Wilhelm Von Humboldt and North American Ethnolinguistics: Boas (1894) to hymes (1961)
Summary
Noam Chomsky’s frequent references to the work of Wilhelm von Humboldt during the 1960s produced a considerable revival of interest in this 19th-century scholar in North America. This paper demonstrates that there has been a long-standing influence of Humboldt’s ideas on American linguistics and that no ‘rediscovery’ was required. Although Humboldt’s first contacts with North-American scholars goes back to 1803, the present paper is confined to the posthumous phase of his influence which begins with the work of Heymann Steinthal (1823–1899) from about 1850 onwards. This was also a time when many young Americans went to Germany to complete their education; for instance William Dwight Whitney (1827–1894) spent several years at the universities of Tübingen and Berlin (1850–1854), and in his writings on general linguistics one can trace Humboldtian ideas. In 1885 Daniel G. Brinton (1837–1899) published an English translation of a manuscript by Humboldt on the structure of the verb in Amerindian languages. A year later Franz Boas (1858–1942) arrived from Berlin soon to establish himself as the foremost anthropologist with a strong interest in native language and culture. From then on we encounter Humboldtian ideas in the work of a number of North American anthropological linguists, most notably in the work of Edward Sapir (1884–1939). This is not only true with regard to matters of language classification and typology but also with regard to the philosophy of language, specifically, the relationship between a particular language structure and the kind of thinking it reflects or determines on the part of its speakers. Humboldtian ideas of ‘linguistic relativity’, enunciated in the writings of Whitney, Brinton, Boas, and others, were subsequently developed further by Sapir’s student Benjamin Lee Whorf (1897–1941). The transmission of the so-called Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis – which still today is attracting interest among cultural anthropologists and social psychologists, not only in North America – is the focus of the remainder of the paper. A general Humboldtian approach to language and culture, it is argued, is still present in the work of Dell Hymes and several of his students.
Quick links
References
Aarsleff, Hans
1988 “Introduction”. Humboldt 1988[1836], vii–lxv.
Adam, Lucien
(1833–1918). 1883 Du genre dans les diverses langues. Paris: A. Maisonneuve & Cie.
Alford, Danny K[eith] H[awkmoon]
1978 “The Demise of the Whorf Hypothesis: A major revision in the history of linguistics”. Proceedings of the [annual meeting of the] Berkeley Linguistics Society 4.485–499. 
Basilius, Harold A[lbert]
(b.1905). 1952 “Neo-Humboldtian Ethnolinguistics”. Word 8.95–105. (Repr. in Readings in the Sociology of Language ed. by Joshua A. Fishman, 447–459. The Hague: Mouton 1968.)
Boas, Franz
(1858–1942). 1894 “Classification of the Languages of the North Pacific Coast”. Memoirs of the International Congress of Anthropology, 339–346. Chicago: Schulte. (Repr. in Boas 1974.159–166.)
1904 “The History of Anthropology”. Science 20.513–524. (Repr. in Boas 1974.23–36.)
1911 “Introduction”. Handbook of American Indian Languages, Part I (= Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 40), 1–83. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office. (Repr., among other places, in American Indian Languages ed. by Preston Holder, 1–81. Lincoln, Nebr.: Univ. of Nebraska Press 1966.)
1914 “Alexander Francis Chamberlain”. Journal of American Folklore 27.326–327.
1920 “The Classification of American Languages”. American Anthropologist 22.367–376.
1929 “Classification of American Indian Languages”. Language 5.1–7.
1940 Race, Language, and Culture. New York: Macmillan. (Repr., Chicago & London: Univ. of Chicago Press 1982.)
1974 A Franz Baas Reader: The shaping of American anthropology, 1883–1911. Ed. by George Stocking, Jr. New York: Basic Books. (Repr., Chicago & London: Univ. of Chicago Press 1982.)
