ALFRED LOUIS KROEBER (1876-1960)

Alfred Louis Kroeber

Dell Hymes

Alfred Louis Kroeber died in Paris in the early morning of Wednesday, October 5, 1960, in his eighty-fifth year. He was a member of the Linguistic Society of America from its beginning, a Signer of the Call that led to its founding, and its president in 1940.

Kroeber was born in Hoboken, New Jersey on June 11, 1876, the son of Florence and Johanna Mueller Kroeber. His first language was German. He and his younger brother, Edward, began their education with three years of tutoring from the principal of the Ethical Culture School, then were sent to a college preparatory school (Sachs), and later to a boarding school in Connecticut. Alfred Kroeber entered Columbia College at sixteen. The reminiscences of a childhood and college friend suggest some of the qualities of the young man. At the preparatory school the Kroeber boys helped form a society whose main objective was collecting expeditions, and it lasted well into Alfred Kroeber’s second year at college. At Columbia,¹

Kroeber was perhaps the shyest and most diffident one of us, yet at heart the boldest and least hampered by convention or fear of consequences ; so he got rather deeper than usual into freshman escapades.

In his sophomore year Kroeber was much influenced by lectures on English literature, and he led in launching a successful undergraduate literary magazine. But the most important influence at Columbia came in the person of Franz Boas.²

After receiving his A.B. degree in 1896, Kroeber entered graduate work at Columbia with Boas. His family met severe financial reverses, but he chose to persevere, rather than to enter business. He received his A.M. degree in 1897, and made his first field trips, sponsored through Boas by the American Museum of Natural History, in 1899-1901. The trips took him to western North America in parts of the Oklahoma territory and the new states of Wyoming, Utah, Idaho, and Montana, for work mainly with the Arapaho, on whose decorative art he wrote his dissertation.

The year of his doctorate (1901) brought Kroeber to the university that was to be the lifelong setting of his career. He came as first faculty member of the Department of Anthropology, just founded at California through the generosity of Phoebe Apperson Hearst.³ His subsequent career can be briefly outlined : at the University of California (Berkeley), instructor in anthropology (1901), assistant professor (1906), associate professor (1911), professor (1919) ; curator in anthropology (1900, 1903-11) of the California Academy of Sciences, curator (1908-25) and director (1925-46) of the Anthropological Museum of the University of California, and research associate of the Chicago Natural History Museum (1925-60). Upon retirement as Emeritus Professor and Emeritus Museum Director at seventy (1946), he did not cease teaching, but went as visiting professor to Harvard (1947-48), Columbia (1948-52), Brandeis (1954), and Yale (1958). He also went as a Fellow to the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (1955-56), and returned there in the spring of 1958 for a series of seminars on the comparative study of civilizations. Such stays at other institutions helped him to know and encourage younger scholars, to whom his interest increasingly turned. With characteristic discretion, he also thus left the department at Berkeley as free as possible of the shadow of virtual identification with himself.

Many honors came to him. A founder of the American Anthropological Association, he was its president in 1917-19 ; president of the American Folklore Society (1906) ; vice-president, Section H, of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (1906) ; vice-chairman of the division of anthropology and psychology of the National Research Council (1921-22) ; as stated, a Signer of the Call, and president of the Linguistic Society (1940) ; Honorary Fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain, and recipient of its Huxley Medal (1945) ; Honorary Fellow of the Academies of Science of Peru and Denmark ; recipient of the Viking Medal of the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research (1946), and chairman of its international symposium (1952) ; elected to membership in the American Philosophical Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was also a member of other professional groups, such as the American Ethnological Society, and the Modern Language Association, which he joined at eighty-one in order to publish an article on statistical study of parts of speech in poetry in PMLA 73.309-14 (1958), after rejections from other journals he could not interest in it. His sixtieth birthday was celebrated with a festschrift and his eightieth birthday honored by the dedication of an issue of Language.⁴

Kroeber’s contributions to knowledge, sustained over some sixtyfour years, are remarkable not merely in number, but for scope and quality. He was probably the greatest general anthropologist that American anthropology has known. His contributions to linguistics, archaeology, ethnography, and ethnology could each have earned him an enviable reputation as a major figure, and he made note- worthy contributions to biological anthropology and folklore as well. He was a prolific fieldworker, a master systematizer, an independent and provocative theorist and critic. Something of his scope is reflected in the monographs and books he has occasionally listed as major publications : The Arapaho (1902), The Yokuts language of South Central California (1907), Zuni kin and clan (1916), Peoples of the Philippines (1919, 1928) ; Anthropology (1923, 1948), Handbook of the Indians of California (1925), Cultural and natural areas of native North America (1939), Peruvian archaeology (1944), Configura- է ions of culture growth (1944), The nature of culture (1952), Style and civilizations (1957).

Kroeber delighted in quantitative estimate as a heuristic device : of eight paragraphs of preface to The nature of culture, three set forth fractions that characterize the papers collected therein ; and so it is worth noting that his publications ultimately will total 460 or more, and that of this number, some 70, slightly less than a sixth, are wholly or in important part contributions to linguistics. (This does not count reviews or comments in published records of conferences.) It is appropriate, too, to put the figures in temporal perspective : the linguistic contributions are not evenly spaced throughout his career, but cluster at its beginning and end. Somewhat more than half come in the first two decades in California, a dozen or so are distributed among the next three decades, and then, beginning with 1952, there are about half again as many in his last ten years.⁵

The roots of Kroeber’s linguistic interests go deep. His first remembered purely intellectual pleasure, as a boy of ten, was the demonstration of pattern in the classes of English strong verbs. As to his professional work, he observed : ‘I came from humanistic literature, entered anthropology by the gate of linguistics ‘ (Nature of culture 173). When Kroeber began graduate study at Columbia, Boas had announced courses in statistical theory and American Indian languages. The two courses were to remain fundamental to Boas’ program for forty years, and the two subjects, sometimes in conjunc- tion, were to be lifelong interests of his great student. Indeed, the course in American Indian languages seems to have been Kroeber’s first graduate course, and he frequently mentioned the experience, speaking of Swanton as having ‘ cut his teeth first on Chinook like so many of us’,⁶ elsewhere describing himself⁷ as ‘an anthropologist who found his way into his profession by being shown how to analyze Boas’ Chinook Texts into grammar and describing with pleasure

Boas’ first linguistic class, which met Tuesday evenings at his home around the cleared family dining table, [and] consisted of an archaeologist from the Museum, a teaching assistant of English, and an adventurous nondescript who soon after rolled himself out of anthropology as suddenly as he had rolled in, and who required some quarts of beer in a can from the nearest saloon to overcome the tension of a two hours’ session with Chinook or Eskimo.⁸

The effect on the teaching assistant of English, Kroeber, is implicit in his praise of Boas for instituting the first productive teaching of American Indian linguistics by

setting his students to discover the structure of a language by analysis of texts. This equivalent of laboratory method introduced the student to an attitude of independent research. It also served as specific training for new field investigation, which was subsequently provided whenever possible. This method naturally proved to be intensely stimulating to capable students.⁹

That the study of language should have played an important part at the outset of Kroeber’s career is not surprising : in the school of Boas it almost could not have been otherwise. With Kroeber the linguistic interest was to prove abiding and individual. Partly this was because of a personal attraction to linguistic data, but it was also because of Kroeber’s conception of anthropology. He sets forth this conception and his commitment to it in the sections of introduction written for The nature of culture and in the appendix to the report of his week-long symposium in the summer of 1960 on ‘ Anthropological horizons ‘ (the report is to be published by the Wenner-Gren Foundation). In The nature of culture Kroeber presents his anthropology almost as a matter of personal style, involving both a way of working and a perspective. To sketch its character, one can perhaps best say that it joined a capacity for a broad view with love of concrete data ; desire to discover patterns intrinsic to data with belief that patterns must be understood in context ; a giving of primacy to cultural data and cultural frames of reference with continuous effort to extend cultural patterns and contexts to the limits of their relevance in space and time ; that much of his work had its roots in a natural-history approach to the materials of the humanities ; that his preference was for characterization rather than dissection ; for ordering rather than manipulating data ; for theory sweated out of empirical studies rather than proclaimed in advance. There was almost no side of culture but subtended his angle of vision ; to change the metaphor, there was little in cultural phenomena that could not come as grist to his mill. For such an approach there was a natural place for the study of language in its own right as part of culture, and for the sake of its contribution to other, sometimes general problems ; and there was of course much in language that lent itself to his way of working.

These qualities of Kroeber’s anthropology could perhaps be inferred from the body of his linguistic work alone, for it is a microcosm of the whole. It has, indeed, a certain unity. Problems of the earliest years reappear in the writings of the last decade, appropriately recast ; and several of the themes that run through his linguistic work are often enough combined in one publication, so that any point of entry to his work is likely to lead, chronologically and bibliographically, into much of the rest. To a considerable degree, tout se tient. Much of the work has been forgotten, yet it is worth while to survey it with some care, not only in tribute to a great scholar, but also because some of the problems still wait to be carried beyond the point to which Kroeber brought them, and because the significance of the man and work as an example for the future relations between linguistics and anthropology lies so much in the details seen as part of the whole.

The matrix is the early period in California. There the first two decades of the century saw the bulk of Kroeber’s linguistic field work, and the appearance of his characteristic interests and mode of interpretation.

A pattern of combined ethnographic and linguistic investigation had begun with Kroeber’s first major field work, among the Arapaho. His dissertation related their decorative art to a theoretical controversy, but he also obtained material for a valuable monograph on Arapaho dialects, UCPAAE 12.71-138 (1916). This pattern continued in his almost single-handed labors in California in the first part of the century. The tribes of California were many, diverse, and little known. With the support of Mrs. Hearst, Kroeber undertook an ‘ ethnological and archaeological survey ‘ of the state (ethnology included linguistics). He was joined in the linguistic work by Goddard (Athabaskan), and, for varying periods, by Dixon (Maidu, Wintu, Shasta, Achomawi), Sapir (Yana), Waterman (Yurok), Barrett (Pomo, Miwok), Radin (Wappo), and others, but the sustained bulk of the work was his, culminating, ethnographically, in the monumental Handbook (completed in 1918, but not published until 1925).

