Women, Language and Linguistics: Three American Stories from the First Half of the Twentieth Century (Routledge Studies in the History of Linguistics)

WOMEN, LANGUAGE AND LINGUISTICS

Women have been a dynamic force in American linguistics, yet this has not always been apparent in current histories of linguistics. For twentieth century linguistics, Julia S.Falk argues, the same story has been told over and over: a story of leading men, their followers, and their interest in language as a structure observable in patterns of the distribution of forms. This book challenges this received history by presenting a much-needed reevaluation of twentieth century American linguistics which focuses on the contributions of women to our modern understanding of language. This book relates an account of linguistics as perceived and experienced by three American women in the first half of the twentieth century. Alice Vanderbilt Morris dreamed of creating a new auxiliary language for international communication, and brought together professional linguists and members of the New York upper class to achieve her goal. Gladys Amanda Reichard devoted her life to the study of Native American languages; despite opposition from men who claimed the territory, her studies still survive. And E.Adelaide Hahn brought themes of modern linguistics to the study of Latin and Hittite, keeping her colleagues mindful of ancient and classical languages. Rather than the standard American story of an increasingly triumphant march of scientific inquiry towards structural phonology, Women, Language and Linguistics reveals a linguistics where the purpose of language was communication; the appeal of languages lay in their diversity; and the authority of language resided with its speakers and writers. Julia S.Falk explores the vital part which women have played in preserving a linguistics based on the reality and experience of language; this book finally brings to light a neglected perspective for those working in linguistics and the history of linguistics. Julia S. Falk is Professor of Linguistics at Michigan State University. She is the author of Linguistics and Language, and is 1999 president-elect of the North American Association for the History of the Language Sciences.

ROUTLEDGE STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF LINGUISTICS Series Editor: Talbot Taylor

1 LINGUISTICS AND THE THIRD REICH Mother-tongue fascism, race and the science of language Christopher M.Hutton 2 WOMEN, LANGUAGE AND LINGUISTICS Three American stories from the first half of the twentieth century Julia S.Falk

WOMEN, LANGUAGE AND LINGUISTICS Three American Stories from the First Half of the Twentieth Century

Julia S.Folk

London and New York

First published 1999 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2002. Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 © 1999 Julia S.Falk All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Falk, Julia S. Women, language and linguistics: three American stories from the first half of the twentieth century/Julia S.Falk. p. cm. —(Routledge studies in the history of linguistics) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Linguistics-United States-History-20th century. 2. Women linguistsUnited States Biography. I. Title. II. Series P81.U5F35 1999 410'.82'092273–dc21 [B] 99–24799 CIP ISBN 0-415-13315-7 ISBN 0-203-21264-9 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-203-21260-6 (Glassbook Format)

CONTENTS

ix xi xiii xiv

List of figures Preface Acknowledgments List of abbreviations

PART I Introduction

1

1 Turning points

3

2 Women Foundation Members of the Linguistic Society of America

7

3 Participation obstacles and exclusion

21

4 Three stories

26

PART II Alice Vanderbilt Morris

31

5 A Vanderbilt woman

33

6 Founding of IALA

40

7 Auxiliary languages: a brief history

43

8 The academy

45

9 IALA’s research programs

48

10 Alice Vanderbilt Morris and Edward Sapir

59

11 Conflicts and changes

70 v

CONTE NTS

12

The final product

75

13

Money and connections

78

14

Conclusions

87

PART III Gladys Amanda Reichard

93

15

Traditions

95

16

Elsie Clews Parsons: scientist, benefactor, institution

101

17

Preparation for the field

111

18

Language—a living, cultural phenomenon

120

19

The Hogan School

132

20

Nature of language and goals of linguistics

139

21

Territoriality

156

22

Relationships

164

23

Reputation

176

PART IV E.Adelaide Hahn

185

24

A life without boundaries

187

25

Friends and colleagues

192

26

Adelaide Hahn and the Linguistic Society of America

207

27

Language and linguistics at Hunter College

217

28

Philology and linguistics

223

29

Vergil, Horace, and Winston Churchill

234

30

Ancient and classical languages

239

31

Problems of method

249

32

Not forgotten

260

vi

CONTE NTS

PART V

265

33

Epilogue

267

Notes References Index

270 274 291

vii

FIGURES

2.1 The Women Foundation Members of the Linguistic Society of America 5.1 The Vanderbilt family: a partial genealogy showing members mentioned in text 5.2 Alice Shepard, portrait by John Singer Sargent, 1888 9.1 Linguistic Society of America members and the auxiliary language movement in the United States 9.2 Excerpts from ‘Why Should We Cut Out Our Tongues?’ by Alice V.Morris (Morris 1927) 10.1 Alice Vanderbilt Morris 12.1 An Interlingua sample 13.1 Radio address delivered from Brussels 12 October 1935 by Dave Hennen Morris (D.Morris 1936:386–387) 16.1 New York anthropologists 16.2 Elsie Clews Parsons 17.1 From the Preface to American Indian Life, by Elsie Clews Parsons (Parsons 1922:1) 18.1 From the Introduction to Navaho Grammar, by Gladys Amanda Reichard (Reichard 1951:6) 19.1 Cover and first page of newspaper White Sands News from the Hogan School conducted by Gladys Reichard in Summer 1934 20.1 Letter from Gladys A.Reichard to Edward Sapir, 27 March 1924 20.2 Excerpt from ‘The Character of the Navaho Verb Stem’, by Gladys A.Reichard (Reichard 1949:56–57) 23.1 Gladys Amanda Reichard 24.1 E.Adelaide Hahn, Class of 1915

ix

8 34 39 54 56 60 77 83 105 106 114 131

136 141 149 182 190

FIG U RES

24.2 Vita prepared by E.Adelaide Hahn and printed at the end of her doctoral dissertation (Hahn 1930) 25.1 E.Adelaide Hahn with John J.Meng and George N. Shuster 25.2 E.Adelaide Hahn with Robert Austerlitz and Hugh Stimson 26.1 E.Adelaide Hahn: participation at meetings of the Linguistic Society of America, 1924–1967 32.1 E.Adelaide Hahn

x

191 198 201 208 264

PREFACE

Despite increasing interest over the last few decades in both linguistic historiography and the status of women in linguistics, there have been surprisingly few attempts to explore the roles and lives of women in the early years of American linguistics. The Committee on the Status of Women in Linguistics of the Linguistic Society of America has begun to remedy this gap with important materials about women linguists (e.g., Davison & Eckert 1990), but so far all of their work has focused on women currently active in the field. Historians looking to the past have chosen to include only male linguists in the series of memoirs and recollections titled First Person Singular (Davis & O’Cain 1980, Koerner 1991, 1998). The major histories of early twentieth century American linguistics generally relegate women to footnotes. Six years ago, when I began a search for the women I was sure must be there— my intellectual ancestors—some friends and colleagues gently conveyed their skepticism that I would find anything (or anyone) of interest or value. Others were encouraging and even optimistic, and for their continuing support I am grateful, especially to Sally Thomason, John Joseph, Talbot Taylor, and many members of the North American Association for the History of the Language Sciences, who responded to papers that were, in effect, early drafts of sections of this book. Other colleagues over the years have sent references, anecdotes, hints, offprints, and comments that aided my work, and I was able to draw both information and inspiration from studies on women in other fields, particularly Margaret Rossiter’s books on Women Scientists in America (1982, 1995), Nancy Parezo and her colleagues’ essays on women anthropologists (Parezo 1993a), and Desley Deacon’s account of Elsie Clews Parsons (1997). Archives and archivists at the Canadian Museum of Civilization, the Linguistic Society of America Secretariat, the Museum of Northern Arizona, the New York Public Library, Radcliffe College, Syracuse University, and Yale University provided valuable documents. Special thanks go to Beth Carroll-Horrocks, formerly of the American Philosophical Society Library, to Frank Esterhill of the Interlingua Institute, and to Julio Hernandez-Delgado of the Hunter College Library for their always prompt responses to my frequent requests for papers and photographs, as well as to Robin D.Franklin xi

PREFACE

for her assistance with research for Part IV. From the University of Michigan Library Tatiana Schwartz searched the nation for uncommon books and documents, finding everything I asked for. Michigan State University provided me with released time and funds to travel to archives and collections through its All-University Research Initiation and Completion Grants. I have done what I could, with all of this help, in the six years devoted to this project. The work was a challenge and a joy, but this book is not yet enough. My fondest hope for the future is that others will take up these stories and take on other stories of other women linguists. There is so much more to learn. I was never alone. There were always letters, e-mails, and telephone calls in response to queries, people volunteering new documents or critiquing drafts. The women from the past spoke to me constantly, about their lives and their work, through their letters, their articles and books, even their photographs. And when it all seemed too much, or too little, my husband, Thomas H.Falk, stood nearby to comfort, to cajole, and to coax me back to my study, my computer, and my documents, until these, the last words, are written—at least for now. Williamston, Michigan Julia S.Falk

xii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

In addition to the credits and acknowledgments that appear throughout the following text, I make specific recognition of the following: Portions of Parts I, II, and III appeared in preliminary versions as the following articles, respectively: ‘The Women Foundation Members of the Linguistic Society of America,’ Language 70.455–490(1994); ‘Words without Grammar: Linguists and the International Auxiliary Language Movement in the United States,’ Language & Communication 15.241–259 (1995); and ‘Territoriality, Relationships, and Reputation: The Case of Gladys A.Reichard,’ Southwest Journal of Linguistics 16.17–37(1997). I thank the Linguistic Society of America, publisher of Language; Elsevier Science Ltd., publisher of Language & Communication; and Jon G.Jonz, Editor, Southwest Journal of Linguistics for permission to use the material here. In Figure 9.2 the excerpts from ‘Why Should We Cut Out Our Tongues?’ by Alice V.Morris, The Forum 77.712–716 (May 1927), are quoted with permission of the current presumed copyright holder, Mark Remond, Publisher, Current History, Inc. In Figure 13.1 Dave Hennen Morris’s radio address, originally published in World Order, January 1936, pp. 386–387, is reproduced with the permission of the Bahá’í Publishing Trust. The complete credit for Figure 20.1 is Canadian Museum of Civilization, image number: Edward Sapir Correspondence (I-A-236M-folder Reichard, Gladys A., 1923– 1924). In Figure 20.2 the excerpt from ‘The Character of the Navaho Verb Stem’ by Gladys A. Reichard, Word 5.55–76(1949), appears with permission of Ruth M.Brend, Assistant to the Managing Editor, Word, Journal of the International Linguistic Association. Nathalie F.S.Woodbury, literary executor for Gladys Amanda Reichard, generously granted permission for the reproduction in Part III of Reichard’s letters, memoranda, reports, photographs, and passages from her publications. For Part IV, Yale University Library authorized the publication of correspondence in its collection between E.Adelaide Hahn and Bernard Bloch, 1935–1965, from the Bernard Bloch Papers, Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library.

