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, AA 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, AA 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 geographically 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 connection; 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 UCP AAE 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 UCP AAE 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?, Archivum linguisticum 1.117–25 (1949), and Proceedings VII^th 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 communication, 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 maris 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-a-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, IJAL 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, IJAL 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 lexicostatistics 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, UCP AAE 47.241–58 (1959); Semantic contribution of lexicostatistics, IJAL 27.1–8 (1961). On Greenberg's quantitative typology, besides encouragement in Critical summary and comment, in R. E. Spencer (ed.), Method and perspective in anthropology: Papers in honor of Wilson D. Wallis 273–99 (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 monographs 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, UCP AAE 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, IJAL 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. 'I feel that the study of both culture and language is in crying need, in its own right, of far more systematic classification of their multifarious phenomena. Perhaps we have had a surplus of bright ideas and a shortage of consistent ordering and comparison of our data'—Lg. 36.17 (1960); 'The situation is made more difficult by the fact that anthropologists still tend to value personal expertise, technical virtuosity, cleverness in novelty, and do not yet clearly recognize the fundamental value of the humble but indispensable task of classifying—that is, structuring—our body of knowledge, as biologists did begin to recognize it two hundred years ago'—Evolution, history, and culture, in S. Tax (ed.), Evolution after Darwin 2.14 (Chicago, 1960).

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, An-thropos 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, UCP AAE 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 therefore 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, AA 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, Yana dictionary (ed. by M. R. Haas), UCPL 22.v (1960).

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