1921. This little book aims to give a certain perspective on the subject of language rather than to assemble facts about it. It has little to say of the ultimate psychological basis of speech and gives only enough of the actual descriptive or historical facts of particular languages to illustrate principles. Its main purpose is to show what I conceive language to be, what is its variability in place and time, and what are its relations to other fundamental human interests-the problem of thought, the nature of the historical process, race, culture, art. Contents: Language Define; The Elements of Speech; The Sounds of Language; Form in Language; Grammatical Processes; Form in Language; Grammatical Concepts; Types of Linguistic Structure; Language as a Historical Product: Drift; Language as a Historical Product: Phonetic Law; How Languages Influence Each Other; Language, Race and Culture; and Language and Literature.

Le langage, Introduction à l'étude de la parole

Perhaps no single feature so markedly sets off man from the rest of the animal world as the gift of speech, which he alone possesses. No community of normal human beings, be their advance in culture ever so slight, has yet been found, or is ever likely to be found, who do not communicate among themselves by means of a complex system of sound symbols; in other words, who do not make use of a definitely organized spoken language. It is indeed one of the paradoxes of linguistic science that some of the most complexly organized languages are spoken by so-called primitive peoples, while, on the other hand, not a few languages of relatively simple structure are found among peoples of considerable advance in culture... We can thus safely make the absolute statement that language is typical of all human communities of today, and of such previous times as we have historical knowledge of, and that language, aside from reflex cries, is just as untypical of all non-human forms of animal life. Like all other forms of human activity, language must have its history... Taking up the history of language in the sense in which it was first defined, we find that there are two methods by which we can follow the gradual changes that a language has undergone.

The History of Human Speech and the Significance of Language

Anthropologue autant que linguiste, passant d'une étude strictement technique de phonétique historique à des considérations extrêmement générales sur la nature et les fonctions du langage, Sapir occupe une place à part dans l'histoire de la linguistique. Il a touché à presque tous les problèmes que les linguistes peuvent être amenés à se poser à propos du langage et à beaucoup d'autres dont, en général, ils ne s'avisent même pas. Il se dégage de son oeuvre un certain éclat qui a toujours séduit ses lecteurs. Suivant de très près les progrès de disciplines comme la psychologie, la psychanalyse et la sociologie, Sapir entend replacer le langage dans l'ensemble du comportement humain. Loin de dissoudre la linguistique dans les autres sciences de l'homme, il définit, en particulier par une analyse des rapports entre la langue et la culture et entre le langage et la pensée, les conditions auxquelles la science du langage peut fournir aux autres sciences du comportement leur modèle formel.

Linguistique

Edward Sapir (26 janvier 1884 – 4 février 1939) est un linguiste et anthropologue américain originaire de Poméranie. Son travail porta essentiellement sur le langage en tant que fait culturel à part entière. Il est notamment connu pour la célèbre hypothèse Sapir-Whorf.

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Sapir

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