Much of the work was in response to the obvious needs to fill gaps in knowledge before too late. Already some of the languages and dialects were extinct, and for them philology of a sort with early materials was all that could be done,¹⁰ if that. Since the description of disappearing languages has often not seemed an obvious need at all, despite being the only contribution to the future of linguistics that future linguistics cannot make for itself, Kroeber’s extensive service in this task deserves full praise. Sometimes his reports mention absence of other knowledge of a dialect as a reason for publishing imperfect data obtained in the course of an ethnographic field trip.¹¹ Opportunities for obtaining linguistic data that would remedy a lack were seized.¹² Sometimes native speakers were brought to Berkeley to be worked with or trained to write their own language.¹³ As much as could be done was done, given the opportunity. Voegelin tells the story of Kroeber waiting for a train, noticing an Indian, and promptly taking a vocabulary in the time available. Kroeber’s descriptive experience during this period embraced Arapaho, Zuni, Marshallese, and, of the languages of California and the adjacent west, Atsugewi, Bannock, Chumash, Costanoan, Diegueno, Esselen, Karok, Luiseno, Miwok, Mohave, Porno, Salinan, Shoshonean, Ute, Washo, Wiyot, Yokuts, Yuki, Yurok ; altogether some 33 languages.

Throughout Kroeber’s work with language as with other phenomena, there runs a remarkable capacity to observe and to seize opportunities for doing so. At Zuni in 1916 he encountered what was observable to all, surface finds of archaeological materials, but it was Kroeber who first ordered the stylistic variations of surface finds into a series, and thus invented a method of chronology. This by-product of his Zuni work was matched by another, apparently the only observations on the speech development of an American Indian child ever published. He had occasion to hear the daily speech of the youngest son of the family with whom he lived, and recorded the changes over a two-month interval ; the record is still worth noting, for its details and general summary.¹⁴

A little-known series of phonetic studies shows Kroeber’s attentiveness to empirical detail,¹⁵ and his eagerness to make use of aids to precision. He himself had moderate phonetic gifts, and he worked when what to expect in the native languages of western America was still uncertain. The identification of segmental sounds was being sweated out mostly by men without much phonetic training,¹⁶ and Kroeber welcomed application to Amerindian languages of

principles and methods of phonetic research established by European scholars . . . largely through the entrance into this field [Amerindian] of several students trained in the study of Indo-European philology.¹⁷

Kroeber’s empirical work was never data-gathering for its own sake. There was always in mind an immediate question or a larger frame of reference, and his phonetic studies show this. They were undertaken to provide orientation and grounding for further descriptive work, to answer questions current at the time about the phonetic characteristics of American languages, and also because phonetic data were cultural data whose distribution and historical interpretation were of interest in themselves. One of the questions of the day concerned the so-called ‘ intermediates ‘, consonants variously perceived as voiced and voiceless by fieldworkers. As part of the phonetic instability considered characteristic of ‘ primitive ‘ language, the matter had been analyzed by Boas in a brilliant paper.¹⁸ In the case of ‘ intermediates ‘, Kroeber suspected a specific phonetic cause in the sounds themselves, voiceless onset of otherwise voiced stops (UCPAAE 10.8 [1911]) ; and when a German trading schooner with a crew of Marshall Islanders docked at San Francisco in April of 1911, he seized the opportunity. His earlier recordings of Caroline Islands dialects had showed such inconsistency in writing surd and sonant as to make him suspect that ‘ intermediates ‘, widespread in western America, might be found in Polynesia too. About 409 tracings revealed surds in final position, sonants inter- vocallically, and initial ‘ intermediates ‘ that began surd and invariably became voiced approaching the following vowel. Kroeber goes on to summarize the study as a whole in characteristic fashion, placing the phenomena as a type in a broader geographical and genetic context.¹⁹

The California linguistic field work had indeed an overall problem orientation from its beginning. Against the background of the number and distribution of linguistic stocks in the rest of North America, California stood out as a great exception. Nearly half the stocks (according to the Powell classification) in the country were represented in the one state (22 out of 52). Explaining this extreme diversity was seen as ‘ the fundamental problem of California linguistics’ (A A 5.2 [1903]). When similarity in grammatical structure was glimpsed between a number of languages whose vocabularies seemed unrelated, there seemed an obvious bearing on the problem of diversity.²⁰

An attempt was therefore made by the writers [Dixon and Kroeber] to secure, through field investigation, information concerning the grammatical structure of all Californian languages. This task was rendered necessary by the fact that with one or two exceptions the grammar of these languages was wholly unknown.

The background of the problem orientation was a natural-history approach to the data of ethnology. Languages, like cultures, were units to be ordered, their connections traced and explained, and in this period of American anthropology the value of linguistics for ordering the ethnological data was at a peak. With historical documents lacking, archaeological time perspective not yet available, and no uniform way of determining political or cultural units amidst the mass of data, the qualitative units of linguistic classification were seized upon by many, and became a primary framework for description and interpretation. Subsequent work has modified the role of genetic classification to that of one line of evidence to be integrated with others, but its value remains a main source of anthropology’s vested interest in linguistics.

When Kroeber began his California work, the Powell classification was so well established and so rightly valued that the temper of the times was not inclined toward more than incidental tinkering with it.²¹ Also, Kroeber was well aware of the necessity of lexical correspondences for proof of genetic connection,²² and the California vocabularies did not manifest connections not already considered by Powell. With the data and analyses available, the apparent resemblances among languages were in structural outlines and subsystems, and these were the lines pursued in search of further ordering. Since the connections that appeared were traced typologi- cally in space rather than genetically in time, the correlative principle of explanation was diffusion, convergence through areal contiguity.

The first result of the field work inspired by the notion of typological resemblances was the first areal classification of a set of New World languages according to grammatical type. The four chief diagnostic features (pronominal incorporation, syntactical [pure-relational] cases, material [mixed-relational] cases, morphophonemies [Sapir’s typological feature of technique, here contrasting agglutinative vs. fusionai combination]) would not today seem sufficient, even with the additional minor features, such as marking of number and reduplication, that were noted ; but a classification according to these features was one that the data could support, and the results made sense : the California languages fell into three broad types correlated with geographical location, cultural groupings seemed more or less to coincide, and comparison with languages outside California showed the types to be indeed distinctive. Interpretation of the typology was carefully restrained, and its application to languages outside California on which it had not been based was not assumed. Moreover, it was a remarkably original step in the study of New World languages, one that has never been adequately followed up.

Kroeber collaborated with Dixon in another pioneering typological survey, one of California numeral systems. A major point was to note correlations between features and to show the inadequacy of some existing conceptions : decimal and quinary-vigesimal could not be set up as absolute types for whole systems, since the character of a system might change at 10, and, indeed, the California material showed more cases of shift at 10 (from quinary to decimal or from decimal to vigesimal) than of continuity (quinary becoming vigesimal or decimal remaining decimal). The great diversity of radicals below 10 within even the most closely related languages was shown, the contrast with the uniformity within Indo-European made, and the moral for comparative method drawn :

Altogether it would appear that numerals occupy a very different place in California languages from their philological position in Indo-European and other great linguistic families of the old world, and that on the whole they cannot be given the importance in comparison and in questions of determination of genetic relationship that they occupy in these languages.²³

The California diversity was explained in terms of the use of arithmetical operations and compounding in the numerals below 10, and the systems related to the corresponding counting practices. This study has stood almost alone in the Americanist literature since its publication more than a half-century ago.²⁴

The thrust of the first of the two papers (Native languages of California) is such as to define what are to all intents and purposes grammatically based linguistic areas, and the principle of areal relationship is clearly stated in both.²⁵

The phonetic studies of this period show the same interest in tracing types of phenomena in the contexts of geographical distribution and genetic affiliation. The Marshallese paper concludes with the summary :

In all essentials, these phonetic traits are duplicated in the Pima-Papago language of Arizona, and several individual features recur in a number of American languages ; but as regards the allied tongues of Malayo-Polynesian stock, the Marshall dialect seems to be phonetically greatly specialized.²⁶

With the California phonetic studies, the Marshallese study raises the prospect of a typological and areal survey of phonetic traits ; but like the German trading ship that supplied Kroeber’s informants, the prospect was soon lost from sight. (The ship sank 24 hours after sailing ; the crew was saved, and Kroeber’s informants had deserted before the vessel left San Francisco.) For many years, Kroeber’s California paper ²⁷ remained the only detailed survey for any part of the New World. Areal groupings and ‘ the fundamental problem whether the linguistic families of America possess any underlying or general features peculiar to themselves as a class’ (UCPAAE 10.2 [1911]) remained untackled.

The typological interest informed many of Kroeber’s reports on individual languages at this time, and his study of Washo was expressly to determine its place and areal connections as a type.²⁸ But about 1910 the focus of linguistic interpretation shifted to genetic relationships, as a decade began that was not to be paralleled until that of the nineteen-fifties for rapid unfolding of new connections and disruption of established perspectives. Kroeber has himself recorded the excitement of the period.²⁹ Swanton showed Natchez to be Muskogean, and compared Athabascan, Haida, and Tlingit ; Kroeber linked Miwok and Costanoan again (Powell having separated them) and with Dixon joined Maidu, Wintu, and Yokuts with them to form Penutian ; by a quick series of steps, aided by Harrington and Sapir, Hokan came into being, comprising first Karok, Chimariko, Shasta, Pomo, Yana, Esselen, (with Chumash and Salinan separate as ‘ Iskoman ‘, then joined in to Hokan through Sapir’s comparisons and Harrington’s affirmation of the unity of Chumash and Yuman), and incorporating Seri and Tequistlatecan through Kroeber’s work, and Washo through that of Harrington and Sapir. Yurok and Wiyot were joined in Ritwan by Dixon and Kroeber, and then connected with Algonquian by Sapir. In addition, Sapir demonstrated the unity of Uto-Aztekan to the satisfaction of all and of Na-Déné to the satisfaction of some, and traced Penutian northward into Oregon and Canada. In passing, Kroeber had also forecast the linking of Salishan, Wakashan, and Chemakuan. No wonder that in the midst of this period Kroeber asserted :³⁰ ‘ We may accordingly be confident that the language map of North America will be thoroughly recolored in a few years.’ One could not then foresee that the breaking of the Powell log-jam was to release a tide of discovery and controversy that shows no sign yet of subsiding. But the genetic connections discovered by Kroeber and Dixon have stood the test of subsequent work, and today the necessarily slow establish- ment in detail of comparative Hokan, Penutian, and Ritwan is one of the healthiest parts of Amerindian linguistics.