xiii

ABBREVIATIONS

AAA AAU ACLS APA APS BBP ECPP EHS/LSA ESC FBC GARC HCA IALA IIP IJAL ILP IRC JAOS LSA LSAA MNA NRC NYT SUA TAPA YWCA

American Anthropological Association Association of American Universities American Council of Learned Societies American Philological Association American Philosophical Society Bernard Bloch Papers. Yale University Archives Elsie Clews Parsons Papers. American Philosophical Society Edgar Howard Sturtevant papers in the Linguistic Society of America Archives Edward Sapir’s Correspondence. Canadian Museum of Civilization Professional Correspondence of Franz Boas. American Philosophical Society Gladys A.Reichard Collection. Museum of Northern Arizona Hunter College Archives and Special Collections International Auxiliary Language Association Interlingua Institute Papers. Rare Books and Manuscripts Division, New York Public Library International Journal of American Linguistics Intensive Language Program International Research Council Journal of the American Oriental Society Linguistic Society of America Linguistic Society of America Archives. Formerly, American Philosophical Society. Currently, Western Historical Manuscript Collection, University of Missouri-Columbia Museum of Northern Arizona National Research Council New York Times Syracuse University Archives, Byrd Library Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association Young Women’s Christian Association

xiv

Part I

INTRODUCTION

1

TURNING POINTS

Diversity and pluralism, realities of modern society in much of the world, have long been characteristic of academic communities. In both the humanities and the sciences it is rare that any two members of the same academic department share exactly the same specialization, even when they agree on theoretical orientation. Theoretical diversity sometimes exists within an institution, but it is more likely to differentiate one program from another. Differences, even disputes, over theory are, in fact, at the heart of the intellectual enterprise. To question a theory, to uncover new evidence to support or refute a hypothesis, to reinterpret a known text, to bring into consideration an idea that has been neglected, these are critical to the advancement of knowledge. Such challenges are possible precisely because the members of a discipline differ from one another, in perspectives, assumptions, theories, and methods. No current participant and no historian would deny the pluralism that exists at any given time within modern linguistics. Indeed, linguists discussing recent events are likely to dwell on differences, as, for example, can be seen in the various accounts of the 1960s and early 1970s in generative grammar in the United States (Harris 1993, Huck & Goldsmith 1995, Newmeyer 1996). But for the history of a time well past and yet still present in living memory, that diversity of views is rarely the focus. Indeed, the same story is told over and over. For the first half of the twentieth century in the United States, the story begins with the foundational work of Franz Boas at the turn of the century, proceeds to the work of Edward Sapir and Leonard Bloomfield, goes on to the ‘structuralism’ or ‘descriptivism’ of their most prolific students, and concentrates there on the subject of phonology and the methodology of distribution (see, for example, Sampson 1980, Hymes & Fought 1981, Matthews 1993, Robins 1997). Such histories of American linguistics are hegemonic, though not necessarily intentionally so. Written by men, some of whom were themselves a part of the very past they portray, the accounts provide just one view of linguistics, the scene discerned most clearly by participants whose own professional success over time has been due in large measure to the place where they themselves

3

I NTRODUCTION

once stood, when they first took the picture. Even when controversy is depicted, it is narrowly focused. A somewhat different kind of picture emerges when history is written for a more distant past, one in which the historian was not a direct participant. In Julie Tetel Andresen’s Linguistics in America, 1769–1924 (1990) we see a pluralistic field, with three ‘arcs of development’ that overlapped through much of the nineteenth century before they began to separate in its final quarter. The arcs were English studies, American Indian studies, and the development of linguistic science. For the last, as linguistics moved toward autonomy in the first quarter of the twentieth century, Andresen repeats the Boas-SapirBloomfield story. But because she took a wider view, also considering English studies, she was led to Louise Pound, a linguist never mentioned in more traditional accounts of American linguistics (pp. 233–235). Further, she reports what other historians do not mention, that when the Linguistic Society of America was founded in 1924, there were more than two dozen women among its first members (p. 241). Andresen counted twenty five; the Foundation Member list included even more—thirty one—as discussed here in the following section. Yet virtually no women appear in most accounts of American linguistics prior to 1950, and even when women are there, they are very difficult to find. Sampson mentions a single woman, unidentifiable as such because he uses an initial, not a first name, describing the person only as one of Roman Jakobson’s students; E. Aginsky (p. 131) is Ethel G.Aginsky. Elsewhere a few women appear not for their own work but because they wrote something about prominent men, e.g., Adelaide Hahn is mentioned once by Hymes and Fought, in a footnote, recounting an incident in which Edgar Sturtevant praised Sapir (Hymes & Fought 1981:115n.35). Margaret Schlauch is in the text, but she, too, appears not for her own linguistic work but for her criticism of the work of Bloomfield’s male followers (Hymes & Fought 1981:57). Matthews and Robins cite no work by women prior to 1950. Hymes and Fought do include Mary Haas’s work on Tunica (pp. 86, 90)—her 1935 doctoral dissertation and a grammatical sketch (Haas 1946); other references are to her later work, also mentioned by Matthews and Robins. More recently, a memorial issue of the journal Anthropological Linguistics contains a collection of eulogistic essays on Haas, who died in 1996 (vol. 39, no. 4, Winter 1997). Otherwise, there simply are no detailed accounts anywhere of the linguistic work conducted by women prior to 1950 in the United States, nor are there histories of American linguistics that reveal the diversity of interests, topics, and research that characterized the work of that period. What we have available now are any number of works that present ‘the great man theory of history,’ history based solely on men who have been the most interesting and influential contributors to the field, a restriction seriously questioned by contemporary historiographers (Novick 1988:8). 4

TURNI NG POI NTS

Confronting just this situation more than a decade ago, the women of American anthropology took it upon themselves to ‘re-place’ women scholars in history, a turning point in the historiography of anthropology. Nancy J.Parezo led a remarkable effort that focused on women in the American Southwest. The project included interviews with nineteen senior women anthropologists; an exhibit of work by women anthropologists and a catalogue, published as Daughters of the Desert (Babcock & Parezo 1988); a 1986 academic conference on women in Southwest anthropology; and a volume of papers by fourteen anthropologists, documenting, describing, and sometimes theorizing the lives and the contributions of dozens of women, the Hidden Scholars (Parezo 1993a). Included among them were several women who had done linguistic, as well as anthropological work, in the earlier years, in the first half of the twentieth century, women such as Gladys A.Reichard and Ruth Bunzel. But of course these studies focused on contributions to anthropology. Despite this extensive effort to recover the contributions of women, to consider their roles and the strategies they used to become and remain part of ‘a male-dominated and controlled’ discipline (Parezo 1993a: xiii), Parezo and her colleagues realized that ‘it would be impossible to discover enough comparable information on cohorts to make meaningful generalizations’ (p. xiv) . The study of women’s contributions to the field was ‘a subject that is only just beginning to emerge’ (p. xviii). How much more true for the history of women’s contributions to American linguistics, and so the first historiographic question is where to begin. Perhaps paradoxically, one answer is to examine the records of an institution that became the stronghold of the men and the approach that was to dominate the field, eventually submerging both diversity of interest and the presence of women. The founding of the Linguistic Society of America (LSA) in late 1924 marked a turning point for the discipline. Previously linguists had been scattered among the academic departments of universities, in departments of English, of the familiar languages and literatures of western Europe, of classics, of anthropology. The Call for the Organization Meeting for a new Linguistic Society, signed by twenty nine men, sought to bring together these ‘students of language…to meet each other, give…opportunity for the exchange of ideas, and represent the interests of our studies’ (Language 1:1.6–7[1 925]) . Since half of the ‘Signers of the Call’ were situated at colleges, universities, museums, and government offices along the northern east coast, the first meeting was held in New York City, at the American Museum of Natural History, on Sunday morning, 28 December 1924. That location also made attendance possible for the women faculty of New York’s oldest and largest institution of higher education for women, Hunter College. Luise Haessler, E.Adelaide Hahn, Anna Jacobson, Henrietta Prentiss, and Helen H.Tanzer were all present, the largest single contingent at the meeting (Language 1:1.8[1925]). By calling on ‘students of language,’ the LSA’s organizers included in linguistics not only academic scholars affiliated with institutions of research 5

I NTRODUCTION

and higher education, but teachers in high schools and even members of the public: ‘Membership in the Society is not restricted to professed scholars in linguistics. All persons, whether men or women, who are in sympathy with the objects of the Society, are invited to give it their assistance in furthering its work’ (LSA Bulletin 2.2[1928]). The explicit invitation to women and the open scope seemed to promise an organization of diverse membership and interests. In fact, very quickly there arose a movement to define linguistics narrowly, to stress the scientific study of language, to withdraw from philological study of written texts and their cultural context, and to exclude the nonprofessional. These shifts, too, were a turning point, and the newly professionalized discipline was gradually redirected to the mechanistic, synchronic study of language that would characterize what became known as ‘American structuralism.’ The founding of the LSA was seen by its organizers as a historic step, one to be carefully documented. The records, therefore, were comprehensive although not always entirely accurate, and membership lists provided not only names, but affiliations and areas of special interest. These early membership lists give a clearer indication than any other documents of the participation of women in linguistic work in 1924–1925.

6

2

WOMEN FOUNDATION MEMBERS OF THE LINGUISTIC SOCIETY OF AMERICA When women are included, American linguistics at the time the LSA was founded was more respectful of the past and less revolutionary, more diverse and less constrained than existing historiographic work leads us to expect. It is not that women had some special niche in the field, but rather that, viewing the field from the perspective of their work and their careers, we come to see those early years differently. With this different perspective, it is impossible to accept the characterization given by Stephen Murray (1991:3): With their contempt for how languages were studied at the time, their rejection of received categories and presuppositions…, their regard of fieldwork as the only reliable method of gathering data, and their tendency to disregard any previous scholarly work, the founders of the Linguistic Society of America look like scientific revolutionaries. While this emphasis on American structuralism occurs repeatedly in standard historiographic writing, it is simply untrue of the majority of men who founded the LSA and of the women who were among its earliest members.1 Following the organization meeting in December 1924, the LSA established the designation of Foundation Member for anyone who paid ‘the annual dues for 1925 on or before March 31, 1925’ (Language 1.26[1925]). There were some slight adjustments to this requirement to accommodate a few people whose checks arrived late, and at the second annual meeting of the society, Roland Grubb Kent (1877–1952), secretary-treasurer, reported a total of 274 Foundation Members (Language 2.65 [1926]). Of these, thirty one, or 11 percent, were women. Throughout the first decade of the LSA, women comprised 10–15 percent of the membership. Many had earned doctoral degrees at prestigious institutions and held professorships. Some published their dissertations and other scholarly works, served within the professional organizations, and spoke at the conferences of learned societies. In addition to recognizing their contributions to knowledge, education, and the profession, it is important to understand how and why they, and the areas of linguistics they pursued, have all but disappeared from our histories. 7

