismarck's paternalistic programs won the support of German industry because its goals were to win the support of the working classes for the Empire and reduce the outflow of immigrants to America, where wages were higher but welfare did not exist. Bismarck further won the support of both industry and skilled workers by his high tariff policies, which protected profits and wages from American competition, although they alienated

918-574: A fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania , where he taught Ethnology and American Linguistics. At Pennsylvania he worked closely with another student of Boas, Frank Speck , and the two undertook work on Catawba in the summer of 1909. Also in the summer of 1909, Sapir went to Utah with his student J. Alden Mason . Intending originally to work on Hopi, he studied the Southern Paiute language ; he decided to work with Tony Tillohash , who proved to be

1071-497: A female professional academic. Though they were very close friends for a while, it was ultimately the differences in worldview and personality that led their friendship to fray. Before departing Canada, Sapir had a short affair with Margaret Mead , Benedict's protégé at Columbia. But Sapir's conservative ideas about marriage and the woman's role were anathema to Mead, as they had been to Benedict, and as Mead left to do field work in Samoa ,

1224-532: A formal student of Sapir. (For a time he dated Sapir's daughter.) In 1936 Sapir clashed with the Institute for Human Relations over the research proposal by anthropologist Hortense Powdermaker , who proposed a study of the black community of Indianola, Mississippi. Sapir argued that her research should be funded instead of the more sociological work of John Dollard . Sapir eventually lost the discussion and Powdermaker had to leave Yale. During his tenure at Yale, Sapir

1377-507: A government body controlled by Protestants. Nearly all German bishops, clergy, and laymen rejected the legality of the new laws, and were defiant in the face of heavier and heavier penalties and imprisonments imposed by Bismarck's government. By 1876, all the Prussian bishops were imprisoned or in exile, and a third of the Catholic parishes were without a priest. In the face of systematic defiance,

1530-521: A great hero to German conservatives, who erected many monuments to his memory and tried to emulate his policies. Bismarck's post-1871 foreign policy was conservative and sought to preserve the balance of power in Europe. British historian Eric Hobsbawm concludes that he "remained undisputed world champion at the game of multilateral diplomatic chess for almost twenty years after 1871, [devoting] himself exclusively, and successfully, to maintaining peace between

1683-543: A leave from Yale, during which Benjamin Lee Whorf taught his courses and G. P. Murdock advised some of his students. After Sapir's death in 1939, G. P. Murdock became the chair of the anthropology department. Murdock, who despised the Boasian paradigm of cultural anthropology, dismantled most of Sapir's efforts to integrate anthropology, psychology, and linguistics. Sapir's anthropological thought has been described as isolated within

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1836-470: A multi-ethnic Empire with a considerable German-speaking population, would remain outside of the German nation state. Bismarck's policy was to pursue a solution diplomatically. The effective alliance between Germany and Austria played a major role in Germany's decision to enter World War I in 1914. Bismarck announced there would be no more territorial additions to Germany in Europe, and his diplomacy after 1871

1989-510: A nationality. Edward Sapir's first language was Yiddish , and later English. In 1888, when he was four years old, the family moved to Liverpool, England, and in 1890 to the United States, to Richmond , Virginia . Here Edward Sapir lost his younger brother Max to typhoid fever . His father had difficulty keeping a job in a synagogue and finally settled in New York on the Lower East Side , where

2142-682: A number of Southern Paiute songs that Tillohash knew. This fruitful collaboration laid the ground work for the classical description of the Southern Paiute language published in 1930, and enabled Sapir to produce conclusive evidence linking the Shoshonean languages to the Nahuan languages – establishing the Uto-Aztecan language family . Sapir's description of Southern Paiute is known by linguistics as "a model of analytical excellence". At Pennsylvania, Sapir

2295-495: A number of restrictions on the Jews, and imposed sumptuary laws , including the requirement that they wear distinctive clothing , including yellow caps for men and yellow kerchiefs for women. The Khmelnytsky Uprising destroyed the existing Lithuanian Jewish institutions. Still, the Jewish population of Lithuania grew from an estimated 120,000 in 1569 to approximately 250,000 in 1792. After

2448-414: A population of 41 million people; by 1913, this had increased to 68 million. A heavily rural collection of states in 1815, the now united Germany became predominantly urban. The success of German industrialization manifested itself in two ways in the early 20th century; German factories were often larger and more modern than many of their British and French counterparts, but the preindustrial sector

2601-497: A relatively smooth economic and political revolution from above that pushed them along the way towards becoming the world's leading industrial power of the time. Bismarck's "revolutionary conservatism" was a conservative state-building strategy designed to make ordinary Germans—not just the Junker elite—more loyal to the throne and empire. According to Kees van Kersbergen and Barbara Vis, his strategy was: granting social rights to enhance

2754-520: A stable appointment for his student, and by his recommendation Sapir ended up being hired by the Canadian Geological Survey, who wanted him to lead the institutionalization of anthropology in Canada. Sapir, who by then had given up the hope of working at one of the few American research universities, accepted the appointment and moved to Ottawa. In the years 1910–25 Sapir established and directed

2907-401: Is a close relation between Sapir's literary interests and his anthropological thought. His literary theory saw individual aesthetic sensibilities and creativity to interact with learned cultural traditions to produce unique and new poetic forms, echoing the way that he also saw individuals and cultural patterns to dialectically influence each other. Sapir's special focus among American languages

3060-412: Is by far the most time-consuming and nerve-racking that I have ever undertaken. Ishi's imperturbable good humor alone made the work possible, though it also at times added to my exasperation". The First World War took its toll on the Canadian Geological Survey, cutting funding for anthropology and making the academic climate less agreeable. Sapir continued work on Athabascan, working with two speakers of

3213-499: Is his classification of Indigenous languages of the Americas , upon which he elaborated for most of his professional life. He played an important role in developing the modern concept of the phoneme , greatly advancing the understanding of phonology . Before Sapir it was generally considered impossible to apply the methods of historical linguistics to languages of indigenous peoples because they were believed to be more primitive than

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3366-412: Is often used for all Haredi Jews who are not Hasidim (and not Hardalim or Sephardic Haredim ). Other expressions used for this purpose are Yeshivishe and Misnagdim . Both the words Litvishe and Lita'im are somewhat misleading, because there are also Hasidic Jews from greater Lithuania and many Litvaks who are not Haredim. The term Misnagdim ("opponents") on the other hand

3519-605: Is referred to in Yiddish as ליטע ‎ Lite , hence the Hebrew term Lita'im ( לִיטָאִים ‎ ). No other Jew is more closely linked to a specifically Lithuanian city than the Vilna Gaon (in Yiddish , "the genius of Vilna "), Rabbi Elijah ben Solomon Zalman (1720–1797). He helped make Vilna (modern-day Vilnius) a world center for Talmudic learning. Chaim Grade (1910–1982)