Of particular interest is the way in which the two men came to perceive the relationships. Structural similarities had suggested connections such as that of Miwok and Costanoan, and of Yurok and Wiyot, but, adhering to the Powell framework, they wrote off all lexical connections among recognized families as due to diffusion. Attempting to interpret the accumulating lexical evidence, they made a mass comparison of the equivalents in 67 dialects (of the 21 California stocks) for a list of 225 meanings appropriately ‘ basic ‘ for the area. The considerable number of resemblances that appeared made no sense on any hypothesis of diffusion.

Finally, in a mood rather of baffled impotence, an interpretation of the cases of most abundant resemblance as due to genetic relationship was applied. At once difficulties yielded, and arrangement emerged from the chaos.³¹

The method (involving a table of interrelationships) anticipated the statistical analyses of cultural and linguistic similarities that were to be one of Kroeber’s main interests in the nineteen-thirties and later, and it has been credited by Swadesh as an independent earlier invention of lexicostatistics.³² Perhaps the most important legacy of the work is in its tactic of careful progress, its attitude of scrupulous boldness. Too narrow a concern with purity of method was rejected as sterile, but essential methodological safeguards were observed. There was no clinging to conventional classifications, but new findings were built up step by step, and not projected beyond the accessible horizon.

The 1919 monograph culminates the first period of Kroeber’s linguistic work, and marks its end. On the theoretical plane the period is outlined by the shift in the dominant mode of interpreting historical connections, genetic retention replacing convergence through diffusion. The 1919 monograph is the chief product of this shift ; following it, there is a sharp drop in linguistic publication for three decades, and also little or no conceptual change with regard to historical interpretation. Indeed, insofar as periods of Kroeber’s linguistic work can be defined, it is jointly by amount of activity (great or small) and state of historical perspective (stable or in development). In the first and last periods there is both extensive activity and development in historical perspective ; in the middle period, as stated, there is little of either. His textbook chapter on language, mostly concerned with historical perspective, hardly changes from the first edition to the last (1923-1948). That is a tribute to its soundness (it is still worth reading), but also a symbol of Kroeber’s lack of involvement in the main linguistic developments of the period.

From about 1920 to 1950, Kroeber’s linguistic publications consist of a few reviews of linguistic books ; some ethnological monographs containing linguistic material ; treatment of linguistic topics in general books (Anthropology, Handbook, Cultural and natural areas, Configurations) ; subgroupings of known language families (with development of statistical techniques) ; and a scattering, topically and chronologically, of papers. Most of the topics are not confined to the period, and indeed, except for instrumental phonetics and child language, which seem wholly part of the first period, it is hard to find one of Kroeber’s linguistic interests that does not persist throughout his career. Mode of historical interpretation becomes vital again in the last period, so it seems best to consider it there, while considering now the range of other topics not yet discussed.

Ethnology led Kroeber into dialectology almost at the start. An early paper treats the degree of dialect differentiation within California languages.³³ Kroeber noted conflicting assumptions about the nature of the unusual Californian diversity, as projected at the dialect level, and made an empirical test. The paper also takes up the relations between dialects and political, social, and cultural units, showing how the relation differs as between such groups as the Maidu and Yokuts. As elsewhere, he states that collection of uniform materials by a single investigator is needed to resolve problems. Much dialect material was obtained adventitiously, but he twice made special field trips, one for the Moquelumnan (Miwok) study just noted, another for systematic coverage of the many Yokuts languages and dialects. The Yokuts material was first dealt with in part of his major linguistic monograph, The Yokuts language (1907), and the full data, promised there, form part of a monograph completed late in the summer of 1960. Dialect work involved interest in the historical information gleaned from place-names, as shown in the Moquelumnan paper and throughout the Handbook. In addition one paper is devoted solely to toponymy, California Place Names of Indian Origin.³⁴

As a concomitant of ethnography, Kroeber noted social variation in speech. Information is scattered through the Handbook, and that for the Yurok is collected in a special article.³⁵ Such study was never intensive on Kroeber’s part, and the early ethnographic work that is most important for linguistics today is that on kinship. In Classificatory Systems of Relationships,³⁶ he defined eight principles (or categories) as basic to the classification of kin by relationship terms, and in so doing, showed the way for the semantic (componential) analysis of kinship that has only now come into its own.³⁷ In this paper Kroeber showed himself not only a brilliant analyst, finding principles that could order a mass of data, but also a polemical theorist. Here and in subsequent writings on kinship, he insisted (as against Rivers, Radcliffe-Brown, and their followers) on the linguistic dimension of kinship. For Kroeber this meant that kinship systems could not be explained entirely by fit to social institutions and practices, but must also be understood as systems of classificatory logic with a partly independent history of their own. That kin terms are linguistic facts was taken as warrant for this view,³⁸ and as showing historical linguistics to be essential to kinship study. Belief in the latter point led him to make a trial reconstruction of Athapaskan kin terms and later to urge Hoijer to undertake a more nearly definitive study. The conclusion of his Athapaskan paper puts the historical matter clearly : ^38a

Since kinship systems are, first of all, systems of classificatory logic expressed in words which are parts of languages, the analysis and comparison of such systems without reference to their linguistic history, so far as this may be available, is an arbitrary limitation on understanding.

The point is especially pertinent, for the best effort so far to reconstruct the evolution of kinship terms on a purely sociological base seems to have gone wrong in two cases where it has been linguistically checked.³⁹

Like other American anthropologists, Kroeber was concerned from the first to destroy misconceptions about the ‘ primitive ‘ languages he studied. Part of his early work in typology (and of his praise of Sapir’s Language⁴⁰) was directed against overgeneralizations and prejudices current among scholars (and still remarkably alive, even among linguists.⁴¹) For the Popular Science Monthly (then an intellectual rather than mechanical journal), Kroeber wrote a special article exploding notions of Amerindian languages as rapidly changing, barbarous in sound, and the like, and many of the points were incorporated into his textbook.⁴² Here he showed his persistent concern not only for objectivity in science, but also for its communication to the general society, as part of a desire to maintain the public relevance of scientific work. Although never a reformer or political activist, Kroeber more than once expressed such concern. It is reported from his student days,⁴³ and it enters as an argument against the esoteric consequences of Powell’s principles of priority in the nomenclature of linguistic families,⁴⁴ in the note struck in the introduction to his monumental Handbook, in his praise of Sapir’s book as uniquely a successful popularization,⁴⁵ in the organization of his classic textbook, whose first eighty-six pages, preceding the chapter on language, concern the lack of objective evidence for belief in racial inferiority, particularly as regards the Negro.⁴⁶

Kroeber’s substantial interest in the phenomena and science of biology impinged upon his interest in language. In the first years of the century he was mainly concerned, like most American anthropologists, to separate the biological from the cultural realm, but, this accomplished, Kroeber took up, unlike most anthropologists, problems of comparison and continuity. In the first edition of his textbook he defined anthropology as concerned with the interplay of biological and cultural factors,⁴⁷ and gave special attention to the emergence of language in the course of human evolution and its comparison to animal communication.⁴⁸

The latter interest shows in his response to the theoretical implications of von Frisch’s work.⁴⁹ Most important are his articles Sub=human Cultural Beginnings and On Human Nature.⁵⁰ With renewal of interest in such questions, Kroeber has been singled out as a pioneer.⁵¹

It is not certain when Kroeber first became interested in systems of communication other than speech. The development of writing and the alphabet was long a subject of special interest, both in its own right and as an example of processes of cultural change and growth. (Language phenomena always appealed to Kroeber in this regard.) The alphabet has a prominent place in both editions of his textbook, and the spread of writing systems provides several case histories for his concept of stimulus diffusion.⁵² Linguistic phenomena indeed provide most of the examples in this article, for several other cases deal with the development of grammatical traditions (in Japan, in China, and in Greece vis-a-vis India), and the diffusion of patterns of quantitative meter and rime. His interest in sign language appears first in a review, later in a discussion of the theoretical import of the first results from research on sign language that he helped sponsor.⁵³

Kroeber’s interest in literature came early and continued through-out his life. His first publication was a short essay, and one activity of his last years was to experiment with translating Heine into English, Housman into German. He was a conscious stylist in all his writing. Of poetry, he once said, ‘I soon learned that I had nothing to say—in verse ‘, but he returned to creative prose in ‘ Earthmaker ‘, a fictional (Mohave) biography written for Elsie Clews Parson’s collection of such, American Indian life (1922), and he included it in his collected essays, as an experiment that was not repeated, to be sure, but yet one with perhaps untried possibilities.⁵⁴ His field work resulted in publication of many myths and tales from American Indians, of which the most significant for comparative literature (and linguistics in relation to it) are probably the later Mohave pieces.⁵⁵ In the second Mohave work he states his conception of stylistic analysis, a critical comment on the linguistic inadequacy of most of what has passed for stylistic study of Amerindian materials :

Of course, in any strict sense of the word, style is choice of language and can therefore be fully conveyed only in the original idiom. Even considered translation from a text in the original by one who knows the language well will successfully seize only part of the style. . . . However, the majority of American Indian narrative material has been recorded in English or some other European language. And even the smaller fraction written and published in text in the original idiom has practically never been subject to genuinely stylistic word-by-word analysis. . . . The one outstanding exception is the description of Yokuts linguistic style by Stanley Newman. ... Occasional other references to ‘ style ‘in Indian narrative or song usually boil down essentially to matters of form or content... and not with linguistically selective form, which, it seems to me, is what literary style above all means.— UCPAR 11.133 (1951).

It is unfortunate that such comment should be necessary, but Radin’s Winnebago work is almost the sole exception, half a century after Boas had insisted that stylistic study had to be undertaken with linguistic tools. Kroeber’s other late publications reflect his interest in long-range perspective,⁵⁶ sometimes linked with statistics, especially as stimulated by the research of Josephine Miles.⁵⁷ She tells of his delight at discovering the possibility of tracing long-range temporai patterns in use of words through the concordances of the major English poets ; a study in which he found such a pattern for the frequencies of death, dead, die, dying is unpublished.