I NTRODUCTION

From the ‘List of Foundation Members’ in Language 1.26–36(1925), with postscripted names alphabetized. The entries are reproduced here as they were published, including inconsistencies (e.g., ‘College’ unabbreviated for Haessler, abbreviated for Hahn). The year in brackets following an entry is the year membership terminated, determined from subsequent annual Lists of Members and reports of the LSA secretary-treasurer. Prof. Sarah T.Barrows, Univ. of Iowa, Iowa City, la. (Phonetics) [1927] Prof. Gertrude H.Beggs, Univ. of Richmond, Richmond, Va. (Latin) [1930] Miss M.Julia Bentley, 3517 Middleton Av., Clifton, Cincinnati, O. [1929] Prof. Louise M.Bourgoin, 54 West St., Northampton, Mass. (French, Smith Col.) [1927] Miss Florence C.Brachman, 8439 Germantown Av., Philadelphia, Pa. [1927] Mrs. Beatrice Allard Brooks, 9 State St., Wellesley, Mass. [1927] Dr. Edith Frances Claflin, 17Felton Hall, Cambridge, Mass. [1953] Miss Roberta D.Cornelius, Randolph-Macon Woman’s Col., Lynchburg, Va. (English) [1938] Prof. Luise Haessler, 100 Morningside Drive, New York City. (German, Hunter College) [1940] Miss E.Adelaide Hahn, 640 Riverside Drive, New York City. (Greek and Latin, Hunter Col.) [1967] Dr. Anna Jacobson, Hunter College, New York City. (German) [1926] Prof. Eva Johnston, Univ. of Missouri, Columbia, Mo. (Latin) [1926] Prof. May Lansfield Keller, Univ. of Richmond, Richmond, Va. (English) [1962] Miss Ruth M.Keller, 568 S.Champion Av., Columbus, O. [1933] Miss Selma S.König, 604 E.Erie St., Albion, Mich. (Modern Langs., Albion Col.) [1965] Miss Mary S.Lee, 879 Wynnewood Road, Philadelphia, Pa. [1930] Miss Charlotte Townsend Littlejohn, 23 E. 67th St., New York City. [?] Mrs. Robert M.Littlejohn, 23 E. 67th St., New York City. [?] Dr. Anna P.MacVay, 418 Central Park West, New York City. [1926] Mrs. Dave Hennen Morris, 19 E. 70th St., New York City. [1950] Dr. Elsie Clews Parsons, Harrison, N.Y. [1932] Prof. Louise Pound, Univ. of Nebraska, Lincoln, Neb. (English) [1942] Prof. Henrietta Prentiss, Hunter College, New York City. (Speech and Dramatics) [1938] Miss Else M.Saleski, 508 N.Frances St., Madison, Wis. (German, Univ. of Wisconsin) [1932] Prof. Lillian S.Smith, Agnes Scott Col., Decatur, Ga. (Latin and Greek) [1926] Miss Maria W.Smith, 6 Lantern Lane, Philadelphia, Pa. [1941] Mrs. Mary Summers Steel, 132 S. 18th St., Philadelphia, Pa. (Defects of Speech, Univ. of Pennsylvania) [1927] Miss Grace Sturtevant, 114 High St., New Haven, Conn. [1940] Prof. Helen H.Tanzer, Hunter Col., New York City. (Classics) [1937] Miss Lella B.V.Watson, 1814 W. 8th St., Santa Ana, Calif. (Head of Lang. Dept, Santa Ana Junior Col.) [1927] Prof. Ola Elizabeth Winslow, Goucher Col., Baltimore, Md. (English) [1929]

Figure 2.1 The Women Foundation Members of the Linguistic Society of America.

LSA officers, and particularly Kent as secretary-treasurer, kept detailed records of the Society’s membership, of participants at the annual meetings, and of the faculty and the registrants for the courses of the LSA’s summer Linguistic Institutes. These records were published in the LSA journal Language and its supplement the LSA Bulletin. For the most part, it is not difficult to identify the women in these official records. It is more challenging to move behind and beyond the lists of names, to understand who they were, how they came to be associated with American linguistics, why some remained and

8

WOMEN FOUN DATION M EMBE RS OF THE LI NGU ISTIC SOCIETY OF AMERICA

succeeded over the years, and why others dissociated from the field in just a short time. There are almost no biographies or autobiographies of American women linguists, and many who appeared on the early LSA lists were not included in the standard biographical directories of their own time or ours. The membership lists provided titles and areas of specialization, to the extent that these were known to Kent. This practice tended to disadvantage members who were not affiliated with the major universities where Kent and most of the LSA leadership held their appointments. Since many of those institutions did not grant faculty positions to women and most admitted very few, if any, women to graduate study, women in general were less likely than men to be known personally by the secretary. As a result, not only were the records for women incomplete, but, as discussed below, it seems that few women ‘came to mind’ when the leading men appointed people to serve on committees, invited reviewers of books for the LSA journal, or selected faculty for the summer Linguistic Institutes sponsored by the Society. An example of the inconsistencies in the records can be found by comparing the entries from the ‘List of Foundation Members’ (Language 1.27, 32[1925]) for two holders of the doctoral degree, both married women: ‘Mrs. Beatrice Allard Brooks, 9 State St., Wellesley, Mass.’ and ‘Dr. Elsie Clews Parsons, Harrison, N.Y.’ Elsie Clews Parsons (1874–1941) was a wealthy New York woman with a doctorate from Columbia University. She conducted and published anthropological and ethnological research. The LSA roster of members for 1925 used the title ‘Dr.’ and identified her as ‘Anthropologist’ (Language 2.88[1926]). Even before the LSA was founded, Parsons had worked directly with several Signers of the Call, including Franz Boas (1858–1942) and Alfred Louis Kroeber (1876–1960). She was well known to a number of early LSA members. Beatrice Allard Brooks (b. 1893), like Parsons, in these years had no formal college or university appointment. Following receipt of her doctorate in 1920 from Bryn Mawr College, she taught biblical history at Wellesley College for a year, but apparently she had neither the social status nor the personal funds that enabled Parsons to maintain an active professional life and contacts in the academic world. Brooks’s LSA entry was never changed; she remained ‘Mrs. Brooks’ without doctorate or recorded specialization until her resignation from the Society effective at the end of 1927 (Language 5.53[1929]). Four years later she began her long career as professor and head of the department of religion at Western College for Women in Oxford, Ohio (Who’s Who of American Women, p. 170). May Lansfield Keller (1877–1964) serves as a second example of the LSA’s records of its early women members. She may have been present at the initial organization meeting; the roster includes a ‘Mary L.Keller’ (Language 1.8[1925]). Since 1914 May Keller had held the deanship of Westhampton College, the women’s division of the University of Richmond, but this was not listed in the LSA directory until 1941 (LSA Bulletin 15.39–40 [1942]). Perhaps 9

I NTRODUCTION

this is a minor omission, but it may help to explain why Keller was never included in the organizational business of the Society even though she had earned a research doctorate (with a dissertation on Anglo-Saxon at the University of Heidelberg, 1904) and had a great deal of administrative experience. Keller retired from Westhampton in 1946 after thirty two years as dean, still a member of the Linguistic Society. (For a brief biography and a collection of Keller’s letters compiled by another early woman LSA member, see Turnbull 1975.) Certainly among the LSA membership there were men who were unknown to the leadership, men whose records were incomplete or inaccurate, men who were never called upon to assist in the Society’s work, men who disappeared from the history of linguistics. But the fact remains that the leaders were all men, while nearly all of the women were forgotten. Of the thirty one women Foundation Members, more than half left the Society during its first decade, and by the start of 1945, with the passing of a second decade, only seven remained as active members: Keller and Edith Claflin, Adelaide Hahn, Selma König, Charlotte Littlejohn, Rebecca Bolling Littlejohn, and Alice Morris. A study of this attrition and retention reveals some of the forces that formed the profession and the discipline of linguistics in the United States during these years, not only for women but also for men. Indeed, the attrition/ retention rates for women and for men were nearly identical: ten years after the founding, 45 percent of the women and 48 percent of the men Foundation Members were still enrolled; after another ten years, 23 percent of women and 23 percent of men remained. Many of the women Foundation Members were educators rather than scholars, and of course some were both. Like Keller, a few remained LSA members for many years, such as Selma S.König, who taught French and German at a number of institutions, including Peru State Teachers’ College in Nebraska and the Extension Teaching Division of the University of Wisconsin. As one of those who had ‘retired from the active exercise of their profession’ she was exempted by the Society from further payment of dues in 1959 (LSA Bulletin 33.15[1960]) and remained on the LSA rolls until her death in 1965 (LSA Bulletin 38.153[1965]). Most women faculty from small colleges resigned within the first decade: Gertrude Beggs from Westhampton College; Louise Bourgoin of Smith College; Anna Jacobson of Hunter College; Else Saleski first at MilwaukeeDowner College, then at St. Lawrence University; Lillian Smith from Agnes Scott College; Lella Watson of Santa Ana Junior College; and from Goucher College, Ola Elizabeth Winslow, later a Pulitzer Prize winning biographer. Julia Bentley, Mary Lee, and Anna MacVay also left the Society after just a few years; they were high school teachers, a common occupation for women and men earning money to support advanced graduate study, as well as for those who could not find professional positions in the colleges and universities even after 10

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they had completed doctorates, clearly the case for Edith Claflin, discussed below (see also Falk 1995a). The LSA today is a professional organization focused on research and scholarship, and so it may seem surprising that so many of the early members were not affiliated with research institutions. But in its formative years, the Society actively encouraged such memberships, unlike other professional associations and learned societies of the time, especially those in the sciences (see Rossiter 1982:275–279). The women teachers at high schools and small colleges who joined the LSA had every reason to expect that their presence would be welcomed and that the Society would respect and even address their professional interests and needs. Indeed, in his opening address at the first LSA meeting, Hermann Collitz (1855–1935), the Society’s first president, noted: ‘A matter worthy of our particular attention is the study of ancient and modern languages in our public schools and colleges’ (Collitz 1925:16), and announcements of the Linguistic Institutes in the early years included the following statement: ‘There will be courses for…high school and college teachers of language who feel the need of acquaintance with linguistic science or with the history of a particular language or group of languages…’ (LSA Bulletin 3.5[1929], 5.5[1930], 7.5[1931]). The third Institute included a course on ‘Linguistics in High School Latin’ (LSA Bulletin 5.9 [1930]), but apparently this effort was too little and came too late. It may be also that the national economic depression affected enrollment. In any case, the first high school Latin teachers among the membership had already resigned, and only one of the four people who enrolled for the course joined the Society. The course was not repeated, and classes for high school teachers do not appear among the ‘essential purposes’ of its formal courses in the official ‘History of the Linguistic Institute’ written in 1940 by Edgar Howard Sturtevant (1875–1952) (LSA Bulletin 13.83–89[1940]). This movement away from ‘students of language’ and ‘all persons in sympathy’ was part of the growing professionalization of the field of linguistics and of the Linguistic Society itself, a movement that tended to exclude the women members in disproportionate numbers. There were earlier signs of this change. When Kent and Sturtevant conducted a ‘Survey of Linguistic Studies’ in 1926, they limited themselves to ‘a tabulation of the linguistic courses in the more important graduate schools,’ ‘to those advanced courses in linguistic subjects that carry graduate credit,’ and they ‘considered only institutions which are members of the Association of American Universities [AAU]’ (Kent & Sturtevant 1926:3–4). In so doing, they largely excluded women faculty and, to a lesser extent, women students. Most of the early women members teaching at the post-secondary level had posts at women’s colleges and at the less eminent coeducational colleges and universities. It is noteworthy that only two women faculty were consulted for the survey: Sarah T.Barrows (b.1870) of the University of Iowa and Louise Pound at the University of Nebraska; both were Foundation Members, though Barrows resigned in 1927 (Language 5.53[1929]). 11

I NTRODUCTION

While there were men among the LSA membership who taught in high schools and at small colleges and minor universities, the Society’s leadership throughout the first decade held appointments at the major research universities of the United States, i.e. those twenty six institutions then affiliated with the AAU. Indeed, from 1925 through 1934 only a single LSA officer— president, vice president, secretary-treasurer, editor—was not on the faculty of an AAU institution. For women, the situation was almost exactly opposite; only three women Foundation Members had such AAU positions, Barrows at Iowa, Pound at Nebraska, and Eva Johnston of the University of Missouri. AAU affiliation was not just a matter of prestige. It meant opportunities for research and support of professional activities. Historian Peter Novick described the very partial and uneven extent to which an ethos of scholarly productivity dominated American higher education in the interwar years… Although no institutions remained unaffected by the spirit of research, there were only a few where it was dominant, and many where its impact was minimal. Teaching loads were heavy, often fifteen or eighteen hours a week, and library resources in most places all but nonexistent. (Novick 1988:175) It is possible, and even likely, that some academic women at the time preferred appointments at smaller colleges (as argued, for example, in Bernard 1964:89– 91). Certainly the major women’s schools (e.g., Hunter, Goucher, Mount Holyoke, Smith, Vassar) were among the elite institutions of higher education in America, attracting many of the nation’s brightest women as students and as faculty (see Rossiter 1982:19). But these schools were not as supportive of research as were the AAU institutions. Well into the 1930s, the climate for research remained difficult at the women’s colleges. Even at the wealthiest ones, research funds, facilities, and faculty time remained scarce or nonexistent, making a career there increasingly difficult for those women who were strongly research oriented…even proven researchers were rarely given reduced teaching assignments. (Rossiter 1982:174) For many women interested in languages and linguistics, it was extraordinarily difficult if not impossible to conduct the research necessary for full participation in the professional meetings, Linguistic Institutes, and publications of the Linguistic Society of America. And those on the faculties of schools far from the intellectual centers where the annual LSA meetings and Linguistic Institutes were held had the burden of travel added to these other deprivations. Unable to pursue research, in some cases not interested in doing so, many Foundation Members from the high schools and the smaller and more distant 12