3672-522: Is somewhat outdated, because the opposition between the two groups has lost much of its relevance. Yeshivishe is also problematic because Hasidim now make use of yeshivot as much as the Litvishe Jews. The characteristically "Lithuanian" approach to Judaism was marked by a concentration on highly intellectual Talmud study. Lithuania became the heartland of the traditionalist opposition to Hasidism . They named themselves " misnagdim " (opposers) of

3825-548: Is the fact that many of the leading Israeli Haredi yeshivas (outside the Hasidic camp) are successor bodies to the famous yeshivot of Lithuania, though their present-day members may or may not be descended from Lithuanian Jewry. In reality, both the ethnic make-up and the religious traditions of the misnagged communities are much more diverse. Customs of Lithuanian non-Hasidic Jews consist of: Jews began living in Lithuania as early as

3978-487: Is the pronunciation of the vowel holam as [ej] (as against Sephardic [oː] , Germanic [au] and Polish [oj] ). In the popular perception, Litvaks were considered to be more intellectual and stoic than their rivals, the Galitzianers , who thought of them as cold fish. They, in turn, disdained Galitzianers as irrational and uneducated. Ira Steingroot's "Yiddish Knowledge Cards" devote a card to this "Ashkenazi version of

4131-451: The Bundesrat , the federal council of deputies from the 27 states. Executive power was vested in the emperor, or Kaiser , who was assisted by a chancellor responsible only to him. The emperor was given extensive powers by the constitution. He alone appointed and dismissed the chancellor (so in practice, the emperor ruled the empire through the chancellor), was supreme commander-in-chief of

4284-573: The Austrian Empire and its allies on one side and Prussia and its allies on the other. The war resulted in the partial replacement of the Confederation in 1867 by a North German Confederation , comprising the 22 states north of the river Main . The patriotic fervor generated by the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 overwhelmed the remaining opposition to a unified Germany (aside from Austria) in

4437-519: The Chicago School of Sociology , and his friendship with psychologist Harry Stack Sullivan . From 1931 until his death in 1939, Sapir taught at Yale University , where he became the head of the Department of Anthropology. He was invited to Yale to found an interdisciplinary program combining anthropology, linguistics and psychology, aimed at studying "the impact of culture on personality". While Sapir

4590-647: The Great Depression , as well as humiliation and outrage experienced by the German population are considered leading factors in the rise of Adolf Hitler and Nazism . The German Confederation had been created by an act of the Congress of Vienna on 8 June 1815 as a result of the Napoleonic Wars , after being alluded to in Article 6 of the 1814 Treaty of Paris . The liberal Revolutions of 1848 were crushed after

4743-531: The Hatfields and McCoys ". This difference is of course connected with the Hasidic / misnaged debate, Hasidism being considered the more emotional and spontaneous form of religious expression. The two groups differed not only in their attitudes and their pronunciation, but also in their cuisine . The Galitzianers were known for rich, heavily sweetened dishes in contrast to the plainer, more savory Litvisher versions, with

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4896-473: The Indo-European languages . Sapir was the first to prove that the methods of comparative linguistics were equally valid when applied to indigenous languages. In the 1929 edition of Encyclopædia Britannica he published what was then the most authoritative classification of Native American languages, and the first based on evidence from modern comparative linguistics. He was the first to produce evidence for

5049-529: The Nootka language. Apart from Sapir the division had two other staff members, Marius Barbeau and Harlan I. Smith. Sapir insisted that the discipline of linguistics was of integral importance for ethnographic description, arguing that just as nobody would dream of discussing the history of the Catholic Church without knowing Latin or study German folksongs without knowing German, so it made little sense to approach

5202-595: The North German Confederation and the new constitution came into force on 16 April, changing the name of the federal state to the German Empire and introducing the title of German Emperor for Wilhelm I , King of Prussia from the House of Hohenzollern . Berlin remained its capital, and Otto von Bismarck , Minister President of Prussia , became chancellor , the head of government. As these events occurred,

5355-493: The Prussian -led North German Confederation and its southern German allies, such as Baden , Bavaria , Württemberg , and Hesse , were still engaged in the Franco-Prussian War . The German Empire consisted of 25 states , each with its own nobility , four constituent kingdoms , six grand duchies , five duchies (six before 1876), seven principalities , three free Hanseatic cities , and one imperial territory . While Prussia

5508-707: The Second Reich or simply Germany , was the period of the German Reich from the unification of Germany in 1871 until the November Revolution in 1918, when the German Reich changed its form of government from a monarchy to a republic . The empire was founded on 18 January 1871 at the Palace of Versailles , outside Paris , France , where the south German states, except for Austria and Liechtenstein , joined

5661-558: The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk . The German declaration of unrestricted submarine warfare in early 1917 contributed to bringing the United States into the war. In October 1918, after the failed Spring Offensive , the German armies were in retreat , allies Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire had collapsed, and Bulgaria had surrendered. The empire collapsed in the November 1918 Revolution with

5814-848: The Triple Alliance (1882) , would exist up until 1915, when Italy declared war on Austria-Hungary. Despite Germany, and especially Austria's, lack of faith in the Russian alliance, the Reinsurance Treaty would be first signed in 1887, and renewed up until 1890, when the Bismarckian system collapsed upon Bismarck's resignation. Meanwhile, the chancellor remained wary of any foreign policy developments that looked even remotely warlike. In 1886, he moved to stop an attempted sale of horses to France because they might be used for cavalry and also ordered an investigation into large Russian purchases of medicine from

5967-652: The phoneme . In 1907–1908 Sapir was offered a position at the University of California at Berkeley , where Boas' first student Alfred Kroeber was the head of a project under the California state survey to document the Indigenous languages of California. Kroeber suggested that Sapir study the nearly extinct Yana language , and Sapir set to work. Sapir worked first with Betty Brown, one of the language's few remaining speakers. Later he began work with Sam Batwi, who spoke another dialect of Yana, but whose knowledge of Yana mythology

6120-513: The welfare state . German workers enjoyed health, accident and maternity benefits, canteens, changing rooms, and a national pension scheme. Industrialisation progressed dynamically in Germany, and German manufacturers began to capture domestic markets from British imports, and also to compete with British industry abroad, particularly in the U.S. The German textile and metal industries had by 1870 surpassed those of Britain in organisation and technical efficiency and superseded British manufacturers in

6273-539: The 13th century. In 1388, they were granted a charter by Vytautas , under which they formed a class of freemen subject in all criminal cases directly to the jurisdiction of the grand duke and his official representatives, and in petty suits to the jurisdiction of local officials on an equal footing with the lesser nobles ( szlachta ), boyars , and other free citizens. As a result, the community prospered. In 1495, they were expelled by Alexander Jagiellon , but allowed to return in 1503. The Lithuanian statute of 1566 placed