As to the history of linguistics, Kroeber of course contributed partly as a participant observer. Passages in his writings on predecessors and contemporaries such as Brinton, Powell, Boas, Swanton, and Sapir are indispensable to the historian of American linguistics ; and his personal correspondence with Sapir should be edited (as he himself wished) for the material of scientific relevance. His par- ticipation engaged him eventually in full-scale discussion of the authorship of the Powell classification, after allusions throughout his career to the role of the ornithologist Henshaw.⁵⁸ He contributed an historical sketch to the final report of the Committee on Research in Native American Languages,⁵⁹ and has helped place the discovery of Indo-European relationships in the context of general science.⁶⁰ His chief contribution to the history of linguistics is his treatment of it as part of the general problem of the clustering of peaks in human achievement.⁶¹ Most of the chapter, dealing with single lines of national philology, is successful, forming one of the best starting points for the student of history of linguistics. The end of the chapter, dealing with the recent period under the two main headings of ‘ linguistics ’ and ‘ comparative philology ‘ suffers from closeness to our own time ; the lists of great scholars seem partly arbitrary and incomplete. But if the general method were applied to lines of scholarship defined more precisely and consistently, the results would be quite valuable.

Two characteristic interests were statistics and style, as ways of ordering and grasping significance in phenomena. The 1919 mono- graph with Dixon sorted counts of cognates in tables. In the 1930’s Kroeber’s ethnology and linguistics took a decidedly statistical turn as he collaborated with H. E. Driver and later S. Klimek on the ethnological side, and with C. D. Chrétien on the linguistic side. The general mode of approach was the same, seeking statistical techniques for grouping historically related data, whether California Indian ethnological traits or Indo-European dialect features. The statistics in the middle period was part of its most solid single line of linguistic work, subgroupings within known language families.⁶² And statistics played a large part in his later linguistic activity, as he encouraged its use by others,⁶³ and employed it in critical and constructive work himself.⁶⁴

The word and concept of style came increasingly to the fore as Kroeber’s work unfolded. It played a great part in his contributions to archaeology, entered into his treatment of other cultural problems (e.g. the stage of development of New World civilizations at time of conquest in Cultural and natural areas [1939]), and reached its fullest statement in his Messenger lectures at Cornell (1956). Much of the attention is to art ; his doctoral dissertation had been on Arapaho decorative art, and a concern for art history found expression throughout his life. But the stylistic interest goes deeply into his linguistic work as well, and language figures in his major application of the concept of style to civilizations. In the central chapter among the published lectures, Kroeber concluded : ⁶⁵

I have faith that a greatly enlarged understanding of civilizations as macrophenomena is attainable, and that it will include comprehension of the part played in their constitution by style.

And in reaching that conclusion, he stated : ⁶⁶

That the members of our civilization and of others are very little aware of total style need not discourage us much. Every human language has such a patterned style—we call it its grammar—of which the speakers are unaware while speaking, but which can be discovered by analysis and can be formulated. The coherence of a grammar is never total or ideal, but is always considerable ; it certainly much exceeds a catalogue of random items. Cultures are larger, more varied and complicated sets of phenomena than languages, as well as more substantive and less autonomous. But the two are interrelated—in fact, language is obviously a part of culture, and probably its precondition. So the structure of cultures, like that of languages, also seems potentially describable in terms of an over-all patterning.

For the most part, style is a humanistic concept, statistics a scientific tool, but for Kroeber there was no clash between the two. Statistics sometimes served in the description of style, and both were means to the main end of discovering the order in phenomena. Indeed, Kroeber’s work stands as an example of how the clash between the two cultures of science and the humanities, of which Sir Charles Snow has written, can be resolved in the pursuit of linguistics and anthropology, the two disciplines which have both humanistic and scientific roots. Unlike narrow partisans of science, Kroeber never rejected significant data on the grounds of maintaining the purity of certain methods ; unlike narrow partisans of the humani- ties, he never rejected useful methods on the grounds of maintaining the purity of certain data. He often commented on the importance of linguistics as an example for anthropology and the study of culture, as providing a model and hope for the scientific treatment of humanistic materials,⁶⁷ sometimes with regard to historical, sometimes descriptive work. It is notable that the ‘ Index of principal topical cross- references ‘ to his book, The nature of culture, contains as its only linguistic item : ‘ Language as an example for culture ‘. The citations are mostly to the argument that the study of language exemplifies the study of cultural phenomena in purely cultural terms, and their understanding through pattern and historical context.

As the dean of American anthropology, Kroeber became involved in its discussions of linguistic questions at conferences and in various volumes. Two such questions were the general relation of language to culture, and the special relation proposed by Whorf. Kroeber was senior author of the chief American treatment of the concept of culture, wherein literally hundreds of authors are cited ; but strangely, the section on the general relation of culture to language does not mention Kroeber’s own statements.⁶⁸ His view is manifest, however, in his textbook and many other writings : though often distinct in practice, language is part of culture, sometimes an especially significant part. In his textbook chapter on language emerge his views on the unconscious nature of cultural patterns, the role of the individual in history, and the sane attitude toward cultural relativism (1923, 125-33). And the concluding review of the Culture monograph has an important section that begins : ‘ The clearest case is furnished by linguistics ‘.⁶⁹

On the hypothesis associated with Whorf, Kroeber took always a cautious view, as shown in his direct comments at the Wenner-Gren conference of 1952, and at the special conference in Chicago in 1953.⁷⁰ His last comments were : ⁷¹

As soon as we learn how to approach the problem with varying depth of focus ... it will probably prove both ‘ true ‘ and ‘ false ‘ at different levels ... I do not believe that at the present time the Whorfian problem can be solved by tests or experiments any more than by analysis : both evidence and arguments simply do not meet counterevidence or argument... a new basic approach will be needed for a pertinent answer to this intriguing and important problem.

Whorf s proposed language-culture correlations called to Kroeber’s mind such attempts at supersummative patterns as those of Spengler, and his book on style and civilization suggests that his own new basic approach to the problem would have been to trace linguistic and cultural patterns historically, looking for congruences but not determinisms. The gist of his thought seems to have been to regard language as an example of culture, and for the study of culture, but not as its matrix. Certainly his bent was toward the working out of linguistic patterns in their own terms with larger correlations or summations to follow. This is especially clear in his treatment of two problems. One is parallel : reviewing an attempt at cultural and psychological interpretation of music, he wrote : ⁷²

The author appears to have had a feeling that a song could best be studied in relation to its place in the culture. Ultimately, this feeling is correct. But in its first aspect a song presents a musical problem and must be brought into relation with other musical material. It is probably only after the music and the religion of the Sioux have been separately worked out with some care that endeavors to determine the relation between the two can be seriously fruitful. ... In other words, a piece of music associated with a certain cultural activity is first of all music, secondly a piece of culture, and only lastly and indirectly an expression of personal emotion.

The parallel (mutatis mutandis) to G. L. Trager’s formulation of the Whorfian problem is almost exact.⁷³ And Kroeber dealt just this way with the cognitive aspect of kinship, which is perhaps the language- and-culture problem par excellence of American anthropology. He insisted on the cognitive import of kin terms as part of language, but also on their degree of autonomy of other parts of culture, such that the problem was always, having worked out the pattern of each in its own terms, to discover the degree of fit, rather than to take one as determinant of the other. Again, the concept of style and historical context enter : kin terms, as unconscious systems of classificatory thought, are ‘ styles of logic in a limited field of universal occurrence ‘.⁷⁴

The several conferences and volumes during the early part of the nineteen-fifties involved Kroeber in fresh currents of anthropological discussion about language, and therein is the prelude or turning point for this increased linguistic activity. In the first half of the decade his published linguistic work consisted mostly of comments and discussions for such occasions, although he had begun to work again on early field data. (In 1951 he obtained a grant to aid completion of linguistic and ethnologic researches on California Indians.) The second five years of the decade saw a spurt of linguistic publication. Some of it was the bringing out of California materials.⁷⁵ Most striking were the papers on new results and approaches in léxico- statistics and typology.⁷⁶

Kroeber was responding to, and helping encourage, an emerging trend. What he perceived is best summarized in his own words : ⁷⁷ ‘ Linguistics has begun the return to (1) typology and classification, (2) semantics The interest in semantics, or meaning, was a serious one ; in his own contribution to the question of the differential stability of semantic classes of stems, he praised lexicostatistics for helping bring meaning back into linguistics more definitely,⁷⁸ and in a discussion of relations between linguistics and anthropology, singled out meaning for consideration as ‘ one kind of content, one body of phenomena, which language and culture indubitably share ‘.⁷⁹ But fresh ideas on classification and historical interpretation were what engaged him most, and the changing content of his engagement illuminates his life’s work. What began as a continued concern with statistical methods of subgrouping and achieving time depth within a genetic perspective led into a new typological perspective (with increased weight given to diffusion). This was a development that had come full circle, for the California work had begun with typological and diffusional interpretation.

The narrative sequence is somewhat misleading, however, and to understand fully Kroeber^ historical work (his chief linguistic love) and to appreciate its value as a legacy, one must realize that each of the three main modes of historical interpretation for linguistic resemblances, genetic, areal, typological, had for him deep and lasting roots, the typological in his love of extrication of pattern, the areal in his ethnology, the genetic in his regard for its ordering power.⁸⁰ All had a part to play in his concern for understanding through classification and context. The key to the shifts in priority of attention is that Kroeber, never a partisan of one mode of interpretation against another, worked and recommended according to his sense of the weight of evidence as to the most productive direction of effort at a given time. He was quick to sense diminishing returns ; at the same time he seldom abandoned an interest, but kept it at hand (or let it lie fallow).