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colleges resigned from a Linguistic Society that became more and more focused on scholarship. Of the seventeen women Foundation Members who resigned in the first decade, only Sarah Barrows, Professor of Phonetics at the University of Iowa, an AAU institution, published in Language, the only book review by a woman in the journal’s first twenty volumes and beyond (Barrows 1926). Barrows attended the LSA meetings geographically closest to her home institution. At the Cincinnati meeting in 1927 her talk on ‘A frequently occurring usage of pronunciation in Iowa’ (Language 4.61 [1928]) prompted discussion by eleven of the members present. Whether the discussion was critical and a cause of her resignation, effective four days later (Language 5.53 [1929]), is not reported in the record. Barrows’s area of specialization was phonetics and this may have been a factor in her departure from the Society; Mary Summers Steel, with similar interests, also resigned early. Phonetics for these women included applications to teaching and speech therapy. They had not stumbled accidentally into the LSA. In his LSA inaugural paper, ‘Why a Linguistic Society,’ Leonard Bloomfield explicitly remarked that linguistics demands…the recording of speech-movements or of the resultant sound-waves’ and noted that ‘methods of mechanical observation, both physiologic and acoustic, are being developed’ (Bloomfield 1925b: 2). Collitz had spoken, as well, of ‘“practical” or “applied” linguistics’ in his own inaugural paper (Collitz 1925:15). Again, the LSA did not long support this early theme. Two courses in phonetics were offered at the first Linguistic Institute, each to a single student (LSA Bulletin 2.17[1928]). The following year, phonetics courses were directed to ‘teachers of the deaf,’ half of them women (LSA Bulletin 3.6, 12[1929]). As with the special course for high school Latin teachers at the third Institute, these ‘applied’ offerings were not repeated. The departure of two-thirds of the founding women members of the Society over little more than a decade passed almost without notice. Most did not hold an appointment at research institutions; they were unconnected to the leadership of the organization; some had been geographically isolated from the Society’s meetings. Even when their interests extended beyond teaching to scholarship, their specializations were too ‘applied’ for a society that had originally encouraged their membership but was in the process of redefining itself. Through the mid 1930s, that definition remained focused on historical studies. The presidents and vice presidents were drawn largely from scholars of ancient languages, philology, and comparative grammar. The longtime editor of Language—George Melville Bolling (1871–1963)—was a specialist in Greek; secretary-treasurer Kent listed his own area as Comparative Philology. The women who retained membership and contact with linguistics over a longer period of time were associated with two overlapping cohorts: those who were active scholars and those who provided financial support for the Society or for linguistic research. Among the latter were Rebecca Bolling Littlejohn (Mrs. Robert M.), and her daughter Charlotte Townsend Littlejohn (later listed as Mrs. Edward Norris Rich). They became ‘Benefactors of the Society, by the 13

I NTRODUCTION

payment into the treasury of Two Hundred and Fifty Dollars each’ (Language 3.154 [1927]), a gesture of family support for Professor George Bolling, Rebecca Bolling’s brother. Another family member to belong was Grace Sturtevant (later identified as Mrs. Francis W.Hopkins), oldest child of Edgar Sturtevant, Signer of the Call and Professor of Greek and Latin at Yale University. Her receipt of the AB degree from Vassar was actually announced in the LSA Bulletin (4.13 [1929]). She went on to study under her father’s direction at Yale, completing her doctorate in 1931. The LSA published her dissertation in its Language Dissertations series (Hopkins 1932), the required subvention apparently paid by her father (Language 9.107[1933]). Two other women benefactors of linguistics, in deed but not in title, were Alice Vanderbilt Morris and Elsie Clews Parsons. Educated in the private schools of New York City, Alice Vanderbilt Morris (1874–1950) did not have a college degree. Her association with the academic world came largely through her work to develop and promote an international auxiliary language, an endeavor which attracted a number of LSA members over the years. Elsie Clews Parsons, mentioned earlier, displayed only slight and passing interest in the languages of the subjects of her ethnographic research, but behind the scenes as well as through the Southwest Society that she founded and funded, she supported the work of Franz Boas and provided grants for linguistic fieldwork to several young scholars in the 1920s, including Gladys Amanda Reichard. We return to Morris in Part II and to Parsons and Reichard in Part III. While Parsons supported the new American focus on the study of Native American Indian languages, another early LSA woman member subsidized the older philological approach. Klara Hechtenberg Collitz (c. 1865–1944) was not a Foundation Member, though she attended that first meeting in December 1924 (‘Mrs. Collitz,’ Language 1.8[1925]); her husband was Hermann Collitz. Klara Collitz was an established scholar with a 1901 Ph.D. from the University of Heidelberg. She had held a number of teaching positions, including a post ‘in charge of Germanic philology’ at Smith College in Massachusetts from 1897 to 1899 (Who’s Who in America, vol. 21, p. 621). Following her marriage in 1904, Klara Collitz never again held an academic position, but she remained active in scholarship. She joined the Society in its third year (Language 4.69[1928]); her presence was recorded at many of the annual meetings; she presented papers before the Society and participated in the discussions; and her work on the semantics of verbs of motion was published as Language Monograph No. 8 (Collitz 1931). Hermann Collitz died in 1935; Klara Collitz retained her membership until her death on 22 November 1944, and she left most of her estate to the Linguistic Society of America (LSA Bulletin 18.17[1945]) with the intention that the LSA was to establish a Professorship for comparative Philology in the United States, to be named ‘The Hermann and Klara H.Collitz Professorship for Comparative Philology’ (i.e. ‘eine Professur für vergleichende 14

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Sprachwissenschaft’). By vergleichende Sprachwissenschaft I mean the term in the sense that my husband used it, i.e. including not only Germanic Philology, ancient and modern, but likewise ethnography, archaeology, dialectology, metrics, and subjects related thereto…(LSA Bulletin 38.21 [1965]) A special Committee on the Collitz Bequest recommended to the LSA in 1945 that a Hermann and Klara H.Collitz Professorship be founded within the Linguistic Institute (LSA Bulletin 19.11[1946]). Klara Collitz’s part in the formal title was almost immediately forgotten with the appointment of the first holder of the chair. In his report on the 1948 Linguistic Institute, Hans Kurath (1891– 1992), the director, recorded that E.H.Sturtevant ‘occupied the Hermann Collitz Professorship in Comparative Indo-European Grammar’ (LSA Bulletin 22.12[1949]). The history of Hermann and Klara Collitz and their professorship illustrates a shift along the continuum that comprises historical studies of language, from the long established philological tradition, to the late nineteenth century neogrammarian approach and beyond, to more contemporary views in the mid to late twentieth century. Both Hermann and Klara were identified with specializations in ‘German Philology’ from the first years of their LSA memberships until his death in 1935, at which time her entry was changed to ‘Germanic and Romance languages’ (LSA Bulletin 9.26[1936]). But in Hermann’s teaching and in Klara’s will there are steps away from strictly Germanic philology and toward the comparative linguistics that had begun to eclipse the older approach in American linguistic circles in the first decades of the twentieth century. However, Klara Collitz had not explicitly incorporated the newer views in the wording of her will. When Kurath took it upon himself to retitle the professorship, he not only excluded her name but also altered the field from her ‘Comparative Philology’ to his own ‘Comparative IndoEuropean Grammar.’ The latter change, with one more alteration, became official almost twenty years later when a Committee on the Collitz Professorship determined that the chair should be ‘in what would now be called Comparative Indo-European Linguistics’ and quoted Klara Collitz’s will (LSA Bulletin 38.21 [1965]). Yet in further deciding that this did not exclude ‘structural, systematic, transformational, and other kinds of linguistics within the areas named’ (ibid.), the Committee explained that ‘If Hermann Collitz were alive today, he would certainly not ignore the pertinence of a structural approach in modern comparative Indo-European linguistics’ (p. 22). If the Committee considered what position Klara Collitz might have taken, it was not reported, though it was her bequest that established the chair which officially carried both of their names. In 1994, apparently in response to the account given here upon its first appearance in Language (Falk 1994), the officers and the Executive Committee of the Linguistic Society of America quietly restored Klara Collitz to the title of the professorship she had endowed fifty years before (LSA Bulletin No. 145, p. 15 [October 1994]). 15

I NTRODUCTION

Of the original thirty one women LSA Foundation Members, five were scholars who took on active roles within the LSA during its early years. Edith Frances Claflin, Luise Haessler, E.Adelaide Hahn, Louise Pound, and Maria Wilkins Smith all pursued research in philology, or ‘classical linguistics’ in the phrasing of Bernard Bloch (1953:219). Their work could also be classified as historical linguistics. Louise Pound (1872–1958) earned the doctoral degree at the University of Heidelberg in 1900, one of a number of American women to study in Germany in an era when many still experienced difficulty gaining admission to advanced study in America (see Rossiter 1982:40–43). An undergraduate and master’s student at the University of Nebraska, upon her return from Europe she spent her career on its English department faculty. Initially her scholarship drew on the traditional philology of her training.2 Martin Joos, in his personal reconstruction of the early years of the LSA, reported being told by one of the men who signed the Call for the Organization Meeting that ‘Louise Pound…would have been included’ among the Signers but that ‘[f]or family reasons, there were no women’ (Joos [1986]:9). Whatever this obscure remark may have been intended to mean, there is no doubt that in 1924 Pound was a significant, national figure among ‘students of language.’ Margaret Rossiter has called her one of the three ‘major academic stateswomen of the 1920s’ (1982:363–364n.12). In 1925, Pound cofounded the journal American Speech with her fellow LSA Foundation Members and junior colleagues Kemp Malone (1889– 1971) of Johns Hopkins University and Arthur G.Kennedy (1880–1954) of Stanford University, one of her former graduate students (Kennedy 1949:x). News of the first issue was posted in Language (1.157– 158[1925]): ‘It will appear monthly and will contain comments on current usage, on phenomena of vocabulary, on shifting pronunciation, on the lore of place names; studies in style, in local dialect, in slang, in the influence of foreign languages, etc.’ (p. 158). Many of those comments and studies were produced by Pound, who filled various editorial positions with the journal from 1925 to 1938. Pound’s leadership role in the study of American English was acknowledged in the early days of the Linguistic Society. Her first LSA talk and its subsequent publication in Language (Pound 1927) dealt with etymology, but she was also clear that ‘we need not go back to Old or Middle English’ to account for American English forms (p. 99). The work immediately followed an article by Charles C.Fries ([1887–1967] Fries 1927) and together they constituted the first publications in the Society’s scholarly journal to deal with American English. The next year Pound taught at the first Linguistic Institute, offering a course in American English (LSA Bulletin 2.9[1928]). She was the only woman on the twenty four member faculty and surely provided a model for the thirteen women students among the total of forty five registrants (LSA Bulletin 2.13– 16[1928]). One cannot ignore the real loss for women students when for many years neither Pound nor any other major woman scholar was appointed to the faculty of subsequent Institutes. 16