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6426-549: The 1793 Second Partition of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth , Litvaks became subjects of the Russian Empire . The Jewish Lithuanian population before World War II numbered around 160,000, or about 7% of the total population. At the beginning of the war, some 12,000 Jewish refugees fled into Lithuania from Poland; by 1941 the Jewish population of Lithuania had increased to approximately 250,000, or 10% of

6579-539: The 19th century, having been supplanted in this meaning by Litwin , only to be revived around 1880 in the narrower meaning of "a Lithuanian Jew". The "Lithuania" meant here is the territory of the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania . Of the main Yiddish dialects in Europe, the Litvishe Yiddish ( Lithuanian Yiddish ) dialect was spoken by Jews in Lithuania, Belarus, Latvia, Estonia and northeastern Poland, including Suwałki, Łomża, and Białystok. However, following

6732-530: The Aboriginal American Culture (1916), in which he laid out an approach to using historical linguistics to study the prehistory of Native American cultures. Particularly important for establishing him in the field was his seminal book Language: An Introduction to the Study of Speech (1921), which was a layman's introduction to the discipline of linguistics as Sapir envisioned it. He also participated in

6885-523: The Alaskan languages Kutchin and Ingalik . Sapir was now more preoccupied with testing hypotheses about historical relationships between the Na-Dene languages than with documenting endangered languages, in effect becoming a theoretician. He was also growing to feel isolated from his American colleagues. From 1912 Florence's health deteriorated due to a lung abscess , and a resulting depression. The Sapir household

7038-675: The Anthropological Division in the Geological Survey of Canada in Ottawa. When he was hired, he was one of the first full-time anthropologists in Canada. He brought his parents with him to Ottawa, and also quickly established his own family, marrying Florence Delson, who also had Lithuanian Jewish roots. Neither the Sapirs nor the Delsons were in favor of the match. The Delsons, who hailed from

7191-552: The Baghdad Railway was resolved in June 1914. Many consider Bismarck's foreign policy as a coherent system and partly responsible for the preservation of Europe's stability. It was also marked by the need to balance circumspect defensiveness and the desire to be free from the constraints of its position as a major European power. Bismarck's successors did not pursue his foreign policy legacy. For instance, Kaiser Wilhelm II, who dismissed

7344-512: The Bismarck government increased the penalties and its attacks, and were challenged in 1875 when a papal encyclical declared the whole ecclesiastical legislation of Prussia was invalid, and threatened to excommunicate any Catholic who obeyed. There was no violence, but the Catholics mobilized their support, set up numerous civic organizations, raised money to pay fines, and rallied behind their church and

7497-590: The Catholic section of the Prussian Ministry of ecclesiastical and educational affairs, depriving Catholics of their voice at the highest level. The system of strict government supervision of schools was applied only in Catholic areas; the Protestant schools were left alone. Much more serious were the May laws of 1873. One made the appointment of any priest dependent on his attendance at a German university, as opposed to

7650-580: The Centre Party showed signs of gaining support among dissident elements such as the Polish Catholics in Silesia . A powerful intellectual force of the time was anti-Catholicism , led by the liberal intellectuals who formed a vital part of Bismarck's coalition. They saw the Catholic Church as a powerful force of reaction and anti-modernity, especially after the proclamation of papal infallibility in 1870, and

7803-505: The Centre Party. The "Old Catholic Church", which rejected the First Vatican Council, attracted only a few thousand members. Bismarck, a devout pietistic Protestant, realized his Kulturkampf was backfiring when secular and socialist elements used the opportunity to attack all religion. In the long run, the most significant result was the mobilization of the Catholic voters, and their insistence on protecting their religious identity. In

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7956-514: The Chinook sound system than Boas. In the summer of 1906 he worked on Takelma and Chasta Costa . Sapir's work on Takelma became his doctoral dissertation, which he defended in 1908. The dissertation foreshadowed several important trends in Sapir's work, particularly the careful attention to the intuition of native speakers regarding sound patterns that later would become the basis for Sapir's formulation of

8109-557: The French lacked the strength to defeat Germany by themselves, they sought an alliance with Russia, or perhaps even the newly reformed empire of Austria-Hungary, which would envelope Germany completely. Bismarck wanted to prevent this at all costs and maintain friendly relations with the Austrians and the Russians, signing the Dual Alliance (1879) with Austria-Hungary in 1879. The Dual Aliance

8262-506: The German steel and pig iron output reached one quarter of total global production. German factories were larger and more modern than their British and French counterparts. By 1913, the German electricity production was higher than the combined electricity production of Britain, France, Italy and Sweden. By 1900, the German chemical industry dominated the world market for synthetic dyes . The three major firms BASF , Bayer and Hoechst produced several hundred different dyes, along with

8415-768: The Hasidi. The Lithuanian traditionalists believed Hassidim represented a threat to Halachic observance due to certain Kabbalistic beliefs held by the Hassidim, that, if misinterpreted, could lead one to heresy as per the Frankists . Differences between the groups grew to the extent that in popular perception "Lithuanian" and " misnagged " became virtually interchangeable terms. However, a sizable minority of Litvaks belong(ed) to Hasidic groups , including Chabad , Slonim , Karlin-Stolin , Karlin (Pinsk) , Lechovitch , Amdur and Koidanov . With

8568-406: The Holy Land, broadly speaking, were divided into Hasidim and Perushim , who were Litvaks influenced by the Vilna Gaon . For this reason, in modern-day Israeli Haredi parlance the terms Litvak (noun) or Litvisher (adjective), or in Hebrew Litaim , are often used loosely to include any non- Hasidic Ashkenazi Haredi individual or institution. Another reason for this broadening of the term

8721-477: The Iroquois in 1988.) He also argued for the reversal of a Canadian law prohibiting the Potlatch ceremony of the West Coast tribes. In 1915 Sapir returned to California, where his expertise on the Yana language made him urgently needed. Kroeber had come into contact with Ishi , the last native speaker of the Yahi language , closely related to Yana, and needed someone to document the language urgently. Ishi , who had grown up without contact with European-Americans,

8874-421: The Origin of Language , and included examples from Inuit and Native American languages, not at all familiar to a Germanicist. The thesis criticized Herder for retaining a Biblical chronology, too shallow to allow for the observable diversification of languages, but he also argued with Herder that all of the world's languages have equal aesthetic potentials and grammatical complexity. He ended the paper by calling for

9027-405: The Pacific ( Jiaozhou Bay and Tianjin in China, the Marianas , the Caroline Islands , Samoa) led to frictions with the UK, Russia, Japan, and the US. The largest colonial enterprises were in Africa, where the Herero Wars in what is now Namibia in 1906–1907 resulted in the Herero and Nama genocide . By 1900, Germany became the largest economy in continental Europe and the third-largest in

