Ask the Chatbot Games & Quizzes History & Society Science & Tech Biographies Animals & Nature Geography & Travel Arts & Culture ProCon Money Videos
Edward Sapir
Table of Contents
Introduction References & Edit History Quick Facts & Related Topics
Images
Edward Sapir and colleagues from the University of Chicago
Read Next
Happy, smiling, flying pig
7 Everyday English Idioms and Where They Come From
Chinese pictograph, calligraphy tablet of Huang Tingjian, a famous calligrapher in Ancient Song Dynasty. The background of Chinese cultural elements.
The World’s 5 Most Commonly Used Writing Systems
Portion of the Aleppo Codex, a manuscript of the Hebrew Bible written in the Hebrew language in the 10th century CE; in the Shrine of the Book, Israel Museum, Jerusalem.
Why Do Languages Die?
Discover
airplane in flight (plane, aircraft, flying)
7 Puzzling Plane Disappearances
Aphrodite. Greek mythology. Sculpture. Aphrodite is the Greek goddess of love and beauty.
12 Greek Gods and Goddesses
Rural Irish landscape, Sligo, Ireland.
Why Is Ireland Two Countries?
A mug shot taken by the regional Colombia control agency in Medellin
Pablo Escobar: 8 Interesting Facts About the King of Cocaine
Statue of Liberty in front of the skyline of Manhattan, New York City, New York.
Who Was the Woman Behind the Statue of Liberty?
Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), Italian Renaissance painter from Florence. Engraving by Cosomo Colombini (d. 1812) after a Leonardo self portrait. Ca. 1500.
10 Famous Artworks by Leonardo da Vinci
Franklin D. Roosevelt, who formulated the Four Freedoms.
7 Alphabet Soup Agencies that Stuck Around

Edward Sapir: Facts & Related Content

verifiedCite
While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions.
Select Citation Style
Share
Share to social media
URL
https://www.britannica.com/facts/Edward-Sapir
Written and fact-checked by
The Information Architects of Encyclopaedia Britannica

The Information Architects maintain a master list of the topics included in the corpus of  Encyclopædia Britannica, and create and manage the relationships between them.
The Information Architects of Encyclopaedia Britannica

Facts

Born January 26, 1884 • Lauenburg • Germany
Died February 4, 1939 (aged 55) • New Haven • Connecticut
Notable Works “Language”
Subjects Of Study ethnolinguistics • structural linguistics • stylistics • Indigenous North American languages • Mesoamerican Indian languages • language

Photos

Edward Sapir and colleagues from the University of Chicago
See All Images →
Leonard Bloomfield
American linguist
Powell, John Wesley
John Wesley Powell
American explorer, geologist, and ethnologist
Kenneth L. Pike
American linguist
Alfred M. Tozzer
American anthropologist
Paul Radin
American anthropologist
Roman Jakobson
American linguist
Horatio Hale
American anthropologist
Benjamin Lee Whorf
Benjamin Lee Whorf
American linguist
Zellig S. Harris
American scholar
James Owen Dorsey
American ethnologist
Wilhelm, Baron von Humboldt, oil painting by F. Krüger
Wilhelm von Humboldt
German language scholar
Ferdinand de Saussure
Ferdinand de Saussure
Swiss linguist
Yury Valentinovich Knorozov
Russian linguist
Paulus Cua
Vietnamese scholar
Nikolay Sergeyevich Trubetskoy
Russian linguist
Eduard Hermann
German linguist
Noam Chomsky
Noam Chomsky
American linguist
Rudolf Carnap
Rudolf Carnap
German-American philosopher
Franz Boas
Franz Boas
German-American anthropologist
Margaret Mead
Margaret Mead
American anthropologist