LANGUAGE

AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF SPEECH

BY
EDWARD SAPIR


1939

1921




PREFACE


This little book aims to give a certain perspective on the subject of
language rather than to assemble facts about it. It has little to say of
the ultimate psychological basis of speech and gives only enough of the
actual descriptive or historical facts of particular languages to
illustrate principles. Its main purpose is to show what I conceive
language to be, what is its variability in place and time, and what are
its relations to other fundamental human interests--the problem of
thought, the nature of the historical process, race, culture, art.

The perspective thus gained will be useful, I hope, both to linguistic
students and to the outside public that is half inclined to dismiss
linguistic notions as the private pedantries of essentially idle minds.