9180-421: The Russian nation, because of its climate, its desert, and its frugality, and having but one frontier to defend", and because it would leave Germany with another bitter, resentful neighbor. Despite this, another alliance between Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy would be signed in 1882, preying on the fears of the German and Austro-Hungarian militaries of the untrustworthiness of Russia itself. This alliance, named

9333-483: The abdication of Wilhelm II, which left the post-war federal republic to govern a devastated populace. The Treaty of Versailles imposed post-war reparation costs of 132 billion gold marks (around US$ 269 billion or €240 billion in 2019, or roughly US$ 32 billion in 1921), as well as limiting the army to 100,000 men and disallowing conscription, armored vehicles, submarines, aircraft, and more than six battleships. The consequential economic devastation, later exacerbated by

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9486-419: The alliance and the Ottoman Empire formally allied with Germany . In the First World War, German plans to capture Paris quickly in the autumn of 1914 failed, and the war on the Western Front became a stalemate. The Allied naval blockade caused severe shortages of food and supplements. However, Imperial Germany had success on the Eastern Front ; it occupied a large amount of territory to its east following

9639-544: The anti-Catholic Kulturkampf and systematic repression of Polish people marked his period in the office. Despite his hatred of liberalism and socialism – he called liberals and socialists "enemies of the Reich" – social programs introduced by Bismarck included old-age pensions, accident insurance, medical care and unemployment insurance, all aspects of the modern European welfare state . Late in Bismarck's chancellorship and in spite of his earlier personal opposition, Germany became involved in colonialism . Claiming much of

9792-434: The armed forces, and final arbiter of all foreign affairs, and could also disband the Reichstag to call for new elections. Officially, the chancellor was a one-man cabinet and was responsible for the conduct of all state affairs; in practice, the State Secretaries (top bureaucratic officials in charge of such fields as finance, war, foreign affairs, etc.) functioned much like ministers in other monarchies. The Reichstag had

9945-407: The basis for conservative modernization in Imperial Japan under Emperor Meiji and the preservation of an authoritarian political structure under the tsars in the Russian Empire . One factor in the social anatomy of these governments was the retention of a very substantial share in political power by the landed elite , the Junkers , resulting from the absence of a revolutionary breakthrough by

10098-399: The basis of the modern European welfare state . He came to realize that this sort of policy was very appealing, since it bound workers to the state, and also fit in very well with his authoritarian nature. The social security systems installed by Bismarck (health care in 1883, accident insurance in 1884, invalidity and old-age insurance in 1889) at the time were the largest in the world and, to

10251-453: The boundary known as the Gefilte Fish Line . The Lithuanian Jewish population may exhibit a genetic founder effect . The utility of these variations has been the subject of debate. One variation, which is implicated in familial hypercholesterolemia , has been dated to the 14th century, corresponding to the establishment of settlements in response to the invitation extended by Gediminas in 1323, which encouraged German Jews to settle in

10404-446: The chancellor in 1890, let the treaty with Russia lapse in favor of Germany's alliance with Austria, which finally led to a stronger coalition-building between Russia and France. Germans had dreamed of colonial imperialism since 1848. Although Bismarck had little interest in acquiring overseas possessions, most Germans were enthusiastic, and by 1884 he had acquired German New Guinea . By the 1890s, German colonial expansion in Asia and

10557-551: The choice of an international auxiliary language. He was the first Research Director of the International Auxiliary Language Association (IALA), which presented the Interlingua conference in 1951. He directed the Association from 1930 to 1931, and was a member of its Consultative Counsel for Linguistic Research from 1927 to 1938. Sapir consulted with Alice Vanderbilt Morris to develop the research program of IALA. German Empire The German Empire (German: Deutsches Reich ), also referred to as Imperial Germany ,

10710-567: The classification of the Algic , Uto-Aztecan , and Na-Dene languages . He proposed some language families that are not considered to have been adequately demonstrated, but which continue to generate investigation such as Hokan and Penutian . He specialized in the study of Athabascan languages , Chinookan languages , and Uto-Aztecan languages, producing important grammatical descriptions of Takelma , Wishram , Southern Paiute . Later in his career he also worked with Yiddish , Hebrew , and Chinese , as well as Germanic languages , and he also

10863-526: The country's population. The imperial crown was hereditary in the ruling house of Prussia, the House of Hohenzollern . With the exception of 1872–1873 and 1892–1894, the chancellor was always simultaneously the prime minister of Prussia. With 17 out of 58 votes in the Bundesrat , Berlin needed only a few votes from the smaller states to exercise effective control. The other states retained their own governments but had only limited aspects of sovereignty. For example, both postage stamps and currency were issued for

11016-428: The country's total population. Vilna (Vilnius) was occupied by Nazi Germany in June 1941. Within a matter of months, this famous Jewish community had been devastated with over two-thirds of its population killed. Based on data by Institute of Jewish Policy Research, as of 1 January 2016, the core Jewish population of Lithuania is estimated to be 2,700 (0.09% of the wider population), and the enlarged Jewish population

11169-543: The course "Introduction to Anthropology", with Professor Livingston Farrand , who taught the Boas "four field" approach to anthropology. He also enrolled in an advanced anthropology seminar taught by Franz Boas , a course that would completely change the direction of his career. Although still in college, Sapir was allowed to participate in the Boas graduate seminar on American Languages, which included translations of Native American and Inuit myths collected by Boas. In this way Sapir

11322-568: The dispute between the Hasidim and the Misnagdim , in which the Lithuanian academies were the heartland of opposition to Hasidism, "Lithuanian" came to have the connotation of Misnagdic (non-Hasidic) Judaism generally, and to be used for all Jews who follow the traditions of the great Lithuanian yeshivot, whether or not their ancestors actually came from Lithuania. In modern Israel, Lita'im (Lithuanians)

11475-413: The domestic market. Germany became the dominant economic power on the continent and was the second-largest exporting nation after Britain. Technological progress during German industrialisation occurred in four waves: the railway wave (1877–1886), the dye wave (1887–1896), the chemical wave (1897–1902), and the wave of electrical engineering (1903–1918). Since Germany industrialised later than Britain, it

11628-597: The elections of 1874, the Centre party doubled its popular vote, and became the second-largest party in the national parliament—and remained a powerful force for the next 60 years, so that after Bismarck it became difficult to form a government without their support. Bismarck built on a tradition of welfare programs in Prussia and Saxony that began as early as in the 1840s. In the 1880s he introduced old-age pensions, accident insurance, medical care and unemployment insurance that formed

11781-403: The emerging Social Democratic Party . Prussia in 1871 included 16,000,000 Protestants, both Reformed and Lutheran, and 8,000,000 Catholics. Most people were generally segregated into their own religious worlds, living in rural districts or city neighbourhoods that were overwhelmingly of the same religion, and sending their children to separate public schools where their religion was taught. There

11934-417: The empire as a whole. Coins through one mark were also minted in the name of the empire, while higher-valued pieces were issued by the states. However, these larger gold and silver issues were virtually commemorative coins and had limited circulation. While the states issued their own decorations and some had their own armies, the military forces of the smaller ones were put under Prussian control. Those of