This capacity for a mixed strategy is one enduring significance of his historical work, and there are other values for us now in his use of each mode of interpretation. In typological work he had a skill for concise characterization of a language that is worth emulating, and he demonstrated an approach still waiting further development in Amer-indian linguistics, when he aligned Yokuts and Yuki, point-for-point, putting differences of structure into relief and also showing a commonalty of type within the wider North American context.⁸¹ His last ethnological monograph applied the same approach, and, although he had known Yurok culture for half a century, he found that the controlled comparison gave him a deeper insight into it. He hoped the approach would be developed by others, so organizing in a new way the accumulated rich data on North American cultures, a hope that was part of his general concern in his last writings for the extension of taxonomy, in culture and language, as the indispensable task.⁸² And in relating typology to diversity, Kroeber maintained a balance between extremes that it would be well to emulate. In much of the present century there has been a tide toward uniqueness and incomparability ; now there is a swelling of emphasis on the essential sameness of languages. Kroeber consistently related his descriptions of individual languages to the concepts and terms of the general linguistics of the time, and where the facts required, participated vigorously in the trend (set by Boas in the Introduction to his Handbook of American Indian languages) to highlight relativity and explode biased generalizations ; ⁸³ and one of his last statements cautioned against premature statement of universals, and against stretching recognition of their importance into a tacit claim that they are of sole or even primary concern.⁸⁴ Yet he made no fetish of diversity or exceptions ; inadequate general concepts and terms had to be attacked, so that more adequate ones could replace them. Indeed, he maintained that the goal of an individual description was to place the language in the context of general linguistics. The attitude is clear in early critiques of typological terminology. He rejected biased use of a general term such as ‘ incorporation ‘ : ⁸⁵

It is thoroughly misleading to designate the same process respectively ‘ composition ‘ and ‘ incorporation ‘ according as one has in mind his own or other forms of speech. Some day philologists will approach their profession not with the assumption that language must differ in kind or in being relatively better or worse, but with the assumption that exactly the same fundamental processes run through them all, and with the realization that it is only by starting from the conception of their essential unity of type and method that their interesting and important diversities can be understood.

But he likewise rejected ad hoc machinery to fit each case, and in doing so went beyond Boas (or beyond Boas as commonly interpreted and followed) to a position just beginning to be occupied by the advance guard of American linguistics at the present time. In a discussion of the structure of the Algonkin verb, Kroeber maintained that to describe each language sui generis was not enough, that the repudiation of frameworks misleadingly extended from other languages was only a first step. If traditional Indo-European categories did not fit Algonkin, it would be meaningless to invent a novel set for Algonkin alone : ⁸⁶

The determination of what they [Indo-European and Algonkin] have in common, involving as it does the recognition of that in which they are different, is an essential purpose of the study of both ; for whether our interest lies in the problem of the nature or that of the origin of human speech, a classification is involved. In its widest ultimate aspect philology is concerned not with Algonkin as such nor with Indo-European as such but with all languages. Only when speech in general, its scope and its methods, are better understood will both Algonkin and Indo-European, or for that matter any particular group of languages be more truly understandable. The real aim of the study of any American tongue, as well as the aim of any deeper research in Indo-European philology, must therefore be the more precise and fundamental determination of their relations to all other languages ; and this necessitates concepts and terms which are applicable in common. It is impossible to characterize the wolf in terms of his skeleton, the elephant of his embryology, the whale of his habits, and then to construct a classification which will help to reveal the inherent nature, the development, or the origin of the animal kingdom.

The point of view of the concluding metaphor is of a piece with that of his last article in Language. The typological perspective was there, if largely latent, through the intervening period. Similarly the areal perspective persisted, in the broad sense of tying linguistic phenomena to the map and inferring significance from their geographical relationships. As a matter of principle, Kroeber insisted on language as one criterion in the areal classification of cultures, as against primarily ecological approaches.⁸⁷ And areal perspective led him to an original contribution to lexicostatistic theory.⁸⁸ Salishan had been recognized as a family very early, Hokan late and with dispute, yet glottochronology showed similar time depths for both. Pointing out the contiguity of most Salishan languages, the isolation of most Hokan languages, Kroeber argued that the percentages of retention could be the same, but the sources of the replacement different. For a Salishan language most innovations would be shared with other Salishan languages, most borrowings Salishan in origin, keeping relationship apparent ; while for a Hokan language, most borrowings would be non-Hokan, innovations unique, obscuring relationship. Geographical distribution thus explained the disparity between the traditional classification and impression of internal diversity, based on inspection of vocabulary lists, and the new glottochronologic time depths. A later article made use of another connection between time perspective and areal distribution, using the principle that ‘ close uniformity of speech throughout wide areas must be due to recency of spread ‘ to interpret a number of North American cases (Algonkin, Teton within Dakota, Navaho within Apachean, Chemehuevi and Kawaiisu within Southern Paiute, Northern Paiute and Mono, Yokuts, Wintu).⁸⁹ Nor was the diffusionai aspect of areal resemblances lost from sight. He pointed up the problem of grammatical diffusion as the final topic of his presidential address.⁹⁰ He was sensible of Boas’ contention against Sapir that grammar might be significantly diffused, but took it as a methodological counter-argument for which Boas had never developed sufficient evidence. He saw the problem as an empirical one that warranted systematic investigation to decide among the alternative interpretations of Ray’s work (that IE was exceptional as a group, that Melanesian was exceptional, or that Ray’s analysis was wrong). Thus it is no surprise that in his last article in Language he responded to increasing evidence from his Berkeley colleagues of the importance of diffusion with reappraisal of Boas as possibly right.

It must be noted here that Kroeber’s role with regard to genetic and areal interpretation in Amerindian linguistics has been largely ignored or misinterpreted. The usual picture is one of Boas holding out almost in isolation for the importance of diffusion and areal interpretations, against Sapir and others hellbent for long-range genetic connections, later being consoled by news of the areal perspective of many European scholars.⁹¹ Because Kroeber helped discover new genetic relationships beyond those of Powell, accepted many of Sapir’s results, and criticized Boas’ refusal to consider new evidence or value historical reconstruction,⁹² it has been overlooked that he stood as a third party to the dispute. Not only was his approach pragmatic rather than partisan, but the principle of areal relationships in language was stated clearly in his work far earlier than the writings of the Prague school on Sprachbünde, and earlier, so far as I can ascertain, than in any writing of Boas.⁹³ And, unlike Boas, who acted mainly as a methodological critic, Kroeber helped make substantive contributions to areal interpretation in language. Indeed, the kind of work that he did with Dixon in the first decade of the century still largely waits to be taken up again ; the mapping of Amerindian linguistic traits is almost all still to be done.

In genetic classification, Kroeber’s middle view is a healthy legacy, as has been noted ; he was open to new findings, yet distinguished carefully between the proven and the prophetic,⁹⁴ and sought to work within the range where consolidation and integration with other lines of historical evidence were possible.

In reappraising Boas’ views on diffusion more sympathetically, Kroeber implied that the new genetic results of Haas and others led only to anarchy, not in time to an ordered, if novel, overall picture. He withdrew the implication,⁹⁵ but the heart of his view would seem still to be in the passage beginning :⁹⁶

The exit from this confounding of the long established order seems to be more comparison and more taxonomy, and let the genetic and the influencing chips lie where they fall. . . . When genetic similarity is strong enough to be certain, its findings should of course continue to be accepted. But when the similarity dilutes into mere possibilities which are so scant and scattering that they might be due to remnants of original unity, or to contact influences or borrowings, or to both sets of causes, some broader strategy of attack is indicated.

Kroeber’s developing views, as presented in the conclusion of this article, need some clarification. The conclusion, for example, seems directed primarily to persuasion of those whose main interest is genetic connection, by suggesting that other taxonomie methods may probe historical connections even further into the past, whereas the earlier portions of §8 (15-8) are general, implying a systematic taxonomy in both language and culture that would apply at all time levels, remote and near. But it is a tribute to the man that his latest work has the vigor of growth. What beside Greenberg’s typological indices he would have accepted into a program for ‘ achieving a sound linguistic taxonomy of breadth and depth ... by operating with mechanisms that transcend the concept of genetic unity ‘ (21), we cannot now know. Clearly, however, the core of the program is that with which he began : to extract all possible historical significance from linguistic phenomena, operating within known genetic relationships, transcending them with typology, always interpreting, in reference to the place of things in time and space, always seeking the largest accessible context in time.

Kroeber’s lasting contribution is almost wholly through his own substantive work and example, not, as with Boas and Sapir, also through an impact on descriptive method and on students trained by himself. Kroeber seemed always somewhat shy of the technical core of ‘ philology ‘ or linguistics, as containing methods whose rigor he admired but with which he did not feel wholly conversant, or free, certainly not to the point of modifying them (his use of statistics is the one exception). He referred to himself as ‘ something of a philologist ( = linguist) ‘ in his review of Sapir’s Language, and at most claimed no hesitancy with regard to a content he thoroughly knew, that of California Indian language (Handbook vi). In this hesitancy to claim the mantle of full-fledged linguist, he was but honest. His training in linguistic analysis came from a self-taught pioneer well before the codification of descriptive methods, and his student contact with the comparative method was not, like Sapir’s, first-hand. Whether his bilingualism in German and English helped or hurt, he had no special phonetic gift, and told stories on himself in this regard ; nor was extensive phonetic training adequate to the western Amerindian languages available to him at the time. Moreover, his task in his years of field work was never solely linguistics, for had it been, he undoubtedly would have set himself to master and develop descriptive linguistic methods, rather than use those at hand ; but he was responsible for a broad range of data, and his personal sweep of interest reinforced this commitment. Here again is the lesson that something of a double standard must be invoked in judging the linguistic contributions made by field workers in the course of other duties, the value of the information being set against the imperfections of the record or the lack of excitement in the method.

Kroeber’s massive contributions of data and interpretation show how greatly he felt the fascination of linguistics, despite his hesitancy. If any serious criticism can be fairly made of his California career, it is that he did not see to the technical training of others during so much of the period in which he dominated the Berkeley department. In later years he insisted that no anthropology department could claim to be first-rate without an active linguistic specialist, but not so in practice during his middle years.⁹⁷ In the first years of the Berkeley department, linguistics was a major part of the instruction offered, reflecting concern with Amerindian languages and Goddard’s interest in instrumental phonetics. After Goddard left in 1909, no other linguist was hired, except for Sapir’s presence as Lecturer in the summer of 1915. Native speakers were given encouragement and training, and many students did incidental linguistic work, but the only specialists were J. Alden Mason (University Fellow in 1910-11, Research Fellow in 1916-17), Լ. S. Freeland at the turn of the 1920’s, and C. F. Voegelin in the early 1930’s. The Hearst memorial volume (1923) and Kroeber’s festschrift (1923) contain but a sprinkling of linguistic contributions, a sharp contrast to the quantity and, in some measure, the quality of the special number of Language (1956). In the first years there were few or no graduate students, but the influx of the middle years coincided with a period in which anthropology was one of the few settings in which linguistics could be carried on at the university (philology was under a cloud there for some time after the First World War). The influx unfortunately coincided also with the dip in Kroeber’s own linguistic activity.

