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From: Ross Clark <benlizro@ihug.co.nz>
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Franz Boas born (9-7-1858)
Date: Wed, 10 Jul 2024 11:30:35 +1200
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Repeating myself from 2018:

July 9 - Franz Boas (1858)
More important to anthropology than to linguistics, but...He was
the teacher of Sapir and Kroeber and thus of a whole line of Americanists.
He did important first-hand work on Native American languages 
(especially Kwakiutl -- well, OK, Native Canadian), and helped to 
establish their methods and analytical approach.
His paper "On Alternating Sounds" (1889) was an important contribution 
to the emergent concept of the phoneme.
Other important themes are the independence of race,language and 
culture, and the challenge of distinguishing between diffusion and 
common inheritance to explain shared linguistic traits.

Oh yes: His doctorate was in physics, with a dissertation on factors 
affecting the colour of sea-water.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Boas

Crystal emphasizes how the opening vista of indigenous languages of the 
Americas broadened the European-focused view of linguists generally. 
Quotes from B's Introduction to the Handbook of American Indian 
Languages, on how categories like tense and gender may work very 
differently, or be absent altogether, in various of these languages.

"In America, true gender is on the whole rare."