12087-409: The family lived in poverty. As Jacob Sapir could not provide for his family, Sapir's mother, Eva Seagal Sapir, opened a shop to supply the basic necessities. They formally divorced in 1910. After settling in New York, Edward Sapir was raised mostly by his mother, who stressed the importance of education for upward social mobility, and turned the family increasingly away from Judaism. Even though Eva Sapir

12240-450: The field of anthropology in his own days. Instead of searching for the ways in which culture influences human behavior, Sapir was interested in understanding how cultural patterns themselves were shaped by the composition of individual personalities that make up a society. This made Sapir cultivate an interest in individual psychology and his view of culture was more psychological than many of his contemporaries. It has been suggested that there

12393-582: The five smaller firms. Imperial Germany built up the world's largest chemical industry, the production of German chemical industry was 60% higher than that of the United States. In 1913, these eight firms produced almost 90% of the world supply of dyestuffs and sold about 80% of their production abroad. The three major firms had also integrated upstream into the production of essential raw materials and they began to expand into other areas of chemistry such as pharmaceuticals , photographic film , agricultural chemicals and electrochemicals . Top-level decision-making

12546-669: The formulation of a report to the American Anthropological Association regarding the standardization of orthographic principles for writing Indigenous languages. While in Ottawa, he also collected and published French Canadian Folk Songs, and wrote a volume of his own poetry. His interest in poetry led him to form a close friendship with another Boasian anthropologist and poet, Ruth Benedict . Sapir initially wrote to Benedict to commend her for her dissertation on "The Guardian Spirit", but soon realized that Benedict had published poetry pseudonymously. In their correspondence

12699-722: The four states south of the Main, and during November 1870, they joined the North German Confederation by treaty. On 10 December 1870, the North German Confederation Reichstag renamed the Confederation the "German Empire" and gave the title of German Emperor to William I , the King of Prussia , as Bundespräsidium of the Confederation. The new constitution ( Constitution of the German Confederation ) and

12852-421: The integration of a hierarchical society, to forge a bond between workers and the state so as to strengthen the latter, to maintain traditional relations of authority between social and status groups, and to provide a countervailing power against the modernist forces of liberalism and socialism. Bismarck created the modern welfare state in Germany in the 1880s and enacted universal male suffrage in 1871. He became

13005-631: The languages of the North West Coast. During his time in Canada, together with Speck, Sapir also acted as an advocate for Indigenous rights, arguing publicly for introduction of better medical care for Indigenous communities, and assisting the Six Nation Iroquois in trying to recover eleven wampum belts that had been stolen from the reservation and were on display in the museum of the University of Pennsylvania. (The belts were finally returned to

13158-500: The larger states, such as the Kingdoms of Bavaria and Saxony, were coordinated along Prussian principles and would, in wartime, be controlled by the federal government. The evolution of the German Empire is somewhat in line with parallel developments in Italy, which became a united nation-state a decade earlier. Some key elements of the German Empire's authoritarian political structure were also

13311-748: The leading Lithuanian authorities were Chaim Soloveitchik and the Brisker school; rival approaches were those of the Mir and Telshe yeshivas. In practical halakha , the Lithuanians traditionally followed the Aruch HaShulchan , though today, the "Lithuanian" yeshivas prefer the Mishnah Berurah , which is regarded as both more analytic and more accessible. In the 19th century, the Orthodox Ashkenazi residents of

13464-675: The leftover territory that was not yet conquered by Europeans in the Scramble for Africa , it managed to build the third-largest colonial empire at the time, after the British and the French ones. As a colonial state, it sometimes clashed with the interests of other European powers, especially the British Empire. During its colonial expansion, the German Empire committed the Herero and Nama genocide . After

13617-551: The liberal intellectuals who wanted free trade. As it was throughout Europe at the time, antisemitism was endemic in Germany during the period. Before Napoleon 's decrees ended the ghettos in Confederation of the Rhine , it had been religiously motivated, but by the 19th century, it was a factor in German nationalism . In the popular mind, Jews became a symbol of capitalism and wealth. On

13770-481: 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

13923-466: The lung abscess, and she died in 1924 due to an infection following surgery, providing the final incentive for Sapir to leave Canada. When the University of Chicago offered him a position, he happily accepted. During his period in Canada, Sapir came into his own as the leading figure in linguistics in North America. Among his substantial publications from this period were his book on Time Perspective in

14076-406: The major ports of Hamburg and Bremen . By 1880, Germany had 9,400 locomotives pulling 43,000 passengers and 30,000 tons of freight, and forged ahead of France. The total length of German railroad tracks expanded from 21,000 km (13,000 mi) in 1871 to 63,000 km (39,000 mi) by 1913, establishing the largest rail network in the world after the United States. The German rail network

14229-898: The major universities, in order to professionalize the discipline. Sapir enlisted the assistance of fellow Boasians: Frank Speck , Paul Radin and Alexander Goldenweiser , who with Barbeau worked on the peoples of the Eastern Woodlands: the Ojibwa , the Iroquois, the Huron and the Wyandot . Sapir initiated work on the Athabascan languages of the Mackenzie valley and the Yukon , but it proved too difficult to find adequate assistance, and he concentrated mainly on Nootka and

14382-411: The names of their Lithuanian forebears. American "offspring" of the Lithuanian yeshiva movement include Yeshiva Rabbi Chaim Berlin , Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary , Yeshivas Rabbeinu Yisrael Meir HaKohen ("Chofetz Chaim"), and Beth Medrash Govoha ("Lakewood"), as well as numerous other yeshivas founded by students of Lakewood's founder, Rabbi Aharon Kotler . In theoretical Talmud study,

14535-529: The need for a speedy completion and a focus on the broader classification issues. In the end Sapir didn't finish the work during the allotted year, and Kroeber was unable to offer him a longer appointment. Disappointed at not being able to stay at Berkeley, Sapir devoted his best efforts to other work, and did not get around to preparing any of the Yana material for publication until 1910, to Kroeber's deep disappointment. Sapir ended up leaving California early to take up

14688-452: The other hand, the constitution and legal system protected the rights of Jews as German citizens. Antisemitic parties were formed but soon collapsed. But after the Treaty of Versailles , and Adolf Hitler 's rise to power in Germany , antisemitism in Germany would increase. Lithuanian Jews Litvaks ( Yiddish : ליטװאַקעס ) or Lita'im ( Hebrew : לִיטָאִים ) are Jews with roots in

14841-400: The peasants in combination with urban areas. Although authoritarian in many respects, the empire had some democratic features. Besides universal manhood suffrage, it permitted the development of political parties. Bismarck intended to create a constitutional façade that would mask the continuation of authoritarian policies. However, in the process, he created a system with a serious flaw. There

