Benjamin Lee Whorf was an American linguist and fire prevention engineer best known for proposing the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis. He believed that the structures of different languages shape how their speakers perceive and conceptualize the world. Whorf saw this idea,named after him and his mentor Edward Sapir,as having implications similar to those of Einstein's principle of physical relativity. However,the concept originated from 19th-century philosophy and thinkers like Wilhelm von Humboldt and Wilhelm Wundt.
Edward Sapir 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.
Navajo or Navaho is a Southern Athabaskan language of the Na-Denéfamily,through which it is related to languages spoken across the western areas of North America. Navajo is spoken primarily in the Southwestern United States,especially in the Navajo Nation. It is one of the most widely spoken Native American languages and is the most widely spoken north of the Mexico–United States border,with almost 170,000 Americans speaking Navajo at home as of 2011.
Ethnolinguistics is an area of anthropological linguistics that studies the relationship between a language or group of languages and the cultural behavior of the people who speak those languages.
Anthropological linguistics is the subfield of linguistics and anthropology which deals with the place of language in its wider social and cultural context,and its role in making and maintaining cultural practices and societal structures. While many linguists believe that a true field of anthropological linguistics is nonexistent,preferring the term linguistic anthropology to cover this subfield,many others regard the two as interchangeable.
Athabaskan is a large branch of the Na-Dene language family of North America,located in western North America in three areal language groups:Northern,Pacific Coast and Southern. Kari and Potter (2010:10) place the total territory of the 53 Athabaskan languages at 4,022,000 square kilometres (1,553,000 sq mi).
The Algic languages are an indigenous language family of North America. Most Algic languages belong to the Algonquian subfamily,dispersed over a broad area from the Rocky Mountains to Atlantic Canada. The other Algic languages are the Yurok and Wiyot of northwestern California,which,despite their geographic proximity,are not closely related. All these languages descend from Proto-Algic,a second-order proto-language estimated to have been spoken about 7,000 years ago and reconstructed using the reconstructed Proto-Algonquian language and the Wiyot and Yurok languages.
Mary Rosamond Haas was an American linguist who specialized in North American Indigenous languages,Thai,and historical linguistics. She served as president of the Linguistic Society of America. She was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the National Academy of Sciences.
Wiyot or Soulatluk is an Algic language spoken by the Wiyot people of Humboldt Bay,California. The language's last native speaker,Della Prince,died in 1962.
Yurok is an Algic language. It is the traditional language of the Yurok people of Del Norte County and Humboldt County on the far north coast of California,most of whom now speak English. The last known native speaker,Archie Thompson,died in 2013. As of 2012,Yurok language classes were taught to high school students,and other revitalization efforts were expected to increase the population of speakers.
Harry Hoijer was a linguist and anthropologist who worked on primarily Athabaskan languages and culture. He additionally documented the Tonkawa language,which is now extinct. Hoijer's few works make up the bulk of material on this language. Hoijer was a student of Edward Sapir.
Coeur d'Alene,known to its speakers as Snchitsu’umshtsn,is a Salishan language. It was spoken by only two of the 80 individuals in the Coeur d'Alene Tribe on the Coeur d'Alene Reservation in northern Idaho,United States in 1999. It is considered an endangered language. However,as of 2014,two elders in their 90s remain who grew up with Cœur d'Alène as their first language,and the use of the language is spreading among all age groups.
The Coeur d'Alene Names-Places Project visits geographic sites on the reservation recording video,audio,and still photos of Tribal elders who describe the site in both English and Coeur d'Alene languages.
Pliny Earle Goddard was an American linguist and ethnologist noted for his extensive documentation of the languages and cultures of the Athabaskan peoples of western North America. His early research,carried out under the auspices of the University of California,Berkeley,focused on the Hupa and adjacent Athabaskan groups in northwestern California. After moving to New York in 1909 at the invitation of Franz Boas his scope expanded to include the Athabaskans of the Southwest,Canada,and Alaska. During the 1910s and 1920s. as Boas's junior colleague at the American Museum of Natural History and Columbia University,Goddard played a major role in creating the academic infrastructure for American Indian linguistics and anthropology in North America.
This article is about the sound system of the Navajo language. The phonology of Navajo is intimately connected to its morphology. For example,the entire range of contrastive consonants is found only at the beginning of word stems. In stem-final position and in prefixes,the number of contrasts is drastically reduced. Similarly,vowel contrasts found outside of the stem are significantly neutralized. For details about the morphology of Navajo,see Navajo grammar.
Truman Michelson was a linguist and anthropologist who worked from 1910 until his death for the Bureau of American Ethnology at the Smithsonian Institution. He also held a position as ethnologist at George Washington University from 1917 until 1932.
Frances Jane Hassler Hill was an American anthropologist and linguist who worked extensively with Native American languages of the Uto-Aztecan language family and anthropological linguistics of North American communities.
Southern Athabaskan is a subfamily of Athabaskan languages spoken primarily in the Southwestern United States with two outliers in Oklahoma and Texas. The languages are spoken in the northern Mexican states of Sonora,Chihuahua,Coahuila and to a much lesser degree in Durango and Nuevo León. Those languages are spoken by various groups of Apache and Navajo peoples. Elsewhere,Athabaskan is spoken by many indigenous groups of peoples in Alaska,Canada,Oregon and northern California.
Oswald J. Werner,better known as Ossy Werner,was a Czechoslovakian-born American linguist. He was Professor of Anthropology and Linguistics for thirty years at Northwestern University and retired in 1998 as Professor Emeritus of Anthropology and Linguistics. During this period he researched the Navajo language and culture. Although specializing in their medicine and science,he impacted anthropology,linguistics,ethnography,ethnographic methodology,ethnoscience,and cognitive anthropology.
Katherine Spencer Halpern was an American anthropologist and educator.
Adee Dodge (1912–1992) or Hashke-yil-e-dale,was a Navajo artist,linguist,and Navajo code talker. He was best known for his paintings of horses,and documenting other aspects of Navajo culture in his paintings. Dodge served in the United States military in the South Pacific during World War II.
