ABSTRACT
Like Saussure's Cours, Edward Sapir's Language, first published in 1921, seeks to stake out the overall field of language study. Sapir hopes to provide a stimulus for the more fundamental study of a neglected field'. Sapir's characteristic stance is a striking mix of sobriety and exuberance. His portrayals of language, for example, range from staid abstractions of a Saussurian cast over to extravagant panegyrics. At the sober end, Sapir describes 'language' as a 'conventional', 'arbitrary system of symbolisms'. Meanwhile, a strong later trend in American linguistics was foreshadowed by Sapir's recommendation that 'linguistic form may and should be studied as types of patterning, apart from the associated functions'. Sapir's 'tabular statement' of 'concepts' is divided on one side into 'concrete', which subsumes 'radical' and 'derivational'; and on the other side into 'relational', which subsumes 'reference', 'modality', 'personal relations', 'number', and 'time'. As befits Sapir's mentalist orientation, he warns 'linguistic students' that 'sound change' is 'a strictly psychological phenomenon'.