14994-401: The perfect informant. Tillohash's strong intuition about the sound patterns of his language led Sapir to propose that the phoneme is not just an abstraction existing at the structural level of language, but in fact has psychological reality for speakers. Tillohash became a good friend of Sapir, and visited him at his home in New York and Philadelphia. Sapir worked with his father to transcribe

15147-435: The power to pass, amend, or reject bills and to initiate legislation. However, as mentioned above, in practice, the real power was vested in the emperor, who exercised it through his chancellor. Although nominally a federal empire and league of equals, in practice, the empire was dominated by the largest and most powerful state, Prussia. It stretched across the northern two-thirds of the new Reich and contained three-fifths of

15300-402: The powers". This was a departure from his adventurous foreign policy for Prussia, where he favored strength and expansion, punctuating this by saying, "The great questions of the age are not settled by speeches and majority votes – this was the error of 1848–49 – but by iron and blood." Bismarck's chief concern was that France would plot revenge after its defeat in the Franco-Prussian War . As

15453-612: The prestigious Jewish center of Vilna , considered the Sapirs to be rural upstarts and were less than impressed with Sapir's career in an unpronounceable academic field. Edward and Florence had three children together: Herbert Michael, Helen Ruth, and Philip. As director of the Anthropological division of the Geological Survey of Canada, Sapir embarked on a project to document the Indigenous cultures and languages of Canada. His first fieldwork took him to Vancouver Island to work on

15606-418: The relations between the educated, well-off middle-class liberals and the urban artisans broke down; Otto von Bismarck 's pragmatic Realpolitik , which appealed to peasants as well as the aristocracy, took its place. Bismarck sought to extend Hohenzollern hegemony throughout the German states; to do so meant unification of the German states and the exclusion of Prussia 's main German rival, Austria , from

15759-431: The resignation of Otto von Bismarck in 1890, and Wilhelm II 's refusal to recall him to office, the empire embarked on Weltpolitik ("world politics") – a bellicose new course that ultimately contributed to the outbreak of World War I. Bismarck's successors were incapable of maintaining their predecessor's complex, shifting, and overlapping alliances which had kept Germany from being diplomatically isolated. This period

15912-450: The same. The empire had a parliament called the Reichstag , which was elected by universal male suffrage . However, the original constituencies drawn in 1871 were never redrawn to reflect the growth of urban areas. As a result, by the time of the great expansion of German cities in the 1890s and 1900s, rural areas were grossly over-represented . The legislation also required the consent of

16065-1112: The scholarship Sapir supplemented his mother's meager earnings. Sapir entered Columbia in 1901, still paying with the Pulitzer scholarship. Columbia at this time was one of the few elite private universities that did not limit admission of Jewish applicants with implicit quotas around 12 percent—approximately 40% of incoming students at Columbia were Jewish. Sapir earned both a B.A. (1904) and an M.A. (1905) in Germanic philology from Columbia , before embarking on his Ph.D. in Anthropology which he completed in 1909. Sapir emphasized language study in his college years at Columbia, studying Latin, Greek, and French for eight semesters. From his sophomore year he additionally began to focus on Germanic languages, completing coursework in Gothic , Old High German , Old Saxon , Icelandic , Dutch , Swedish , and Danish . Through Germanics professor William Carpenter , Sapir

16218-456: The seminaries that the Catholics typically used. Furthermore, all candidates for the ministry had to pass an examination in German culture before a state board which weeded out intransigent Catholics. Another provision gave the government a veto power over most church activities. A second law abolished the jurisdiction of the Vatican over the Catholic Church in Prussia; its authority was transferred to

16371-689: The spread of the Enlightenment , many Litvaks became devotees of the Haskala (Jewish Enlightenment) movement in Eastern Europe pressing for better integration into European society, and today, many leading academics, scientists, and philosophers are of Lithuanian Jewish descent. The most famous Lithuanian institution of Jewish learning was Volozhin yeshiva , which was the model for most later yeshivas. Twentieth century "Lithuanian" yeshivas include Ponevezh , Telshe , Mir , Kelm , and Slabodka , which bear

16524-687: The study of Indigenous folklore without knowledge of the indigenous languages. At this point the only Canadian first nation languages that were well known were Kwakiutl, described by Boas, Tshimshian and Haida. Sapir explicitly used the standard of documentation of European languages, to argue that the amassing knowledge of indigenous languages was of paramount importance. By introducing the high standards of Boasian anthropology, Sapir incited antagonism from those amateur ethnologists who felt that they had contributed important work. Unsatisfied with efforts by amateur and governmental anthropologists, Sapir worked to introduce an academic program of anthropology at one of

16677-563: The subsequent German Empire. He envisioned a conservative, Prussian-dominated Germany. The Second Schleswig War against Denmark in 1864, the Austro-Prussian War in 1866, and the Franco-Prussian War in 1870–1871 sparked a growing pan-German ideal and contributed to the formation of the German state. The German Confederation ended as a result of the Austro-Prussian War of 1866 between the constituent Confederation entities of

16830-411: The summer of 1915, having to invent new methods for working with a monolingual speaker. The information from Ishi was invaluable for understanding the relation between the different dialects of Yana. Ishi died of his illness in early 1916, and Kroeber partly blamed the exacting nature of working with Sapir for his failure to recover. Sapir described the work: "I think I may safely say that my work with Ishi

16983-461: The synthesis of materials that were subject to import restrictions and for chemical weapons and war supplies. Lacking a technological base at first, the Germans imported their engineering and hardware from Britain but quickly learned the skills needed to operate and expand the railways. In many cities, the new railway shops were the centers of technological awareness and training, so that by 1850, Germany

17136-540: The territory of the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania (covering present-day Lithuania , Belarus , Latvia , the northeastern Suwałki and Białystok regions of Poland , as well as adjacent areas of modern-day Russia and Ukraine ). Over 90% of the population was killed during the Holocaust. The term is sometimes used to cover all Haredi Jews who follow an Ashkenazi , non- Hasidic style of life and learning, whatever their ethnic background. The area where Litvaks lived

17289-462: The tightening control of the Vatican over the local bishops. The Kulturkampf launched by Bismarck 1871–1880 affected Prussia; although there were similar movements in Baden and Hesse, the rest of Germany was not affected. According to the new imperial constitution, the states were in charge of religious and educational affairs; they funded the Protestant and Catholic schools. In July 1871 Bismarck abolished

17442-558: The title Emperor came into effect on 1 January 1871. During the siege of Paris on 18 January 1871, William was proclaimed Emperor in the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles . The second German Constitution , adopted by the Reichstag on 14 April 1871 and proclaimed by the Emperor on 16 April, was substantially based upon Bismarck's North German Constitution . The political system remained