In the first half-century of work with Amerindian languages at the University of California, then, after the extensive activity in the first two decades by Kroeber, supplemented by that of Dixon, Goddard, Sapir, and Harrington, there came decades that saw field work by Harrington of the BAE, by a Boas student (Reichard on Wiyot), Sapir students (Li on Mattole, Newman on Yokuts), Sapir himself (a summer with Hupa), and other friends and associates of the department (especially Paul Radin, Jaime de Angulo and his wife Nancy Freeland, and Hans Uldall) ; but, except for Freeland and Voegelin, none were the University’s own products. A fresh, sustained impetus to the increasingly critical rescue work, and to the training of linguists to do it, had to wait until the formation of the Survey of California Indian Languages by Mary Haas and Murray Emeneau early in the 1950’s. In the intervening period Kroeber and his department concentrated on ethnology and culture history. Kroeber still listed himself as actively instructing in Indian languages (ACLS Bull. 29.119 [1939]), but it was the Committee on Research in American Native Languages, sparked by Boas, that supported and fought for the urgently needed descriptive work in California and elsewhere, whereas Kroeber conceived and carried through a massive and effective ethnographic salvage program, that of the Culture Element Surveys. It would be jejune to note all this, were it not that students are part of a scholar’s record, and that the record here involves Kroeber’s role in American linguistics. When the study of language in future years shows the fruit of seeds sown by him, it will be through the work of men, trained by others, who have responded to his insights and perspective. So far as this will be due to the dip in linguistic activity of his middle years, it is compensated by his encouragement of younger men in his last years, and his attraction of them by his own youthful freshness of mind, for which there are countless anecdotes and illustrations. And if with him a whole historical period has passed,⁹⁸ much of its value he consciously transmitted in his person. He knew well how much a value must change to remain the same.

The dip in linguistic activity must be seen in proportion. The middle period was scant only relative to the standards of productivity of someone like Kroeber—not like an artist’s period of silence, but like a period with few portraits from a painter who had turned most of his attention to murals. Like Boas, Kroeber ranged so widely and individually that any conventional framework is too narrow, and to estimate him within one is an error. Perhaps he will not suffer like Boas, who has often been judged anachronistically by social anthropologists who forget that his major chosen fields were physical anthropology, folklore, and linguistics. Yet to evaluate Kroeber one must bring to mind so many contributions in method, theory, and data in so many lines of work that the imagination can hardly hold them all together, although the character and greatness of the man lie in the whole. He was in his own right a cultural world of values, pattern, and distinctive style, a world that teaches that value and meaning may sometimes emerge more from the whole of a dedicated career than from any one striking event. This is perhaps the core of his significance for the future relations of linguistics and anthropol- ogy. Kroeber’s work embodies the view that linguistic research is intrinsic to (and a responsibility of) anthropology. His work carries implicit definitions of linguistic anthropology as, simply and broadly, study of language within an anthropological context, and of the linguistic anthropologist as one who uses linguistic techniques and data to answer anthropological questions. Sometimes these questions are straightforwardly descriptive (‘ What is that language like ? ‘), or classificatory (‘ Where does that language belong?), sometimes more complex ; but language being part of culture, language data are cultural data, and there is no necessary chasm between the study of the two. Almost any general anthropological question can be asked of language, some can be best asked of language, and some cannot be answered without the aid of language. The implicit definition of linguistic anthropology, the ‘ figure in the carpet ‘ of Kroeber’s linguistic work, accounts for the diversity of his studies, varying across phonetic detail, grammatical typology, semantic components, speech development of children, statistical subgrouping, and more. All were germane to anthropological questions. Kroeber is the best example to set against the attitude of some anthropologists that linguistics is something apart, reserved for those with a miraculous ear or the mind of a mathematical genius. He respected the rigor of linguistics, but he also practiced it wherever he could, and showed that the main thing is a sense of problem. The need in anthropology is not so much to give anthropologists a training in linguistic techniques, although that is important, practically and intellectually. The great need is for anthropologists to have a sense of anthropological problems in the data of linguistics. Where this sense exists, the rest can follow.

Kroeber’s life was touched by sorrow, but not his death. His young brother had died while he was west on his first field trip, the news having to be brought him by pony rider, and his first wife died in 1913 after but seven years of marriage. But his second marriage in 1926 to Theodora Kracaw Brown was a long and happy one, and she and their four children (two adopted from her previous marriage) survive him. His last professional activity was partly a vacation trip for the two of them. The director of the Wenner-Gren Foundation, Paul Fejos, had urged Kroeber to lead one of the series of symposia that the Foundation had inaugurated at its summer headquarters, Burg Wartenstein, in southern Austria near the Hungarian border. Free to choose any theme and plan, Kroeber required no prepared papers, but under the heading ‘ Anthropological Horizons ‘ brought together some very diverse individuals, essentially for the pleasure, and possible surprises, of having them discuss matters close to his heart. The setting, an old frontier castle, was toward the road part of a village countryside, while toward the valley it commanded a distant prospect of mountains, sometimes breathtaking with mist like that of a Chinese scroll, sometimes brilliantly clear in sunlight. No one enjoyed the discussions more than he, and an evening given over to local Austrian dances and songs found no one livelier in appre- ciation. At the final dinner he thanked the company, saying that he tended to judge intellectual activities by the pleasure they gave, and that he had enjoyed the conference greatly. His greeting on arrival had been, ‘ What’s new at Berkeley ? ‘ and his words at departure were, ‘ Don’t start anything until I get back.’

From Burg Wartenstein the Kroebers made their first trip to Paris. Tuesday, October 4th, was a day of reading and writing in the morning, a walk and drive to museums in the afternoon, with dinner in a favorite restaurant, then talk, and reading in a travel favorite, War and Peace. About 11:30 there came difficulty in breathing and forty-five minutes later he was gone. At his University the memorial service followed suggestions he had prepared with his wife, beginning with remembrances from friends, and ending with the playing of a movement from a favorite Mozart trio. He had chosen for reading poems from the Book of Numbers (6, 26), Lao Tze, the Bhagavad Gita, Housman, and the California Indians, the last ending :

Think of me now and again / As I was in life / At some moment which it is pleasant to recall. / But not for long. / Leave me in peace / As I shall leave you, too, in peace. / While you live, / Let your thoughts be with the living.

It was a life of full-hearted savoring of life, that in its fulness and discreet boldness extended beyond life to the needs of others. Few men of eighty-four are cut off before their time, but Alfred Kroeber was, not only because of the work he would yet have done, but also because of the symbol and inspiration of the work and person to younger men. Young men who knew him in his later years thought of him as someone all young men should have the good fortune to know.

Source : Dell Hymes, ‘ Alfred Louis Kroeber,' Language 37.1-28 (1961). By permission of Language, and the author.

¹ Carl L. Alsberg, Personal reminiscences, in Essays in anthropology presented to A. L. Kroeber xv (Berkeley, 1936).

² Alsberg (xvii) places Boas’ first influence in Kroeber’s junior and senior years (1894-6). Kroeber, however, has recorded Boas as coming to the American Museum of Natural History (New York) in 1895 or 1896, ‘ quite possibly at the turn of the year,’ and as receiving his first appointment at Columbia in the summer of 1896. The timing is uncertain, but the influence is not. See Kroeber, Franz Boas : The man, AA 45:3.15 (1943).

³ See the Historical introduction, in Kroeber (ed.), Phoebe Apperson Hearst Memorial Volume, UCPAAE 20.ix-xiv (1923).

⁴ Essays in anthropology presented to A. L. Kroeber (Berkeley, 1936) ; Lg. 32:1 (January-March 1956).

⁵ A full bibliography of Kroeber’s writings will appear in the American anthropologist. At the request of the Editor of Language I have not tried to duplicate part of that bibliography, but cite particular writings as they are discussed. The abbreviations used include AA : American anthropologist ; SJA : Southwestern journal of anthropology ; UCPAAE : University of California publications in American archaeology and ethnology ; UCPAR : University of California publications, anthropological records ; and, as short titles for some of the books cited above, Handbook, Cultural and natural areas, Configurations.

⁶ The work of John R. Swanton, Essays in historical anthropology of North America, Smithsonian miscellaneous collections 100.2 (1940) ; a graduate student at Harvard, Swanton had come to Columbia to learn linguistics, and wrote his dissertation, Harvard’s first in anthropology, on the morphology of the Chinook verb.

⁷ Foreword, in D. H. Hymes (ed.), Reader in linguistic anthropology (to appear).

⁸ Franz Boas : The man, A A 45:3.7 (1943).

⁹ An outline of the history of American Indian linguistics, ACLS Bull. 29.119 (1939).

¹⁰ E.g. in The Chumash and Costanoan languages, UCPAAE 9:2.237-71 (1910).

¹¹ Thus, ‘ Since there is practically no Nisenan linguistic material accessible beyond old word lists, the vocabulary obtained is given in full ‘֊—The Valley Nisenan, UCPAAE 24.289 (1929) ; ‘ There was no intention of presenting the imperfect lexical material thus obtained, until it was realized that no vocabulary of Washo has ever been published, and that the determination of the language by Powell as constituting an independent family, however correct it may be, has never been rendered verifiable by the general availability of the information used for the determination ‘—The Washo Language of east central California and Nevada, UCPAAE 4.308 (1907), and Notes on the Ute language, AA 10.74 (1908).

¹² E.g. ‘Consequently an occasion for obtaining information as to these two languages, presented by the visit to San Francisco ... of a number of Shoshoni and Bannock was made use of’—The Bannock and Shoshoni languages, AA 11.266 (1909).