Brinton, Daniel Garrison
(1837–1899). 1885 The Philosophic Grammar of American Languages, as set forth by Wilhelm von Humboldt; with the translation of an unpublished memoir by him on the American verb. Philadelphia: McCalla & Stavely, 51 pp. [Originally published in Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 22.306–354 (1885).]
Brown, Roger Langham
1967 Wilhelm von Humboldt’s Conception of Linguistic Relativity. The Hague: Mouton. [Originally, Ph.D. diss., Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 1964.]
Câmara, Joaquim Mattoso, Jr.
1970 “Wilhelm von Humboldt et Edward Sapir”. Actes du Xe Congrès international des Linguistes, Bucarest, 28 août – 2 septembre 1967 ed. by Alexandru Graur et al., vol. II, 327–332. Bucharest: Éditions de l’Acad. de la Rép. Socialiste de Roumanie.
Carroll, John B[issell]
1956 “Introduction”. Whorf 1956.1–34.
Chomsky, Noam
1964[1962] Current Issues in Linguistic Theory. The Hague: Mouton.
1966 Cartesian Linguistics: A chapter in the history of rationalist thought. New York & London: Harper & Row.
1968 Language and Mind. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World. (2nd enl. ed. 1972.)
Christmann, Hans Helmut
1967 Beiträge zur Geschichte der These vom Weltbild der Sprache. Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner.
Darnell, Regna
1970 “The Emergence of Academic Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania”. Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 6.80–92.
1987 Daniel Garrison Brinton: The “fearless critic” of Philadelphia. Philadelphia: Dept. of Anthropology, Univ. of Pennsylvania. [Rev. version of 1967 M. A. thesis, Univ. of Pennsylvania.]
Darnell, Regna & Dell Hymes
1986 “Edward Sapir’s Six-Unit Classification of American Indian Languages: The search for the time perspective”. Studies in the History of Western Linguistics: In honour of R. H. Robins ed. by Theodora Bynon & F[rank] R[obert] Palmer, 202–249. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press.
Feuer, Lewis S.
1953 “Sociological Aspects of the Relation between Language and Philosophy”. Philosophy of Science 20.85–100.
Friedrich, Paul
1979 “Poetic Language and the Imagination: A reformulation of the Sapir hypothesis”. Language, Context, and the Imagination by P. Friedrich, ed. by Anwar S. Dil, 441–512. Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press.
Gilbertson, Albert Nicolay
1914 “In Memoriam: Alexander Francis Chamberlain”. American Anthropologist 16.337–348.
Gipper, Helmut
1972 Gibt es ein sprachwissenschaftliches Relativitätsprinzip? Untersuchungen zur Sapir-Whorf Hypothese. Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp.
Harrington, J[ohn] P[eabody]
(1884–1961). 1945 “Boas on the Science of Language”. IJAL 11.97–99.
Haym, Rudolf
1856 Wilhelm von Humboldt: Lebensbild und Charakteristik. Berlin: R. Gaertner.
Herder, Johann Gottfried
1772 Abhandlung über den Ursprung der Sprache, welche den von der Königl. Academie der Wissenschaften auf das Jahr 1770 gesetzten Preis erhalten hat. Berlin: Friedrich Voss.
1784–1791 Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit. 4 vols. Riga & Leipzig: Johann Friedrich Hartknoch. [There exist many editions of this work, several of which have the title shorted to ‘Ideen zur Geschichte der Menschheit’, including the one by Julius Schmidt, published in 3 vols, in Leipzig: F. A. Brockhaus 1869.]
Heynick, Frank
1983 “From Einstein to Whorf: Space, time, matter and reference frames in physical and linguistic relativity”. Semiotica 45.35–64.
Hill, Jane H.
1988 “Language, Culture, and World View”. Linguistics: The Cambridge Survey ed. by Frederick J. Newmeyer, vol. IV: Language: The socio-cultural context, 14–36. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press.
Hoijer, Harry
ed. 1954 Language in Culture: Conference on the interrelations of language and other aspects of culture. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.