17595-580: The total population. During the German invasion of June 1941, 141,000 Jews were murdered by the Nazis and Lithuanian collaborators. Notable execution locations were the Paneriai woods (see Ponary massacre ) and the Ninth Fort . Litvaks have an identifiable mode of pronouncing Hebrew and Yiddish; this is often used to determine the boundaries of Lita (area of settlement of Litvaks). Its most characteristic feature

17748-474: The two critiqued each other's work, both submitting to the same publishers, and both being rejected. They also were both interested in psychology and the relation between individual personalities and cultural patterns, and in their correspondences they frequently psychoanalyzed each other. However, Sapir often showed little understanding for Benedict's private thoughts and feelings, and particularly his conservative gender ideology jarred with Benedict's struggles as

17901-614: The two separated permanently. Mead received news of Sapir's remarriage while still in Samoa, and burned their correspondence there on the beach. Settling in Chicago reinvigorated Sapir intellectually and personally. He socialized with intellectuals, gave lectures, participated in poetry and music clubs. His first graduate student at Chicago was Li Fang-Kuei . The Sapir household continued to be managed largely by Grandmother Eva, until Sapir remarried in 1926. Sapir's second wife, Jean Victoria McClenaghan,

18054-538: The world behind the United States and the British Empire , which were also its main economic rivals. Throughout its existence, it experienced economic growth and modernization led by heavy industry. In 1871, it had a largely rural population of 41 million, while by 1913, this had increased to a predominantly urban population of 68 million. For 30 years, Germany struggled against Britain to be Europe's leading industrial power. Representative of Germany's industry

18207-468: The world. Germany also became a great power , building the longest railway network of Europe, the world's strongest army, and a fast-growing industrial base. Starting very small in 1871, in a decade, the navy became second only to Britain 's Royal Navy . From 1871 to 1890, Otto von Bismarck's tenure as the first and to this day longest-serving chancellor was marked by relative liberalism at its start, but in time grew more conservative. Broad reforms,

18360-654: Was a defensive alliance that was established against Russia, and by association France, in the event alliance did not work out with the state. However, an alliance with Russia would come not long after the signing of the Dual Alliance with Austria, the Dreikaiserbund (League of Three Emperors), in 1881. During this period, individuals within the German military were advocating a preemptive strike against Russia, but Bismarck knew that such ideas were foolhardy. He once wrote that "the most brilliant victories would not avail against

18513-473: Was a significant disparity between the Prussian and German electoral systems. Prussia used a three-class voting system which weighted votes based on the amount of taxes paid, all but assuring a conservative majority. The king and (with two exceptions) the prime minister of Prussia were also the emperor and chancellor of the empire – meaning that the same rulers had to seek majorities from legislatures elected from completely different franchises. Universal suffrage

18666-436: Was able to make more efficient use of capital. Germany was not weighted down with an expensive worldwide empire that needed defense. Following Germany's annexation of Alsace-Lorraine in 1871, it absorbed parts of what had been France's industrial base. Germany overtook British steel production in 1893 and pig iron production in 1903. The German steel and pig iron production continued its rapid expansion: Between 1911 and 1913,

18819-551: Was able to model its factories after those of Britain, thus making more efficient use of its capital and avoiding legacy methods in its leap to the envelope of technology. Germany invested more heavily than the British in research, especially in chemistry, ICE engines and electricity. Germany's dominance in physics and chemistry was such that one-third of all Nobel Prizes went to German inventors and researchers. The German cartel system (known as Konzerne ), being significantly concentrated,

18972-436: Was also a pioneer in Yiddish studies (his first language) in the United States (cf. Notes on Judeo-German phonology , 1915). Sapir was active in the international auxiliary language movement. In his paper "The Function of an International Auxiliary Language", he argued for the benefits of a regular grammar and advocated a critical focus on the fundamentals of language, unbiased by the idiosyncrasies of national languages, in

19125-403: Was an important fount of knowledge. Sapir described the way in which the Yana language distinguishes grammatically and lexically between the speech of men and women. The collaboration between Kroeber and Sapir was made difficult by the fact that Sapir largely followed his own interest in detailed linguistic description, ignoring the administrative pressures to which Kroeber was subject, among them

19278-400: Was an important influence, Sapir received his lust for knowledge and interest in scholarship, aesthetics, and music from his father. At age 14 Sapir won a Pulitzer scholarship to the prestigious Horace Mann high school , but he chose not to attend the school which he found too posh, going instead to DeWitt Clinton High School , and saving the scholarship money for his college education. Through

19431-683: Was born in Vilna, the city about which he would write. The inter-war Republic of Lithuania was home to a large and influential Jewish community whose members either fled the country or were murdered when the Holocaust in Lithuania began in 1941. Prior to World War II , the Lithuanian Jewish population comprised some 160,000 people, or about 7% of the total population. There were over 110 synagogues and 10 yeshivas in Vilnius alone. Census figures from 2005 recorded 4,007 Jews in Lithuania – 0.12 percent of

19584-399: Was denied membership to the faculty club where the senior faculty discussed academic business. At Yale, Sapir's graduate students included Morris Swadesh , Benjamin Lee Whorf , Mary Haas , Charles Hockett , and Harry Hoijer , several of whom he brought with him from Chicago. Sapir came to regard a young Semiticist named Zellig Harris as his intellectual heir, although Harris was never

19737-442: 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. Among his major contributions to linguistics

19890-777: Was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences , the United States National Academy of Sciences , and the American Philosophical Society . In the summer of 1937 while teaching at the Linguistic Institute of the Linguistic Society of America in Ann Arbor , Sapir began having problems with a heart condition that had been diagnosed a couple of years earlier. In 1938, he had to take

20043-461: 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 . Among his many students were

20196-456: Was estimated at 6,500 (0.23% of the wider population). The Lithuanian Jewish population is concentrated in the capital, Vilnius, with smaller population centres including Klaipėda and Kaunas . The Yiddish adjective ליטוויש Litvish means "Lithuanian": the noun for a Lithuanian Jew is Litvak . The term Litvak itself originates from Litwak , a Polish term denoting "a man from Lithuania", which however went out of use before

20349-446: Was explicitly given the task of founding a distinct anthropology department, this was not well received by the department of sociology who worked by William Graham Sumner 's "Evolutionary sociology", which was anathema to Sapir's Boasian approach, nor by the two anthropologists of the Institute for Human Relations Clark Wissler and G. P. Murdock . Sapir never thrived at Yale, where as one of only four Jewish faculty members out of 569 he

20502-477: Was exposed to methods of comparative linguistics that were being developed into a more scientific framework than the traditional philological approach. He also took courses in Sanskrit, and complemented his language studies by studying music in the department of the famous composer Edward MacDowell (though it is uncertain whether Sapir ever studied with MacDowell himself). In his last year in college Sapir enrolled in