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At the second Linguistic Institute Pound was one of two women among the fifty invited participants at a concurrent conference held to establish policies and procedures for what became the Linguistic Atlas of the United States and Canada (Kurath 1929). The record does not include her among those contributing to any of the discussion. When one member suggested that only the male voice be studied because it ‘is more easily reproduced’ in mechanical recording, it was Hans Kurath, later selected as the project director, who responded that it was ‘important to study the speech of both sexes’ (Kurath 1929:41). Whether the conference report is accurate in its record of discussion participants cannot be determined, but in any case Pound apparently had no influence on the project despite her prominence in the field of American English and her position at the time as national vice president of the American Dialect Society. Nevertheless, she continued to support the LSA, but her participation became increasingly inconsequential. Earlier she had attended the second, third, and fourth annual meetings (Language 2.64[1926], 3.30[1927], 4.54[1928], respectively), giving a paper at the third (Pound 1927) and then at the sixth and seventh meetings (published as Pound 1930a, 1930b, 1930c and Pound 1931a, 1931c, respectively). She was also registered for the ninth, eleventh, fourteenth, and fifteenth meetings (Language 9.104[1933], 11.53[1935], LSA Bulletin 11.3 [1938], 12.8[1939], respectively), but there is no record of her so much as discussing others’ papers, nor did she serve on the Executive Committee or in any routine capacities. However, in December 1938, Fries was elected president of the LSA for 1939 and Pound became vice president (LSA Bulletin 12.25[1939]), the first woman to hold this high elective office. Together they constituted the first leadership team whose work was concentrated on the description of contemporary American English. Why the LSA turned to her at this time is unknown. An inactive officer, Pound did not participate in arranging the program for the next annual meeting, and she did not attend the meeting itself in Philadelphia. This may have resulted from a lack of funds for travel and conferences, a common situation at the time and one noted specifically as a continuing problem in Pound’s career by a colleague at Nebraska (Wimberly 1949:xiv). But she remained active in other professional organizations, serving as national president of the American Dialect Society 1938–1944 and president of the Modern Language Association of America 1954–1955, the first woman to hold the latter office (Who’s Who of American Women, p. 1030). It seems more likely that Pound became alienated from the Linguistic Society. She resigned at the end of 1942, perhaps not coincidentally just as Fred N.Robinson (1871–1966) was about to take office as president. Aside from Charles Grandgent (1862– 1939) in 1929, Robinson was the only LSA president up to that time who was not a Foundation Member. His election may have insulted Pound. Despite her LSA papers, Linguistic Institute course, and vice presidency, Louise Pound never became a key figure in American linguistics. Not only was her home institution located far from the East Coast base of many of the leading 17

I NTRODUCTION

LSA founders, but her early graduate studies at Heidelberg deprived her of the network of American faculty and fellow students that aided her colleagues. Some revealing contrasts of geography and generation can be found in the short career of Maria Wilkins Smith whose studies remained within the traditional philological framework, displaying none of the innovation that characterized Pound’s work during the LSA decades. A graduate student when she enrolled as a Foundation Member, Maria Smith’s brief career exemplifies the opportunities available to her generation following the establishment of the LSA. She published her first article in Language in 1928 (Smith 1928) and the same year read a paper on Avestan at the fifth annual LSA meeting, based on her doctoral work in ‘Indo-European Philology’ at the University of Pennsylvania under Roland Kent’s direction (Language 4.153 [1928]). This direct association with a prominent member of the organization provided her with access to the Society’s programs and publications. Her dissertation was among the first published in the LSA Language Dissertations series (Smith 1929). She was promoted from instructor to assistant professor of Latin at Temple University in Philadelphia (Language 4.153 [1928], LSA Bulletin 9.44[1936]), but after the eleventh annual meeting, held in Philadelphia, in 1934 (Language 11.53 [1935]), she is not reported in attendance at further meetings of the Society, and the next year her directory listing no longer specified academic rank or affiliation. She apparently never fulfilled the promise noted by a reviewer of her dissertation who had written: ‘it will be a pleasure to look forward to further Avestan studies by Dr. Smith, who has shown her colors so brightly in this first piece of work’ (Jackson 1930:332). Smith resigned from the Society effective at the end of 1941 (LSA Bulletin 16.7 [1943]). Luise Haessler (b.circa 1866) also had only a brief scholarly career in linguistics, although she had taught German for many years at Hunter College in New York City. She was present at the organization meeting (Language 1.8[1925]), attended the second annual meeting in Chicago in 1925, and thereafter registered for almost every LSA meeting held on the East Coast until her retirement a dozen years later. After chairing the German Department at Hunter, she moved to Brooklyn College, a newly founded school that joined Hunter within The City University of New York system in 1930. A paper she presented on Old English at the LSA meeting in 1934 was published in Language (Haessler 1935a), and her University of Chicago doctoral dissertation appeared as Language Dissertation No. 19 (Haessler 1935b). Haessler was listed as ‘Ph.D., Professor and Head’ of her department at Brooklyn College in the membership directory for 1935 (LSA Bulletin 9.30[1936]), and she gave a second paper at the next LSA meeting (‘Middle High German houbetstat,’ LSA Bulletin 9.16[1936]), where she was also appointed to the Committee on Resolutions (ibid.), a largely honorary post with the sole responsibility of formulating an expression of thanks to the meeting hosts. She gave a third LSA paper in 1936 (‘Old High German neman and its Compounds,’ LSA Bulletin 10.18[1937]). 18

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Luise Haessler was among the first ten women to publish in Language, among the first to serve on any committee, and, as a member of the Executive Committee for 1937 (LSA Bulletin 10.19[1937]), just the second woman to be elected to LSA office. She retired from teaching sometime between 1936 and 1937 (see LSA Bulletin 11.33[1938]) and a few years later was dropped from the LSA membership list for non-payment of dues (LSA Bulletin 16.7[1943]; also Part IV below). Edith Frances Claflin (1875–1953) was already well along in her career when the LSA was founded. Receipt of the doctorate in 1904 and its publication the following year (Claflin 1905) did not lead to a regular college or university position for Claflin. She taught Greek and Latin at several preparatory schools in the Midwest, with a brief stint at a small college, and then served from 1916 to 1933 as head of the Greek department at Rosemary Hall, a preparatory school for girls in Connecticut. She moved to New York City and in 1936 was an instructor of Latin at a Columbia University summer session (Language 12.321[1936]). At age 61 she was appointed lecturer in Greek and Latin at Barnard College (Language 13.81 [1937]) and continued to teach there and in other temporary posts associated with Columbia University even beyond her official retirement in 1945(Bloch 1953:219). The demands of secondary school teaching and the years of geographical separation from the intellectual centers on the East Coast combined to limit the scholarly opportunities available to Claflin. Aside from her dissertation, she apparently published nothing until the founding of the LSA (see the list of her principal publications in Bloch 1953:220). Her relocation to Connecticut and then to New York made participation in the scholarly work of the Society possible. Claflin regularly attended the annual meetings, particularly those in the East, almost always engaging in some of the discussion following the presentations and often reading papers, five of which were subsequently published in Language (Claflin 1929, 1936, 1938, 1939, 1942). As was the case for others outside the hallowed AAU circle, the LSA and its Linguistic Institute had provided Claflin with a context and contacts in support of her scholarship. She enrolled in Bolling’s course on ‘The Language of the Homeric Poems’ and in Sturtevant’s ‘Hittite’ at the second Institute at Yale (LSA Bulletin 4.16–17[1929]) and thereafter often attended meetings of the Yale Linguistic Club (Bloch 1953:220). The approach and the subject matter of her work did not change significantly over the two decades of her active postdoctoral research, focused on the middle voice in Indo-European, but a growing awareness of the changing nature of American historical linguistics led her to update the listing of her specialized area in the LSA membership rolls from the original ‘Greek and Latin’ to ‘Indo-European comparative linguistics’ and finally to ‘Indo-European linguistics’ (LSA Bulletin 9.26[1936], 10.26[1937]). In 1943, Edith Claflin was chosen to serve on the Executive Committee of the LSA (LSA Bulletin 16.12[1943]), just the second woman to hold that post. She continued her association with the Society into her retirement years, but thereafter she held no further offices and did not publish in Language again. 19

I NTRODUCTION

In 1952 Claflin became a Life Member of the Linguistic Society of America (LSA Bulletin 26.8 [1953]), but when she died the following year, a typo for her middle initial (R rather than the correct F) in the secretary’s report went unnoticed (LSA Bulletin 27.7[1954]). She had worked on the syntax of Latin verbs, an area also investigated by E.Adelaide Hahn, who was head of the Classics Department at Hunter College in the years that Claflin was also in New York, but apparently there were some problems between these two women. When Claflin died in 1953, her sister asked Bernard Bloch specifically not to invite Hahn to prepare the obituary, writing ‘[r]elations with her were not so happy’ (Isabel Claflin to Bernard Bloch 12 March 1953, Bernard Bloch Papers, Yale University Archives). Bloch could find no one else close to Edith Claflin or sufficiently familiar with her work to take on the task. He prepared the obituary himself (Bloch 1953), using nearly verbatim the account of her life and her career prepared for him by her sister (Isabel Claflin to Bernard Bloch 22 March 1953, Bernard Bloch Papers). E.Adelaide Hahn (1893–1967) was the most prominent woman in the first quarter century of the LSA. She was present at the very first meeting in 1924 and remained in regular attendance for more than forty years, reading some sixty five papers, always participating in the discussion. The author of nine articles and one of the longest reviews ever published in the journal Language, an even greater number of publications in the philological journals, and three books, she was an important scholar, with work focused on Latin syntax and the Hittite language. Professor of Greek and Latin and for more than a quarter century chair of the Department of Classics at Hunter College, she spent her career in the perfect geographical location for participation in the meetings and institutes of the Linguistic Society, and through her acquaintance with the linguistics faculty at Yale University, she was also intellectually connected to some of the leading scholars of American linguistics in the years following the founding of the LSA. Adelaide Hahn was the first woman to discuss a scholarly topic at an LSA meeting, the first woman to serve as LSA president, the first woman appointed to the Collitz professorship (at the 1951 Linguistic Institute at the University of California, Berkeley). She provided a link to the past and to the wellestablished and prestigious American Philological Association, enhancing the legitimacy of the LSA in its early years. Though her scholarship became outmoded, her constant presence, her intelligence, her impressive command of Greek and especially Latin, and her articulate outspokenness at the annual and summer meetings of the Society were models of engagement and participation for countless young linguists, both men and women, for more than forty years. She is the subject of Part IV of this book.