Horne, Kibbey M[inton]
1966 Language Typology: 19th and 20th century views. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown Univ. Press.
Humboldt, Wilhelm von
1904[1812] “Essai sur les langues du Nouveau Continent”. Gesammelte Schriften III, 300–341.
1827 Ueber den Dualis. Berlin: Königl. Akad. der Wissenschaften 1828, 27 pp. (Repr. in Gesammelte Schriften VI, 4–30[1907].)
1836 Ueber die Verschiedenheit des menschlichen Sprachbaues und ihren Einfluss auf die geistige Entwickelung des Menschengeschlechts. With a preface by Alexander von Humboldt. Berlin: Ferd. Dümmler (for the Königl. Akad. der Wiss.). (Facs.-repr., Bonn: Ferd. Dümmler 1960.)
1903–1936 Gesammelte Schriften. Herausgegeben von der Königlichen Preußischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. 17 vols. Berlin: B. Behr. (Repr., Berlin: W. de Gruyter 1967–1968.) [The vols.I-IX, containing the linguistic and literary works, were edited by Albert Leitzmann. They are referred to as Werke in the text of the present paper.]
1988[1836] On Language: The diversity of human language-structure and its influence on the mental development of mankind. Transl, by Peter Heath. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press.
Hymes, Dell H[athaway]
1961 “On Typology of Cognitive Styles (with examples from Chinookan)”. Anthropological Linguistics 3:1.22–54.
1963 “Notes towards a History of Linguistic Anthropology”. Ibid. 5:1.50–103. (Repr. in Hymes 1983.1–57.)
1983 Essays in the History of Linguistic Anthropology. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: J. Benjamins. [Includes, among others, his 1976 paper, “The Americanist Tradition in Linguistics” (pp. 115–134).]
Jakobson, Roman
1944 “Franz Boas’ Approach to Language”. IJAL 10.188–195. (Repr. in Selected Writings, vol.11: Word and Language, 477–488. The Hague: Mouton 1971.)
Kluckhohn, Clyde
((d.1960) & Olaf Prufer 1959 “Influences during the Formative Years”. The Anthropology of Franz Boas: Essays on the centenary of his birth ed. by Walter Goldschmidt, 4–28. San Francisco, Calif.: Howard Chandler.
Koerner, E[rnst] F[rideryk] Konrad
1973a Ferdinand de Saussure: Origin and development of his linguistic thought in western studies of language. Braunschweig: Friedrich Vieweg & Sohn. [Revised version of 1971 Ph.D. dissertation, Simon Fraser Univ., Vancouver, B.C.]
1973b The Importance of Techmer’s “Internationale Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft” in the Development of General Linguistics. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
1973c Review of Linguistic Relativity and Intellectual Development by Wilhelm von Humboldt, transl, by George C. Buck & Frithjof A. Raven (Coral Gables, Florida: Univ. of Miami Press 1970) Language 49.682–685.
1977 “The Humboldtian Trend in Linguistics”. Descriptive and Historical Linguistics: Festschrift for Winfred P. Lehmann ed. by Paul J. Hopper, 144–158. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
ed. 1984 Edward Sapir: Appraisals of his life and work. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Kroeber, A[lfred] L[ouis]
(1876–1960). 1984[1959] “Reflections on Edward Sapir, Scholar and Man”. Koerner 1984.131–139.
Lenneberg, Eric H[einz]
(1924–1975) “Cognition in Ethnolinguistics”. Language 29.463–471.
Lowie, Robert H[arry]
(1883–1957). 1943 “The Progress of Science: Franz Boas, anthropologist”. Scientific Monthly 56.183–184.
Manchester, Martin L.
1985 The Philosophical Foundations of Humboldt’s Linguistic Doctrines. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Miller, Robert L[ee]
1968 The Linguistic Relativity Principle and H umboldtian Ethnolinguistics: A history and appraisal. The Hague: Mouton. [Originally, Ph.D. diss., Univ. of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Mich. 1963.]