¹³ E.g. Juan Dolores (a Papago) and Gilbert Natchez (a Paiute) ; see UCPAAE 20 (1923).

¹⁴ The speech of a Zuni child, AA 18.529-39 (1916).

¹⁵ Phonetic constituents of the native languages of California UCPAAE 10.1-12(1911) ; Phonetic elements of the Mohave language, UCPAAE 10.45-96 (1911); Phonetics of the Micronesian language of the Marshall islands, AA 13.380-93 (1911); Phonetic elements of the Diegueno language, UCPAAE 17.177-88 (1914) ; cf. also, Visible speech, Scientific American 112.471 (1915).

¹⁶ A good example is found in the history of gradual recognition of the members of the voiceless lateral order ; the matter is mentioned by Kroeber (UCPAAE 10.11 [1911]) and is salient in Boas’ work on the Northwest Coast.

¹⁷ He had particularly in mind his first colleague at Berkeley, Pliny Earle Goddard, who, fresh from a degree in philology with Benjamin Ide Wheeler, combined Athabaskan field work and laboratory phonetics, using equipment modelled on that current in French research. Goddard’s study of Hupa (UCPAAE 5.1-20 [1907]) was probably the first instrumental phonetics done with an American Indian language, and Kroeber, wishing to extend the use of such methods with American languages, chose Mohave because of familiarity with it through earlier fieldwork (UCPAAE 10.45-6 [1911]).

¹⁸ On alternating sounds, A A 2.47-53 (1889), reprinted in F. de Laguna (ed.), Selected papers from the American Anthropologist, 1888-1920 (Evanston, 1960), partly at Kroeber’s recommendation. Boas used psychophysical data to explain the supposed alternation of pronunciation as due to alternating apperception of a fixed sound partly resembling each of two different sounds in the observer’s speech. The paper, although falling short of a phonemic conception, is a remarkable anticipation of modern work on phonic interference.

¹⁹ AA 13.393 (1911) : in all essentials the Marshallese phonetic traits ‘ are duplicated in the Pima-Papago language of Arizona, and several individual features recur in a number of American languages ; but as regards the allied tongues of Malayo-Polynesian stock, the Marshall dialect seems to be phonetically greatly specialized.’

²⁰ Native languages of California, AA 5.2 (1903).

²¹ ‘ The convenience of the first exhaustive and entirely definite classification was so great that it was soon looked upon as fundamental, and the incentive to tamper with it was lost’—Kroeber, UCPAAE 11.288 (1915) ; cf. UCPAAE 16.49 (1919).

²² The determination of linguistic relationship, Anthropos 8.389-401 (1913), and statements in other writings of the period, e.g. UCPAAE 9.415 (1911).

²³ The numeral systems of California, AA 9.690 (1907).

²⁴ Its only successor as a systematic study was inspired by two former students of Kroeber ; see V. D. Hymes, Athapaskan numeral systems, IJAL 21.26-45 (1955).

²⁵ ‘ A principle that appears prominent in the facts that have been presented is that of territorial continuity of characteristics. A feature is rarely found in only one language. When it does occur in several stocks, as is usually the case, these are not scattered at random and more or less detached from each other, but generally form a continuous or nearly continuous area, however irregular its outline may be. This principle applies as well to types of languages as to single characteristics’—AA 5.21 (1903) ; ‘ The accompanying maps showing the geographical distribution by linguistic families of the various methods of numeral formation, sum up the material collected and the generalizations stated. They are in no need of a commentary beyond a notice of the extent to which the principle of territorial continuity of characteristics obtains. While diversity and irregularity seem the chief features of the maps, yet the areas in which similar numeral methods occur are not randomly scattered, but with few exceptions are geograph- ically continuous. This makes it clear that, with but little borrowing of specific words distinct families have considerably influenced each other as regards their processes of numeral formation’—AA 9.671 (1907).

²⁶ AA 13.319 (1911). (The passage was quoted in fn. 19 above.)

²⁷ UCPAEE 10:1.1-12 (1911).

²⁸ Introduction, UCPAAE 4.252-3 (1907).

²⁹ UCPAAE 11.287-9 (1915) are pages of special value for understanding this period ; see also SMC 100.7 (1940).

³⁰ UCPAAE 11.288 (1915). Kroeber’s contributions to this work are found in The Chumash and Costanoan languages, UCPAAE 9.237-71 (1910), on Miwok and Costanoan ; The languages of the coast of California north of San Francisco, UCPAAE 9.273-435 (1911), on presumption of Yurok-Wiyot connec- tion ; Relationship of the Indian languages of California, AA 14.691 (1912 ; with Dixon) ; The relationship of the Indian languages of California, Science 37.225 ; New linguistic families in California, AA 15.647-655 (with Dixon) ; Chontal, Seri, and Yuman, Science 40.448 (1914) ; Serian, Tequistlatecan, and Hokan, UCPAAE 11.279-90 (1915); and the principal statement, Linguistic families of California, UCPAAE 16.47-118 (1919 ; with Dixon).

³¹ UCPAAE 16.50 (1919).

³² Lg. 32.17-8 (1956).

³³ The dialectic divisions of the Moquelumnan family in relation to the internal differentiation of other linguistic families of California, AA 8.652-63 (1906).

³⁴ UCPAAE 12.31-69 (1916).

³⁵ Yurok speech usages, in S. Diamond (ed.), Culture in history : Essays in honor of Paul Radin 993-9 (New York, 1960).

³⁶ J. Royal Anthr. Inst. 39.77-84 (1909).

³⁷ See the papers by Lounsbury and Goodenough in the issue of Language (32:1, 1956) dedicated to Kroeber. Kroeber’s other important discussions of the problem are in his California kinship systems, UCPAAE 12.339-96 (1916) ; Kinship and history, AA 38.338-41 (1936) ; Yurok and neighboring kin term systems, UCPAAE 35.15-22 (1934) ; Athabascan kin term systems, AA 39.602-8 (1937). The 1909, 1934, 1936, and 1937 papers are reprinted in The nature of culture (the 1937 paper only in part), with introductory comment (172-3).

³⁸ ‘. . . the patterns have had each a history of its own as a pattern, just as the languages in which they occur have had each a history of its own ‘—Nature of culture 200.

^38a AA 39.608 (1937) ; The nature of culture 209.

³⁹ The sociological reconstructions are in G. P. Murdock, Social structure (New York, 1949) ; the linguistic checks are H. Hoijer, Athapaskan kinship systems, AA 58.309-33 (1956), which gives bifurcate collateral terms in the first ascending generation as against the generation type of terminology proposed by a follower of Murdock (see discussion in D. H. Hymes and H. E. Driver, On reconstructing Proto-Athapaskan kinship terms, AA 59.151-5 [1957]), and G. H. Matthews, Proto-Siouan kin terms, AA 61.252-78 (1959), which gives an Omaha system where Murdock inferred a Crow.

⁴⁰ The Dial 72:3.314-7 (March 1922).

⁴¹ E.g. W. J. Entwistle, Pre-grammar?, Archívum linguisticum 1.117-25 (1949), and Proceedings Vllth International Congress of Linguists 96, 392, 411 (London, 1956) ; see 394-6 of the latter for a statement in refutation by Bernard Bloch.

⁴² The languages of the American Indians, Popular Science Monthly 78.500-15 (1911) ; Anthropology (1923) 112-9.

⁴³ Essays xvii.

⁴⁴ AA 7.579-93 (1905).

⁴⁵ ‘ The technique of modern philology has something superb about it. It is as austere as anything in the world. The work of an accepted leader like Brugmann is of an order unsurpassed in any branch of learning. But it cannot be popularized . . . [Here is where Sapir’s book is new] ... It is unique in its field, and is likely to become and long remain standard’—The Dial 72:3.314, 317 (1922).

⁴⁶ This in 1923. Kroeber’s distaste for antiquarianism and insistence on public relevance appear most strongly here : ‘ obviously the heterogeneous leavings of several sciences will never weld into an organized and useful body of knowledge. ... As a co-laborer on the edifice of fuller understanding, anthropology must find more of a task than filling with rubble the temporarily vacant spaces in the masonry that the sciences are rearing ‘—Anthropology 2.

⁴⁷ ‘ Here, then, is a specific task and place in the sun for anthropology : the interpretation of these phenomena into which both organic and social causes enter. The untangling and determination and reconciling of these two sets of forces are anthropology’s own. They constitute, whatever else it may undertake, the focus of its attention and an ultimate goal.’—Anthropology 3-4.

⁴⁸ Sections on ‘ The biological and historical nature of language,’ ‘ Problems of the relation of language and culture,’ ‘ Period of the origin of language,’ Anthropology 106-10 (1923).

⁴⁹ Sign and symbol in bee communications, Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. 38.753-7 (1952).

⁵⁰ Quarterly review of biology 3.325-42 (1928) ; SJA 11.195-294 (1955).

⁵¹ The evolution of man’s capacity for culture, ed. J. N. Spuhler (Detroit, 1959), is inscribed as bringing up to date Kroeber’s 1928 paper, and within the volume, Hockett’s chapter on animal communication vis-à-vis language is dedicated to him.

⁵² AA 42.1-20(1940).

⁵³ Review of W. Tomkins, Indian sign language, in AA 29.127 (1927) ; Sign language inquiry, I JAL 24.1-9 (1958).

⁵⁴ The nature of culture 263 ff.

⁵⁵ Seven Mohave myths, UCPAR 11.1-70 (1948) ; A Mohave historical epic, UCPAR 11.76-171 (1951).

⁵⁶ The novel in Asia and Europe, UCP in Semitic and Oriental studies 11.233-41 (1951).

⁵⁷ ’Parts of speech in periods of English poetry, PMLA 73.309-14 (1958), a discussion of Miss Miles’s work.

⁵⁸ Kroeber, Systematic nomenclature in ethnology, AA 7.580 (1905) ; Some relations of linguistics and ethnology, Lg. 17.288 (1940) ; Concluding review, in S. Tax and others (eds.), An appraisal of anthropology today 369 (Chicago, 1955) ; Powell and Henshaw : An episode in the history of ethnolinguistics, Anthr. ling. 2:4.1-5 (1960). The full-scale discussion in the last paper was prompted by W. C. Sturtevant, Authorship of the Powell linguistic classification, IJ AL 25.196-9 (1959). The basis of the matter is a visit to Kroeber by Henshaw early in the century. In date and content Kroeber’s own 1905 paper (cited above) corroborates his memory of the event 55 years later.