20

3

PARTICIPATION OBSTACLES AND EXCLUSION

The linguistic scholars among the women Foundation Members were the only women selected to LSA leadership positions in the Society’s initial two decades. Hahn, Haessler, and Claflin were the first women to serve on the LSA Executive Committee (Hahn in 1930 and 1934, Haessler in 1937, Claflin in 1943). Pound was the Society’s first woman vice president (1939) and Hahn the second (1940). In 1946 Hahn became the first woman president, the only woman to hold that post until the election of Mary Haas almost two decades later. Except for those just mentioned, there were no women among the presidents, vice presidents, secretary-treasurers, or editors in the first forty years of the Society’s history. No women were ever appointed to the Standing Committee on Research from its formation at the 1933 annual meeting (Language 10.80[1934]) until its dissolution in the 1960s (LSA Bulletin 40.19[1967]). The Committee on Publications did not have a single woman member until Barbara Hall Partee was elected to serve a three year term beginning in 1967. Not coincidentally, the Nominating Committee—on which Foundation Member Helen H.Tanzer (b. 1876) had served at the organization meeting (Language 1.11 [1925])—until 1973 consisted entirely of men, except for several terms by Hahn (1929, 1932, 1957– 1959). Women were not selected to LSA leadership in proportion to their presence among the membership. Over the first decades, between 10 and 15 percent of LSA members each year were women, but on only a single occasion was there more than one woman at any time among the leaders. Though there were at least twelve positions to be filled each year (officers and standing committees), for ten of the first twenty years women were entirely unrepresented. The period of World War II saw the greatest female presence in leadership positions, with Claflin and then Haas on the Executive Committee (their two year terms overlapping in 1944), followed by Hahn’s presidency. Each of their elections occurred under unusual wartime conditions. For Claflin, because the 1942 annual meeting was canceled in response to a ‘governmental call’ to conserve resources for the nation’s war effort (LSA Bulletin 16.12[1943]), the Executive Committee acted under emergency powers to elect officers following 21

I NTRODUCTION

a mail ballot to confirm the slate proposed by the nominating committee. The same situation occurred the following year when Haas was elected to the Committee (LSA Bulletin 17.11 [1944]) and again when constraints on travel prevented the 1945 meeting: officers were elected by mail for 1946, when Adelaide Hahn became president (LSA Bulletin 19.10[1946]). But then the representation of women declined. For the decade after the war, between Hahn’s presidency in 1946 and Haas’s vice presidency in 1956 there were no women at all among the officers or on the major committees. Perhaps not surprisingly, there is no overt record of gender discrimination in the Society’s official records. In part, the decade without female leadership resulted from a generation gap that arose because of the limitations experienced by, and imposed upon, the original women LSA members. Many of the women Foundation Members had left the Society. Others, like Luise Haessler and May Keller, were approaching the end of their careers, retiring from their teaching posts, and curtailing their professional activities. Among the women Foundation Members, the two most important scholars who remained members of the Society into the 1940s and beyond were identified with historical studies and not with the synchronic descriptive work that was assuming primary mainstream status. The transition was well marked in the mid 1940s with both Claflin and Haas on the Executive Committee, when Claflin represented the older trend and Haas the newer one. But historical work was not a disqualification from leadership roles for men, as the list of LSA presidents makes clear (see p. 2 of any December issue of the quarterly LSA Bulletin). Haas, who included comparative historical linguistics among her specializations, did become president, but not until 1963. Classical languages comprised the major area of education and professional activity for more than a third of the thirty one women Foundation Members, and many of those involved in the study and teaching of modern languages were trained in diachrony, as well, from either a philological or a historicalcomparative approach. Such interests also characterized some of the most prominent men among the Society’s early membership and were typical of the LSA as a whole during the 1920s and 1930s, a fact perhaps lost from sight with current focus on synchronic linguistics. American linguistics in the 1920s and 1930s was predominantly historical, emphasizing ancient languages, often with a strong philological orientation. The women who studied and taught classical languages, and modern languages from a historical perspective, were in the mainstream of their times in the 1920s and well into the 1930s. Although the roots of American descriptive structuralism had been put down by Boas at the turn into the twentieth century, nurtured by the field studies of Sapir in the 1910s and 1920s, and promoted by Bloomfield, beginning with his work with a Tagalog speaker in 1917, it was only later that synchronic studies came to dominate American linguistics. Even then it did not entirely displace historical work. In the meantime, and especially during the 1930s, the women Foundation Members 22

PARTICIPATION OBSTACLES AN D EXCLU SION

provided a strong voice in support of not only historical but also humanistic study of language in the United States. At the 1936 annual LSA meeting, for example, Edith Claflin raised concern at ‘the attack made upon languages as objects of study, by those whose interest centered in the so-called social sciences’ (LSA Bulletin 10.16[1937]) and, in response, the following year the Executive Committee expressed ‘deep concern [over] the declining importance given to the study of foreign languages, both ancient and modern, in colleges and secondary schools’ and adopted a statement by which it ‘endorse [d] the current movement on the part of the four regional classical associations…to defend the place of humanistic studies in American education’ (LSA Bulletin 11.13[1938]). Claflin’s concern and the Executive Committee’s statement reveal not only support for the study of languages in the face of a perceived threat from the educational establishment to their place in the curriculum, but also the growing tension between humanities and science within linguistic study. While the male members of the LSA were divided on the issue, the female Foundation Members were all but unanimous in their support of a more humanistic approach. The women resisted the increasingly popular ‘mechanistic’ approach that was said to have ‘achieved ascendance…over the mentalistic’ as the Society approached its twentieth anniversary (Language 19.199[1943]). They continued to support and pursue the study of a diversity of subject areas through the years when their ‘scientific’ colleagues were more narrowly focused on distribution and methodology. Broadly conceptualized, these women remained concerned with lexicon, syntax, and semantics while many of their male colleagues, especially from the next generation, concentrated on phonology and morphology. It is also interesting to recall the women Foundation Members’ interests in phonetics and speech, in the teaching of English, in American English dialects, and in foreign language teaching. In some ways parallel to developments in the fields of nutrition, home economics, and psychology in the years 1920– 1940 (see Rossiter 1982), these subjects were marginal to the profession and largely studied and taught by women in the late 1920s and 1930s. But as the topics assumed greater academic and political significance, attracting more foundation and government support, they were ‘scientized’ and taken over by men. Edgar Sturtevant, for example, sought to introduce them at the Linguistic Institutes in the late 1920s and early 1930s (Falk 1998a, 1998b). In 1935 the LSA established an all male Committee to report ‘on the present status of college and university courses announced under the name of Phonetics’ (LSA Bulletin 9.13, 16[1936]). Two years later the Committee had concluded that ‘the elementary principles …are often incompetently taught’ (LSA Bulletin 11.14[1938]). Another committee was formed ‘on the Application of Linguistic Knowledge to the Practical Problems of Teachers of English’ (LSA Bulletin 11.15[1938]). Though women such as Foundation Members Roberta Cornelius and May Keller, college teachers with declared specializations in 23

I NTRODUCTION

English, were LSA members at the time, this committee too consisted entirely of men. In the shift from philology to historical-comparative linguistics and the concurrent rise to dominance of synchronic structuralism, the turning point is especially visible in the year 1940, beginning with Bloch’s assumption of the editorship of Language from Bolling and ending with J Milton Cowan (1907– 1993) succeeding Kent as secretary-treasurer of the LSA. The new direction was more firmly established with World War II and the joint efforts of the LSA and the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) to prepare materials for foreign language study associated with the war effort. As with phonetics, the teaching of English, and American dialect studies, this new approach to teaching foreign languages excluded the women who had been central to such enterprise in earlier years. The exclusion is related in part to the military connections of the Intensive Language Program with the Language Section of the War Department and the Army Specialized Training Program. Men were in charge of these war efforts. The few women who did author language materials through the program were married to male authors and/or were members of the generation that followed the Foundation Members: Jeannette Dearden, Jenny K.Moulton, Renée Kahane, Eleanor Jorden, Mary Haas (see Cowan 1991:77–78). The widespread exclusion and displacement of women in linguistics was effected in the absence of officially articulated discriminatory policies. Indeed, on several occasions the early LSA made overt efforts to include women. The second LSA Bulletin invited ‘All persons, whether men or women’ to join the society (2.2[1928]); the next one, announcing the second Linguistic Institute, made explicit reference to the availability of dormitory rooms ‘both for men and for women’ (3.5[1929]). In 1941 the Society created an associate membership category with reduced fees for ‘the wife or husband of any active member,’ though this provision was repealed after three years when no one had applied for the new status (LSA Bulletin 15.22[1942], 18.16–17[1945]). Women had equal access to membership in the organization; they had equal access to enrollment at its summer institutes. But the public efforts to accommodate them were all made at the margins. What women did not widely experience was equal participation in the real work of the Society once they had paid their dues. The paucity of papers, articles, and reviews written by women for the early meetings and volumes is reflected in the discussion above. Just 3.4 percent of the articles and short notes (‘Miscellanea’) published in the first ten volumes of Language had women authors. Of 206 such items, just 6 were authored by women: Pound 1927, Smith 1928, Claflin 1929, and Smith 1933, discussed above, and Pauline Turnbull 1929 and Grace Macurdy 1930; one had a woman co-author, Eloise Vaughn (Holmes & Vaughn 1933). The percentage for reviews was even lower (0.51 percent), with just a single woman reviewer (Barrows 1926) among 196 reviews over the same ten year period. Contributions by women overall amounted to 2 percent of the total items 24

PARTICIPATION OBSTACLES AN D EXCLU SION

published in the first decade of Language. Women’s LSA memberships in those years ranged from a low of 10.1 percent in 1926 to a high of 14.7 percent in 1932. Thus, women were significantly underrepresented among the published contributors to Language when measured against their presence among the members. Editor Bolling left no records of submissions, acceptances, and rejections, so there is no way to compare the submission rates of women and men and there is no evidence to support or refute any overt gender bias. Indeed, the numbers here surely reflect in part the lesser emphasis on publication by some women LSA members, so many of whom concentrated on teaching throughout their academic appointments at non-research institutions. However, in contrast to their publication record in the LSA journal, when women paid subventions, their work was published by the Society. They are well represented among the volumes in both the Language Dissertations and the Language Monographs series, which included work by Luise Haessler, Grace Sturtevant Hopkins, Maria Smith, Klara Collitz, and Alice Morris. Other women who were not Foundation Members also were published in these series, e.g. Ruth Albright (1927). Even in the 1940s when Claflin, Hahn, and Haas all held appointments among the LSA officers, however, there were still no women on the Committee on Publications and Bernard Bloch included not a single woman in the list of referees he had consulted on two or more occasions during his first decade as editor of Language (LSA Bulletin 23.17 [1950]). Limited access to career appointments at research institutions, lower salaries and heavier teaching loads, restricted opportunities to teach graduate students and seminars, the absence of supplemental funds for research and travel, sparse library facilities and few sabbatical leaves, all were factors that reduced women’s participation in the professional activities of the field and its institutions. Sexism played a role, as evidenced by the facts and figures cited here, but no single prejudice (against gender, institution, location, method, or interest) dominated these women’s careers and no single reason accounts for the neglect of their talents and their contributions. Many factors were involved. Under these circumstances it is remarkable that many of these women achieved so much.

