ABSTRACT
Morris Swadesh was a leader in the first generation to develop modern linguistic analysis in the United States—the generation that came to the analysis of linguistic structure as something with a distinct methodology to be developed and learned. Swadesh has recognized and avoided many of the palpable weaknesses of earlier writings on the subject”. Other papers that were to be seen as fundamental to the later development of the “neo-Bloomfieldian” position acknowledge his influence. Swadesh’s career must be seen against the background of these years as student of and collaborator with Sapir. One hears of the ‘‘Yale School” of linguistics in reference to Leonard Bloomfield, who went to Yale as Sterling Professor in 1940, and more particularly in reference to the “neo-Bloom-fieldian” scholars who dominated American linguistic discussion in the nineteen-forties and early nineteen-fifties. As evidence accumulated of lexical connections throughout both the Old and New World, Swadesh’s conviction of the unity of the whole became firm.