20655-560: Was focused on stabilizing the European system and preventing any wars. He succeeded, and only after his departure from office in 1890 did the diplomatic tensions start rising again. After achieving formal unification in 1871, Bismarck devoted much of his attention to the cause of national unity. He opposed Catholic civil rights and emancipation, especially the influence of the Vatican under Pope Pius IX , and working-class radicalism, represented by

20808-555: Was followed by Austria-Hungary (43,280 km; 26,890 mi), France (40,770 km; 25,330 mi), the United Kingdom (32,623 km; 20,271 mi), Italy (18,873 km; 11,727 mi) and Spain (15,088 km; 9,375 mi). The creation of the Empire under Prussian leadership was a victory for the concept of Kleindeutschland (Smaller Germany) over the Großdeutschland concept. This meant that Austria-Hungary,

20961-558: Was in Europe, as opposed to just 5% of British investment. Most of the money went to developing nations such as Russia that lacked the capital or technical knowledge to industrialize on their own. The construction of the Berlin–Baghdad railway , financed by German banks, was designed to eventually connect Germany with the Ottoman Empire and the Persian Gulf , but it also collided with British and Russian geopolitical interests. Conflict over

21114-569: Was in the Athabaskan languages, a family which especially fascinated him. In a private letter, he wrote: " Dene is probably the son-of-a-bitchiest language in America to actually know ...most fascinating of all languages ever invented." Sapir also studied the languages and cultures of Wishram Chinook , Navajo , Nootka , Colorado River Numic , Takelma , and Yana . His research on Southern Paiute, in collaboration with consultant Tony Tillohash , led to

21267-468: Was in the hands of professional salaried managers; leading Chandler to call the German dye companies "the world's first truly managerial industrial enterprises". There were many spinoffs from research—such as the pharmaceutical industry, which emerged from chemical research. By the start of World War I (1914–1918), German industry switched to war production. The heaviest demands were on coal and steel for artillery and shell production, and on chemicals for

21420-505: Was introduced to Indigenous American languages while he kept working on his M.A. in Germanic linguistics. Robert Lowie later said that Sapir's fascination with indigenous languages stemmed from the seminar with Boas in which Boas used examples from Native American languages to disprove all of Sapir's common-sense assumptions about the basic nature of language. Sapir's 1905 Master's thesis was an analysis of Johann Gottfried Herder 's Treatise on

21573-569: Was invested in the development of an International Auxiliary Language . Sapir was born into a family of Lithuanian Jews in Lauenburg (now Lębork) in the Province of Pomerania where his father, Jacob David Sapir, worked as a cantor . The family was not Orthodox , and his father maintained his ties to Judaism through its music. The Sapir family did not stay long in Pomerania and never accepted German as

21726-404: Was largely run by Eva Sapir, who did not get along well with Florence, and this added to the strain on both Florence and Edward. Sapir's parents had by now divorced and his father seemed to develop psychosis, which made it necessary for him to leave Canada for Philadelphia , where Edward continued to support him financially. Florence was hospitalized for long periods both for her depressions and for

21879-577: Was little interaction or intermarriage. On the whole, the Protestants had a higher social status, and the Catholics were more likely to be peasant farmers or unskilled or semiskilled industrial workers. In 1870, the Catholics formed their own political party, the Centre Party , which generally supported unification and most of Bismarck's policies. However, Bismarck distrusted parliamentary democracy in general and opposition parties in particular, especially when

22032-499: Was marked by increased oppression of Polish people and various factors influencing the Emperor's decisions, which were often perceived as contradictory or unpredictable by the public. In 1879, the German Empire consolidated the Dual Alliance with Austria-Hungary , followed by the Triple Alliance with Italy in 1882. It also retained strong diplomatic ties to the Ottoman Empire . When the great crisis of 1914 arrived, Italy left

22185-524: Was monolingual in Yahi and was the last surviving member of his people. He had been adopted by the Kroebers, but had fallen ill with tuberculosis , and was not expected to live long. Sam Batwi, the speaker of Yana who had worked with Sapir, was unable to understand the Yahi variety, and Krober was convinced that only Sapir would be able to communicate with Ishi. Sapir traveled to San Francisco and worked with Ishi over

22338-413: Was more backward. The success of the German Empire in the natural sciences, especially in physics and chemistry, was such that one-third of all Nobel Prizes went to German inventors and researchers. During its 47 years of existence, the German Empire became an industrial, technological, and scientific power in Europe, and by 1913, Germany was the largest economy in continental Europe and the third-largest in

22491-529: Was on the Wishram Chinook language in the summer of 1905, funded by the Bureau of American Ethnology. This first experience with Native American languages in the field was closely overseen by Boas, who was particularly interested in having Sapir gather ethnological information for the Bureau. Sapir gathered a volume of Wishram texts, published 1909, and he managed to achieve a much more sophisticated understanding of

22644-528: Was one of four kingdoms in the realm, it contained about two-thirds of the Empire's population and territory, and Prussian dominance was also constitutionally established, since the King of Prussia was also the German Emperor ( Deutscher Kaiser ). After 1850, the states of Germany had rapidly become industrialized, with particular strengths in coal, iron (and later steel), chemicals, and railways. In 1871, Germany had

22797-453: Was self-sufficient in meeting the demands of railroad construction, and the railways were a major impetus for the growth of the new steel industry. German unification in 1870 stimulated consolidation, nationalisation into state-owned companies, and further rapid growth. Unlike the situation in France, the goal was support of industrialisation, and so heavy lines crisscrossed the Ruhr and other industrial districts and provided good connections to

22950-518: Was significantly diluted by gross over-representation of rural areas from the 1890s onward. By the turn of the century, the urban-rural population balance was completely reversed from 1871; more than two-thirds of the empire's people lived in cities and towns. Bismarck's domestic policies played an important role in forging the authoritarian political culture of the Kaiserreich . Less preoccupied with continental power politics following unification in 1871, Germany's semi-parliamentary government carried out

23103-420: Was sixteen years younger than he. She had first met Sapir when a student in Ottawa, but had since also come to work at the University of Chicago's department of Juvenile Research. Their son Paul Edward Sapir was born in 1928. Their other son J. David Sapir became a linguist and anthropologist specializing in West African Languages, especially Jola languages . Sapir also exerted influence through his membership in

23256-426: Was the steel giant Krupp , whose first factory was built in Essen . By 1902, the factory alone became "A great city with its own streets, its own police force, fire department and traffic laws. There are 150 kilometers of rail, 60 different factory buildings, 8,500 machine tools, seven electrical stations, 140 kilometers of underground cable, and 46 overhead." Under Bismarck, Germany was a world innovator in building

23409-431: Was urged to work at a quicker pace than he felt comfortable. His "Grammar of Southern Paiute" was supposed to be published in Boas' Handbook of American Indian Languages , and Boas urged him to complete a preliminary version while funding for the publication remained available, but Sapir did not want to compromise on quality, and in the end the Handbook had to go to press without Sapir's piece. Boas kept working to secure

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