25

4

THREE STORIES

Biographical sketches, lists of names and of publications, numbers and percentages all serve to reveal the presence of women in American linguistics during the first half of the twentieth century. Such information even permits the formulation of a few generalizations about the status of women within the professional world and about the climate in which they worked. But a great deal is still missing. We gain no sense of how these women came to their subjects, of the degree of their commitment and the reasons for it, of the people with whom they worked and the relationships that affected their careers, of their victories and their struggles, of their strategies for success and the factors behind their failures. What were the principles that guided their work? How was that work received? How has it held up over time? And more specific to the study of language and the field of linguistics, what were their perceptions of the nature of human language? How did they define linguistics? Did they remain within the boundaries created by other people and institutions of the time or did they push beyond them, establishing their own territory? With so little prior study of women in American linguistics, there is no basis for assuming that the answers to such questions will be the same or even consistent from one individual woman to another. As Parezo said of the research into women in anthropology, it is not possible at this time in our exploration ‘to discover enough comparable information on cohorts to make meaningful generalizations’ (1993a:xiv). To begin to answer the questions and to achieve some initial depth in understanding women, language, and linguistics in early twentieth century America requires a focus on individuals, with case histories that detail and document the intellectual lives of women who were engaged in the study of language. As a proper antidote to Novick’s ‘great man theory of history’ we might select, not the ‘great women’ of our history (however ‘great’ might be defined), but rather a sample more representative of the cohort of women who were engaged in the study of language during the turning point of linguistics in the United States, the period that began with the founding of the Linguistic Society of America late in 1924 and early in 1925. There is, however, a major obstacle to such a choice: the general absence of accessible records on such women. They 26

TH REE STORIES

did not appear in biographical reference volumes; there were rarely festschriften prepared in their honor; the high schools and colleges where they taught kept only the slimmest of personnel files, and may not have archived them at all; learned societies, scholarly journals, and professional associations did not honor their passing with extended obituaries, at most noting their deaths in an annual necrology; they did not have literary executors to save their letters, research notes, and other personal and professional papers, nor were they in regular contact with others whose correspondence was preserved. Thus, it is the more prominent women to whom there is access. And of course there is another reason to begin with them. If we are to find any impact of women’s thinking that transcended traditional ideas, contemporary constraints, and academic boundaries, that impact is most likely to have come from women who in their own time had achieved a presence within the profession. The choice of women as subject for a book on American linguistics is a political decision. The very act of exploring the stories of women in the field challenges received history, not necessarily displacing what is now recorded, but adding ‘a new dimension and discourse to the dominant framework’ (Parezo 1993a:31). When one begins with women’s interests and experiences as central, different questions arise, different issues emerge. Rather than the standard story of American linguistics in the first decades following the founding of the LSA—often presented as an inevitable and increasingly triumphant march of synchronic scientific inquiry toward the glories of structuralist phonology—we see a much more complex and diverse field, striving to establish itself, with all of the intellectual tensions and personal conflicts that characterize much of everyday life within an academic discipline. In the struggle between the conflicting goals of a newer, scientific, and professionalized linguistics and those of an older humanistic philology or ethnology, ambitions, self-promotion, and powerplays enhanced some careers and marginalized others. Women were often the linguists who were marginalized, yet their stories reveal an always dynamic, sometimes conflicted, and possibly more interesting picture of early twentieth century linguistics than any of the works drawing solely on the contributions of leading male linguists. At times, of course, women’s stories are also men’s stories, because they worked together or because men took over the work begun by women. In any case, the account that results is richer and more complex than earlier histories. Although the three stories here all begin with and focus on women, they are also about more general issues and developments in the field at large and within the Linguistic Society of America during its formative years. Women’s history of linguistics is about both women and linguistics. In the years 1924 and 1925, Alice Vanderbilt Morris founded the International Auxiliary Language Association, attracting a number of early LSA members to the goal of a world language; Gladys Amanda Reichard completed and published her doctoral dissertation, a grammar of the Native American language Wiyot, following fieldwork conducted in part with funding from Elsie 27

I NTRODUCTION

Clews Parsons; and E.Adelaide Hahn, the first woman to engage in scholarly discussion at the inaugural meeting of the Linguistic Society of America, was appointed assistant professor of Latin and Greek at Hunter College. Substantial documentation exists for each of these women. None of them preserved her own papers or left a diary or extensive personal records that would grant in-depth insights into their private lives. However, through their less formal publications, newspaper accounts of their work, institutional files, and especially in letters to individuals whose correspondence was archived, all have left evidence of the contexts of their lives and their work. Alice Vanderbilt Morris, although personally reserved and private, was a public figure, as were nearly all members of the wealthy family to which she belonged. She used publicity to promote her cause, and her Association prepared and published minutes of meetings and annual reports of activities; late in her life she donated much of that material to the New York Public Library. Gladys Reichard’s own perceptions of her times and her work were given in correspondence with her mentors and friends, Franz Boas and Elsie Clews Parsons, both of whose papers are in collections at the American Philosophical Society. The Linguistic Society of America was at the center of Adelaide Hahn’s life. It was here that she presented much of her research and here that she formed many friendships. The Society’s records—of membership, meetings, and institutes —document her professional activities. In addition, for twenty five years, Hahn communicated with Bernard Bloch, editor of Language and a friend; those letters are included among the Bernard Bloch Papers at the Yale University Archives. With these documents and other published work by and about these women, their stories are available, not in their entirety, certainly not at the level of personal biography, but in sufficient detail to reveal distinct perspectives on language and linguistics in the United States during the first half of the twentieth century. These three women pursued different intellectual goals, and their professional and personal lives did not intersect, although all worked in Manhattan. Born in the nineteenth century, they carried forward into the twentieth century ideas of that earlier era—the creation of a new international language based on existing languages; the description of Native American Indian languages on their own terms, not with the imposition of traditional European grammatical frameworks; the value of the classics, of ancient and classical languages, and the study of language change. In each case, they attempted to bring to these subjects a more modern and more scientific perspective, but each remained concerned with human dimensions of language. For Alice Morris, the goal was to achieve communication among people who did not share a common language through the creation of a language that all could learn with equal ease. Gladys Reichard focused on the complexity of language and the variation to be found among the members of a living community of speakers. And Adelaide Hahn emphasized the authority of the original users of now extinct languages, as opposed to the ‘rules’ of grammarians and the ‘corrections’ of later editors. Hahn explored evidence of the Indo-European languages as far back into the past as records would permit. A common theme for 28

TH REE STORIES

all three was their conviction that meaning lay at the very core of language. They focused much of their research and scholarship on the study of semantics. Their positioning in relation to the academic discipline of linguistics differed. Alice Morris was on the outside, a nonprofessional scholar without academic credentials who, nevertheless, through dedication, organizational skills, and financial support managed to engage many of the linguists of her time in work that, despite its utopian goal, was essentially practical. Gladys Reichard was part of an intellectual world that was still in formation, the synchronic study of spoken languages previously undervalued by academic specialists. Problems of acceptance from the men in that world pushed her toward the periphery, but she held on to a place, benefiting from a legacy of work by women, including Helen Hunt Jackson, Matilda Coxe Stevenson, and her own friend and supporter, Elsie Clews Parsons. Adelaide Hahn worked at the very heart of the linguistics of her day, the study of ancient and classical languages, of language change, and of historical comparison. Her research interests were the interests of an entire generation of leaders in American linguistics, many of whom were among the Signers of the Call for the formation of the Linguistic Society of America. By the end of their lives’ work, all three had been marginalized. In an experience so common for women, Morris developed and energized a project, bringing in American and European linguists who then pushed her to the side, taking her money and her cause to pursue their own goals, leaving her finally to turn outside the discipline for partners who would complete the new international auxiliary language. Reichard found that no matter how long and how hard she worked on descriptions of Native American languages, she was always seen as an interloper to more established men and their male students, one of whom eventually wrote her and her accomplishments out of the history of the field. And Hahn, with her great erudition and high standards of scholarship, her three books, dozens of articles, and scores of papers, was upon her death still identified as a ‘disciple’ of one of her early mentors and characterized as much according to her personal traits as to her professional contributions. Below are the stories of these three women. This is not personal hagiography, nor is it a celebration of the formative years of twentieth century American linguistics. It is an account of real people whose intellectual work is often indistinguishable from their personal lives. To the extent possible, when decades now separate us from these women, it is their perspectives that are presented here, perspectives on language, perspectives on linguistics. In their stories there is naïveté, procrastination, intellectual obstinacy, and conventionality. There is also vision, creativity, insight, and perseverance. These women constructed unique and rewarding careers, pursuing ideals and ideas even when their work was ignored, attacked, or ridiculed. They sometimes followed well-worn paths, they sometimes struck out on their own. Above all, they were exemplars of independence and courage.

29

Part II

ALICE VANDERBILT MORRIS

5

A VANDERBILT WOMAN

When Alice Shepard married Dave Morris in June 1895, the wedding was ‘the event of the week’ for New York society. She was a member of the Vanderbilt family and all Vanderbilt weddings were front-page news for The New York Times. Usually, the papers were filled with detailed descriptions of the ceremony, the dresses worn by the ladies, valuable gifts of jewelry and china, the menu for the reception, the names of the hundreds in attendance, even the number of police required to keep the crowds of onlookers under control. The Vanderbilt family was large, wealthy almost beyond belief, and socially prominent. But there was not much to report about the Shepard—Morris wedding. It had been a quiet affair with only six guests, conducted without prior announcement at 5:30 on a Wednesday afternoon, not in one of the major churches near the various Vanderbilt residences on Fifth Avenue by Central Park, but south, at the Church of the Transfiguration on East Twenty-Ninth Street. Known as The Little Church Around the Corner, it had a romantic, slightly naughty image as ‘the scene of many weddings in which the contracting parties were known to fame, more especially in the theatrical field,’ hardly a place thought suitable for a Vanderbilt wedding (New York Times [NYT] 23 June 1895, p. 11). As the story unfolded to the public in a series of four newspaper articles during the week that followed the 19 June ceremony, it was revealed that this young couple had eloped in ‘a runaway match’ (ibid.), marrying without the permission, and perhaps without the knowledge, of the bride’s mother, Margaret Louise Vanderbilt Shepard (1850–1924), eldest daughter of William Henry Vanderbilt (1821–1885), granddaughter of the family patriarch ‘Commodore’ Cornelius Vanderbilt (1794–1877), and sister of Cornelius Vanderbilt II (1843– 1899), head of the richest family in the United States. Mrs. Shepard, a widow of just two years who maintained her city residence in the old Vanderbilt mansion built for her by her father on Fifth Avenue, declined to comment to the press, but her absence from her daughter’s wedding became the headline in the second article The Times published, which began: ‘Mrs. Elliott F.Shepard was not present at the marriage of her daughter, Alice Vanderbilt Shepard, and Dave Hennen Morris’ (NYT 21 June 1895, p. 5). 33

Figure 5.1 The Vanderbilt family: a partial genealogy showing members mentioned in text.

A VANDERBILT WOMAN

Indeed, Alice was married without the presence or the support of a single member of the Shepard and Vanderbilt families. She was given away by her husband’s brother-in-law, whose wife’s maid served as one of the two witnesses. The problem, it seemed, was horse-racing. Dave Morris—and it was Dave, not David, as The New York Times was required to note, correcting its first report (ibid.)— owned a stable of thoroughbred racing horses in partnership with his older brother Alfred. The brothers had inherited this interest from their father, John A.Morris, who not only owned racing horses but had run a state lottery in Louisiana. The Morris legacy and practice of horse-racing and gambling were the reasons that Dave’s brother-in-law gave to the press for Mrs. Shepard’s opposition to the engagement of the young couple (ibid.). Gambling of any kind was unacceptable in the family of Elliott Shepard, Mrs. Shepard’s late husband and Alice’s father. Elliott Fitch Shepard (1833–1893) was one of the major conservatives of his day.1 A lawyer who served as counsel for the Vanderbilts’ New York Central Railroad, Shepard founded the New York State Bar Association in 1876 before leaving the practice of law in 1884 to travel in Europe, Asia, and Africa. His pamphlet ‘Labor and Capital Are One’ declared ‘the modern corporation to be one of the greatest blessings of the nineteenth century, and a distinguishing mark of its civilization.’ Shepard was president of the American Sabbath Union, dedicated to the scriptural observance of the Christian Sabbath. He had purchased controlling interest in a Fifth Avenue stage line in order to bring a halt to its Sunday service. The Mail and Express, a New York newspaper he owned and edited from 1888 until his death five years later, was noted for its steadfast support of Republican politics and its daily front-page printing of a biblical verse. It was unlikely that Mr. Shepard’s family would tolerate either gambling or horse-racing. But Dave Morris was an unsuitable match for a Vanderbilt woman in other ways, as well. He and Alice had not been introduced in the normally sanctioned manner, in the homes and at the dinner parties and balls that occupied New York’s highest society. Rather, the previous summer they had met on the steamship Majestic sailing to Europe, and, without obtaining the approval of her family, they had become engaged some months afterwards. And although he later studied law and was to become a distinguished attorney, a champion of education, and a decorated diplomat, at the time of the marriage Dave Morris was still a student at Harvard University. He was planning a career in homeopathic medicine with the idealistic goal of someday establishing and heading a large urban hospital ‘where all, rich and poor alike, may be treated gratuitously,’ a goal supported by his wife (ibid.). It was this unsuitability— marriage to ‘a medical student’—that earned Alice Shepard her only mention in Clarice Stasz’s book The Vanderbilt Women: ‘Alice’s audacity stunned [her cousin] Gertrude, and also strengthened [Gertrude’s] resolve to be a respectful daughter and not shock the family’ (Stasz 1991:142). At age 23, Dave Morris’s education was only partly completed, but he was already financially secure, involved in substantial business enterprises (in 35