⁵⁹ An outline of the history of American Indian linguistics, ACLS Bull. 29.116-20 (1939).

⁶⁰ Evolution, history, and culture, in S. Tax (ed.), Evolution after Darwin 2.1-6 (Chicago, 1960) ; the section is ‘ An exception : Philology,’ 8-9.

⁶¹ Ch. IV, Philology, Configurations of culture growth 215-38 (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1944).

⁶² Relationships of the Australian languages, Proc. Royal Sec. New S. Wales 57.101-117 (1923); Uto-Aztecan languages of Mexico, Ibero-Americana 8 (1934) ; Quantitative classification of Indo-European languages, Lg. 13.83-103 (with Chrétien); of Mayan languages, in Cultural and natural areas 112-4 (1939) ; The statistical technique and Hittite, Lg. 15.69-71 (1939 ; with Chrétien) ; Classification of the Yuman languages, UCPL 1.21-40 (1943).

⁶³ E.g. ‘ [there are] two new developments to chronicle, both of interest to cultural anthropologists in their results, and both using quantitative expression ‘ (referring to lexico-statistics and Greenberg’s typological indices)—History of anthropological thought, in W. L. Thomas (ed.), Current anthropology 296-7 (Chicago, 1955).

⁶⁴ In lexicostatistics : Linguistic time depth results so far and their meaning, IJAL 21.91-104 (1955) ; Romance history and glottochronology, Lg. 34.454-7 (1958) ; Reflections and tests on Athabascan glottochronology, UCPAAE 47.241-58 (1959) ; Semantic contribution of lexicostatistics, IJAL 27.1-8 (1961). On Greenberg’s quantitative typology, besides encouragement in Critical summагу and comment, in R. E. Spencer (ed.), Method and perspective in anthropology : Papers in honor of Wilson D. Wallis 213-99 (Minneapolis, 1954), and in Lg. 36.20-21 (1960), the first paper of an intended series, Typological indices I : Ranking of languages, IJAL 26.171-7 (1960).

⁶⁵ Style and civilizations 107.

⁶⁶ Style and civilizations 106.

⁶⁷ E.g. ‘ Linguistics is a genuine natural science dealing with intangible phenomena. That it grew out of culture-bound contexts augurs well for the study of culture ‘—concluding review, in S. Tax and others (eds.), An appraisal of anthropology today 368 (Chicago, 1953).

⁶⁸ Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn, Culture : A critical review of concepts and definitions, Papers of the Peabody museum of American archaeology and ethnology (Harvard University) 47:1.115-24 (1952).

⁶⁹ Culture 188.

⁷⁰ Concluding review, in S. Tax and others (eds.), op. cit. 370 (the Whorf correlations are not proved) ; comments passim in H. Hoijer (ed.), Language in culture (Chicago, 1954), such as that the Whorf insights are very interesting but hard to prove (231-2), and need certain kinds of testing (274).

⁷¹ Prepared comments on Clyde Kluckhohn, Notes on some anthropological aspects of communication, Wenner-Gren Foundation Symposium 7 (1960). I am much indebted to the director of the Foundation, Paul Fejos, for copies of the paper and the comments.

⁷² Review of Frances Densmore, Teton Sioux music, AA 20.446-50 (1918).

⁷³ G. L. Trager, The systematization of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, Anthr. ling. 1:1.31-8 (1959).

⁷⁴ AA 38.340 (1936).

⁷⁵ An Atsugewi word list, IJAL 24.203-4 (1958) ; Northern Yokuts, Anthr. ling. 1:8.1-19(1959) ; The Sparkman grammar of Luiseño, UCPL 16(1960 ; with George Grace) ; Yurok speech usages (see fn. 35) ; and two Yokuts mono- graphs now in press. Kroeber also resumed work on Yuki, and one note reached print : Possible Athapaskan influences on Yuki, IJAL 25.59 (1959).

⁷⁶ Linguistic time depth results so far and their meaning, IJAL 21.91-104 (1955) ; Romance history and glottochronology, Lg. 34.454-7 (1958) ; Reflections and tests on Athabascan glottochronology, Ethnographic interpretations 8, UCPAAE 47.241-58 (1959) ; Statistics, Indo-European, and taxonomy, Lg. 36.1-21 (1960) ; Typological indices I : Ranking of languages, IJAL 26.171-7 (1959) ; Semantic contribution of lexicostatistics, IJ AL 27.1-8 (1961).

⁷⁷ Addendum, Report on anthropological horizons (preliminary version) 70 (Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, 1960).

⁷⁸ IJAL 27.8 (1961).

⁷⁹ Foreword, Reader in linguistic anthropology (Ms.).

⁸⁰ E.g. ‘ The situation is one of those not infrequently arising in which the philologist, and only he, can come to the ethnologist’s or historian’s rescue. A dozen randomly preserved facts from the history of civilization of a nation are almost certain to be so disconnected as to allow only of the most general or doubtful inferences ; the same number of words, if only they and their meanings are carefully written down, may, if there are more fully known cognate tongues, suffice to determine with reasonable assurance the provenience and the main outlines of the national existence of a lost people. The student of history who permits the difference of material and technique of the sister science philology to lead him into the lax convenience of disregarding it as something alien and useless, withdraws his hand from one of the most productive tools within his reach—on occasion his only serviceable instrument ‘—Handbook 281 ; Kroeber considered the Handbook a history.

⁸¹ The Yokuts and Yuki languages, Boas anniversary volume 64-79 (New York, 1906). The conclusion states in part : ‘ the degree to which their similarities are fundamental is quickly and convincingly apparent when they are even superficially compared with such languages as Iroquois, Algonquin, Shoshonean, Eskimo, Nahuatl, Wakashan, Chinook, Salish, or Siouan ‘ (78).

⁸² E.g. ‘ [there are] two new developments to chronicle, both of interest to cultural anthropologists in their results, and both using quantitative expression ‘ (referring to lexico-statistics and Greenberg’s typological indices)—History of anthropological thought, in W. L. Thomas (ed.), Current anthropology 296-7 (Chicago, 1955).

⁸³ His repeated discussions of the use of suppletive stems for number in verbs, of the relation of objective and subjective forms to each other and to verbs, of the presence or absence of pronominal incorporation, are all with an eye toward then current typological generalizations about Amerindian languages.

⁸⁴ Prepared comment on Clyde Kluckhohn, Notes on some anthropological aspects of communication (1960).

⁸⁵ Noun incorporation in American languages, Verh. der XVI. Internationalen Amerikanisten-Kongress 569-76 (Wien, 1909) ; Noun composition in American languages, Anthropos 5.204-18 (1910). When Sapir then showed that ‘ incorporation ‘ could be given precise descriptive content (The problem of noun incorporation in American languages, AA 13.250-82 [1911]), Kroeber, noting that Sapir’s explication related it to stem-compounding, offered a fourfold typology of stem-compounding in terms of parts of speech that did away with need for the term ‘ incorporation' altogether : Incorporation as a linguistic process, AA 13.577-84 (1911).

⁸⁶ Arapaho dialects, UCPAAE 12.71-138 (1916), esp. 93. In the monograph Kroeber accepts rehabilitation of terms such as ‘ incorporation ‘ and ‘ polysynthetic' as convenient designations for particular applications of general processes (91-2).

⁸⁷ ‘ Language itself is a natural part of culture from one point of view, though it can also be separated off for other purposes of study. I have therefore not hesitated to put Paiute and Walapai into separate subareas and even main areas in my maps. It is true that Yuman speech (Walapai) would be as practicable north of the Grand Canyon as south of it or for that matter in the Colorado River bottomlands ; any historically particularized language is in its nature impervious to such interadaptation with environment. Consideration of speech may there-fore tend to blur the sharpness of classificatory conceptualization of culture. But as long as speech is in culture, and cultures are what we are classifying, speech obviously belongs in the picture ‘—Comments to P. Kirchoff, Gatherers and farmers, AA 56.556-9 (1954).

⁸⁸ Linguistic time depth results so far and their meaning, IJAL 21.91-105 (1955).

⁸⁹ Recent ethnic spreads, UCPAAE 47.235-310 (1959).

⁹⁰ Lg. 17.290-1 (1940), regarding Ray’s work on Melanesian ; Kroeber had reviewed Ray’s book a quarter-century before, A A 29.705 (1927).

⁹¹ R. Jakobson, Franz Boas’ approach to language, IJAL 10.188-95 (1944). The disagreement between Boas and Sapir, and the theoretical issue, have been explicated by Morris Swadesh, Diffusional cumulation and archaic residue as historical explanations, SJA 7.1-21 (1951).

⁹² E.g. in IJAL 21.92-3 (1955), and SMC 100.7 (1940).

⁹³ See fn. 25.

⁹⁴ Cf. Lg. 17.289 (1940), SMC 100.7 (1940).

⁹⁵ ‘ I did not think the “overall anarchy” will be permanent—more like a turn of the tide : still flowing out and the new flood coming in. I’m not in the least pessimistic over it ; stimulated rather ‘—(personal communication, 12 July 1960).

⁹⁶ Lg. 36.19-20 (1960).

⁹⁷ Sapir spent a year before his degree as Research Fellow at Berkeley, but : ‘ Sapir’s stay fell in the terminal year of a second period of affluence and research activity provided for the Department and Museum of Anthropology by Regent Phoebe Apperson Hearst. In the summer of 1908 came a renewed and deeper cut in resources, with the University assuming responsibility for all staff salaries ; this circumstance rendered a continuation of Sapir’s connection with the University impossible. In fact the staff of Anthropology—Museum and Department —was reduced to the two original academic appointees : Goddard and myself. A year later, Goddard, depressed by the contracted prospects at Berkeley, accepted an appointment with the American Museum in New York.’—Kroeber’s preface, E. Sapir and M. Swadesh, Y ana dictionary (ed. by M. R. Haas), UCPL 22.V (1960).

⁹⁸ C. Lévi-Strauss, L’Express 32-3 (Paris, October 20, 1960).