definition of language according to edward sapir

It is also influenced by Italian famous idealist philosopher Benedetto Croce.

 Sapirs psychological tendency in his grammatical research is affected by his teacher, Franz Boas, who claims that anthropology and psychology are indivisible. He points out the basic concepts and pure relational concepts are essential to all languages, while derivational concepts and concrete relational concepts are common but not essential. Based on his analysis, Sapir categorizes various speeches in the world.

Besides, he subdivides relational elements into concrete relational concepts modifying radical elements and pure relational concepts defining the sentence forms. In the further analysis, Sapir revises his first classification by attributing radical elements and derivational elements to material content, with each corresponding to basic concepts and derivational concepts. Meanwhile, derivational elements define the meanings of radical elements, but they do not influence the meaning of a proposition. At the sentence level, there are relational elements used to express relational concepts which define the relationship among radical elements and construct the forms of proposition. It is unique in that Sapir categorizes different language elements according to the various concepts conveyed by them, the way of which highlights the psychological and social characteristics of language. According to Sapirs grammatical theory, there are two types of concepts and of linguistic elements: radical elements expressing radical concepts and derivational elements expressing descriptive or derivational concepts.

The fifth chapter Form in Language: Grammatical Concepts presents Sapirs unique grammatical analysis which is conceptcentered and meaning based. This perspective is not only reflected in the popular ″SapirWhorf Hypothesis″ but also in Sapirs grammatical research. In the grammatical analysis, Edward Sapir places persistent emphasis on languages social and psychological essence. This book includes both the language external research, the research on the languagerelated culture, and the language internal research, the research on language concept system.

Definition of language according to edward sapir