Müller, Friedrich Max
1873 Introduction to the Science of Religion. London: Longmans & Green.
Müller-Vollmer, Kurt
1976a “Von der Poetik zur Linguistik: Wilhelm von Humboldt und der romantische Sprachbegriff”. Universalismus und Wissenschaft im Werk und Wirken der Brüder Humboldt ed. by Klaus Hammacher, 224–340. Frankfurt/Main: V. Klostermann.
1976b “Wilhelm von Humboldt und der Anfang der amerikanischen Sprachwissenschaft: Die Briefe an John Pickering”. Ibid., 259–334.
Murray, Stephen O.
1983 Group Formation in Social Science. Preface by Regna Darnell. (=
Current Inquiry into Language, Linguistics, and Human Communication, 44.) Edmonton, Alta.: Linguistic Research, Inc.
1985 “A Pre-Boasian Sapir?”. HL 12.267–269.
Murray, Stephen O. & Wayne Dynes
1986 “Edward Sapir’s Coursework in Linguistics and Anthropology [at Columbia University]”. HL 13.125–129.
Penn, Julia M[yrle]
1972 Linguistic Relativity versus Innate Ideas: The origins of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis in German Thought. The Hague: Mouton. [Originally, Ph.D. diss., Univ. of Texas at Austin 1966.]
Pinxton, Rik
ed. 1976 Universalism versus Relativism in Language and Thought: Proceedings of a colloquium on the Sapir-Whorf hypotheses. The Hague: Mouton.
Sapir, Edward
(1884–1939). 1907[1905] “Herder’s ‘Ursprung der Sprache’”. Modern Philology 5.109–142. (Repr., with a preface by Konrad Koerner [349–354], in HL
11.355–388 [1984].)
1921 Language: An introduction to the study of speech. New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co.
1929 “The Status of Linguistics as a Science”. Language 5.207–214. (Repr. in Sapir 1949.160–166.)
1949 Selected Writings […] in Language, Culture, and Personality. Ed. by David G. Mandelbaum. Berkeley & Los Angeles: Univ. of California Press. (Repr. 1986.)
Steinthal, Heymann
(1823–1899). 1850 Die Classification der Sprachen, dargestellt als die Entwickelung der Sprachidee. Berlin: F. Dümmler.
1858 Der Ursprung der Sprache im Zusammenhang mit den letzten Fragen alles Wissens: Eine Darstellung der Ansicht Wilhelm v. Humboldts, verglichen mit denen Herders und Hamanns […]
. 2nd rev. and enl. ed. Ibid. (4th rev. ed. 1888.)
1860 Charakteristik der hauptsächlichen Typen des Sprachbaues. Ibid.
Stocking, George W., Jr.
1968 Race, Culture, and Evolution: Essays in the history of anthropology. New York: The Free Press. (Repr., with a new preface, Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press 1982.)
1974 “The Boas Plan for the Study of American Indian Languages”. Studies in the History of Linguistics: Traditions and paradigms ed. by Dell Hymes, 454–484. Bloomington & London: Indiana Univ. Press.
Whitney, William Dwight
(1827–1894). 1867 Language and the Study of Language. New York: Scribner, Armstrong & Co.; London: Trübner & Co.
1875 The Life and Growth of Language. New York: D. Appleton & Co.; London: H. S. King.
Whorf, Benjamin Lee
(1897–1942). 1940 “Science and Linguistics”. Technology Review (M.I.T.) 42.229–231, 247–248. (Repr. in Whorf 1956.207–219.)
1950[c.l936] “An American Indian Model of the Universe”. IJAL 16.67–72. [Ed. from MS by George L. Trager & E. A. Kennard.] (Repr. in Whorf 1956.57–64.)
1956 Language, Thought, and Reality: Selected writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf Ed. with an introd. by John B[issell] Carroll. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, x, 278 pp. [Whorf’s bib. on pp.271–276.]