In this episode, we begin our exploration of American linguistics by looking at the innovative contributions of Franz Boas (1858–1942) and his circle of students.

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Boas, Franz (1889), ‘On alternating sounds’, American Anthropologist 2.1: 47–54. https://doi.org/10.1525/aa.1889.2.1.02a00040

Boas, Franz, ed. (1911), Handbook of American Indian Languages, Part I, Washington DC: Government Printing Office. Google Books

Boas, Franz, and Ella Cara Deloria (1941), Dakota Grammar, Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office.

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Powell, John Wesley (1887), ‘Museums of ethnology and their classification’, Science 9: 612–614. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.ns-9.229.612

Bunzl, Matti (1996), ‘Franz Boas and the Humboldtian tradition: From Volksgeist and Nationalcharakter to an anthropological concept of culture’, in George W. Stocking Jr., ed., Volksgeist as method and ethic: Essays on Boasian ethnography and the German anthropological tradition, 17–78, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.

Darnell, Regna (1998), And along came Boas: Continuity and revolution in Americanist anthropology. Amsterdam: Benjamins.

Krüger, Gesine (2021), ‘Franz Boas and the “School of Rebellious Women”‘, Journal of the History of Ideas Blog. https://jhiblog.org/2021/04/26/boas-school-of-rebellious-women/

Mackert, Michael (1993), ‘The roots of Franz Boas’ view of linguistic categories as a window to the human mind’, Historiographia Linguistica 20.2–3: 331–351.

Mackert, Michael (1994), ‘Franz Boas’ theory of phonetics’, Historiographia Linguistica 21.3: 351–386.

McElvenny, James (2019), ‘Alternating sounds and the formal franchise in phonology’, in James McElvenny, ed., Form and Formalism in Linguistics, 35–58, Berlin: Language Science Press. Open Access

Thomas, Margaret (in press), ‘Boas’ “purely analytical approach” to language classification in the backdrop to American structuralism’, in James McElvenny, ed., The Limits of Structuralism, Oxford: Oxford University Press.