ALICE VAN DERBILT MORRIS

addition to the infamous horse-racing), with a reported personal fortune of $1,000,000 (NYT 20 June 1895, p. 1). The disapproval of Mrs. Shepard did not affect the young couple’s economic well-being, and they set off for Boston to establish a home before leaving on a summer vacation in Europe. On their return, Dave completed his studies at Harvard, graduating magna cum laude with the class of 1896, while Alice, to be 21 years old on her next birthday, registered for the first time in college as a special student at Radcliffe. In contrast to the notoriety of her marriage, most of Alice Vanderbilt Morris’s early life was quiet and private, and much of it is difficult to recapture since she apparently left no diaries and few papers. Before the wedding, she had ‘not appeared much in society’ but ‘devoted her attention, rather, to charitable and religious matters’ (NYT ibid.; 23 June 1895, p. 11), as might be expected given the character of her family and the nature of her upbringing. And for decades after the wedding there was nothing to bring her to the attention of the public beyond the birth announcements of her six children and her work with the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA), a charity also supported over many years by her mother. Mr. and Mrs. Morris were not included among the ‘prominent guests’ listed in the newspapers when her cousin Emily Vanderbilt Sloane married John Henry Hammond in New York in April 1899 (NYT 6 April 1899, pp. 1–2), but they were surely in attendance. Still in their twenties and, though comfortable by any standard, not possessed of the multiple millions of other family members, they would not have been considered particularly prominent. That mother and daughter reunited quickly was to be expected. Elliott Shepard might have had his objections to horse-racing, but his position was extreme. The breeding and racing of horses was a favorite pastime of many Vanderbilt men, including Mrs. Shepard’s grandfather, father, and at least one brother (Hoyt 1962:176–190; Auchincloss 1989:16, 46, 51), and even cousin Gertrude, who had been so shocked at Alice’s marriage, was soon to marry Harry Payne Whitney, a devotee of polo and horse-racing. Within weeks of Alice’s wedding, a reconciliation was reported by the New York Times (1 July 1895, p. 9) and later mentioned by family acquaintance Louis Auchincloss in his book The Vanderbilt Era: ‘Eventually, however, Margaret came around and lived as cozily with Alice and her irreproachable husband as with the rest of her family’ (1989: 66). Years later when Mrs. Shepard collapsed from a sudden heart attack at her New York apartment, Alice was called to the deathbed by the family physician, along with her two sisters (NYT 4 March 1924, p. 19), and Dave Morris was named an executor of the estate (NYT 15 March 1924, p. 13). As time passed following Elliott Shepard’s death, his family put his preachings aside. His memory apparently was not revered by his descendants. One of his grandsons reportedly told Auchincloss: ‘“I don’t know if there’s a hell, but if there is, Grandpa Shepard is surely in it”’ (Auchincloss 1989:66). The remark was ‘caused by Shepard’s having told one of his daughters that 36

A VANDERBILT WOMAN

her physical deformity had been inflicted by God’ (p. 66). That daughter may have been Alice, who was obliged to wear braces for several hours each day for most of her life because of a childhood back injury, according to her daughter Alice Morris Sturges ([1911–1986] AMS to Gabriel M.Verd, SJ, 22 October 1979, Interlingua Institute Papers [IIP], Rare Books and Manuscripts Division, New York Public Library). Only the most careful search of Alice Morris’s background to this point reveals the seeds of what was to become the program of linguistic research that engaged her for nearly half of her adult life, a program that attracted several of the foremost linguists of the time and that anticipated the empirical research and the search for linguistic universals that played such an important role in later American linguistics. The altruism seen in the couple’s youthful goal to found a hospital to serve all people, rich and poor, was expressed later in their lives by a commitment to improving communication among people speaking different languages. The acceptance of the social world, briefly denied them at the time of their marriage, was later augmented by acceptance within the academic community, an acceptance not by birthright but earned through ideas, hard organizational work, and scientific research. And although their dedication to a common cause was conducted in partnership, it is Alice Vanderbilt Morris who became the intellectual leader in the movement for an international auxiliary language. The independence, even the ‘audacity,’ that had enabled her to marry Dave Morris and thereby leave her family’s comfortable but narrow world later allowed her to enter another world, initiating and maintaining contacts with world-famous scholars, proposing theories and research agendas, seeking compromises and consent, organizing meetings, attending international academic congresses, all in pursuit of the ideal of a single constructed international language upon which numerous competing factions could agree. In this important sense, Alice Morris remained a Vanderbilt woman: what distinguishes the [Vanderbilt] family from others of their class is the deviance of [many of the] women…they have refused to submit to their friends’ and relatives’ expectations of them as society matrons. They would not limit their lives to a seclusive circle of family, the ‘right kind’ of social events, and approved charity work. (Stasz 1991:xii) To appreciate the courage of Alice Morris in taking up this new work, it is helpful to consider some others in the family. Two of the most famous Vanderbilt women did, in fact, achieve public lives as society hostesses. Both married into the family. First came Alice Gwynne Vanderbilt (1845–1934), the wife of Cornelius Vanderbilt II, Margaret Vanderbilt Shepard’s older brother. Then Alice Gwynne Vanderbilt’s daughter-in-law Grace Wilson Vanderbilt (1873–1953) became known for keeping three dozen maroon-liveried servants and holding lavish dinners throughout the Depression of the 1930s and even 37

ALICE VAN DERBILT MORRIS

during World War II, all at the twin Fifth Avenue mansion that had once belonged to Margaret Shepard. Another of Mrs. Shepard’s sisters-in-law—and thus Alice Morris’s aunt— Alva Smith Vanderbilt Belmont (1853–1933) married and then divorced William Kissam Vanderbilt (1849–1920) and later wed Oliver Hazard Perry Belmont (1858–1908). She played a significant role in the National American Woman Suffrage Association and the National Woman’s party, fund-raising and working for women’s equality in politics and the workplace from the time of her widowhood until her death. Of those who were Vanderbilt women by birth, among the first generations only one became a public figure, Alice’s cousin Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (1875–1942), a serious sculptor and art collector and the founder of the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. Few of the Vanderbilts had any contact with the academic world and, according to Auchincloss, they and their peers ‘had little to do with the arts and letters, except […as] patrons and collectors […since they had] little wish to be made uncomfortable by intellectuals chattering about books they hadn’t read… It was a society where the men cared mostly for business and sport, and the women for dress and parties’ (Auchincloss 1989:8). Most of Alice Vanderbilt Morris’s aunts and uncles, siblings and cousins, did not attend college. Higher education was not the usual Vanderbilt priority, but it was important to Alice. At the first opportunity after her wedding, she had registered at Radcliffe College for the 1895–1896 year when she and her husband resided in Boston. Radcliffe has no record of her actual enrollment in courses, but it is likely that she did attend, at least informally, for she always considered herself a former Radcliffe student and years later regularly completed the Alumnae Information forms sent out by the college (Radcliffe College Archives). Her only other college experience was a ‘Women’s Law Class’ that she took at New York University in 1903. In contrast to her own educational background and that of her generation within the family, five of the Morris children graduated from college and the sixth was in attendance until shortly before his early death in 1928. Throughout her life, Alice Vanderbilt Morris was known for her beauty, and her childhood portrait by John Singer Sargent (1856–1925) has been widely exhibited. Her own interests were to become primarily intellectual. It is notable that the minister who officiated at her wedding ceremony commented in a letter written the next day not, as might have been expected given the times and the situation, on the loveliness of the bride, but rather that she ‘was so intelligent’ (NYT 21June 1895, p. 5). Little is known now about her life during the years in which Alice Morris bore and raised six children. From her namesake, the youngest daughter often referred to in girlhood as Alice Vanderbilt Morris II, there is a report that shortly before World War I her mother became interested in Esperanto, the artificial language constructed late in the nineteenth century in Poland by 38

A VANDERBILT WOMAN

Figure 5.2 Alice Shepard, portrait by John Singer Sargent, 1888. Private collection. Photo courtesy of Elaine Kilmurray, from the Peter A.Juley & Son Collection, National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution; reproduced with permission.

Ludwig Lazarus Zamenhof (1859–1917). The interest was encouraged by Dave Morris because Mrs. Morris’s back problems increased as she grew older and ‘this interest…could be pursued by writing, lying down’ (Alice Morris Sturges to Gabriel Verd 22 October 1979 IIP). Since its creation, Esperanto had enjoyed a steadily increasing growth, with an estimated 1,800 supporting societies and organizations, 118 journals, and more than 2,700 books published by the year 1914, mostly in Europe, though the war interrupted that (Large 1985:85). In the United States, however, there had not been much interest in any of the artificial international languages. That was to change after the war, in part because of the efforts of Alice Vanderbilt Morris.

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6

FOUNDING OF IALA

In 1906, a young assistant professor in physical chemistry at the University of California at Berkeley invented an electrostatic precipitator for the control of the industrial air pollution that was poisoning the skies over San Francisco with, among other toxins, sulfuric acid mists emanating from the chemical plant of E.I.Du Pont de Nemours on San Francisco Bay (1987 Annual Report, Research Corporation, pp. 4–5). Frederick Gardner Cottrell (1877–1948) hoped to assign the profits that eventually would accrue from patents on his invention to an academic institution for support of further scientific research. But first the University of California and then the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., rejected his offer, both finding the notion of profits to be not in keeping with their missions. Cottrell’s idealism and generosity eventually found an outlet with his creation of the Research Corporation in the year 1912, a foundation incorporated in the state of New York and which to this day funds scientific research in the United States. Cottrell left the academic world for federal government employment in Washington, D.C., first in the U.S. Bureau of Mines, later with the National Research Council (NRC). 1 In 1919, representing the NRC, he went to Europe and attended various scientific meetings, including the inaugural session of the International Research Council (IRC). There he proposed the creation of an IRC Committee on International Auxiliary Language. The proposal was accepted and Cottrell was named chair. Auxiliary languages were a relatively recent enthusiasm for Cottrell, dating only back to 1914 when he took up the study of Esperanto as ‘the handiest to learn’ of all the auxiliary languages (Cameron 1952:201). The European meetings brought forth an occasion for presenting this interest to the community of scientists when a move to create an international journal of abstracts in the field of chemistry failed because of disagreement over which of the various languages of Europe should be used in the publication. Cottrell was himself sensitive to the issue. He had taken up Esperanto precisely because, as his biographer reports, he ‘had long been baffled by orthodox foreign tongues’ (p. 199), though it is clear from some of the accounts that he often did not work very hard to master them. 40

FOU NDI NG OF IALA

On his way to doctoral study in Germany in 1899 or 1900, he stopped in Paris ‘to refurbish his French,’ engaged a tutor, and when, after two weeks ‘the liquid language still congealed on his reluctant tongue…[g]rudgingly he decided that he was never meant to be a linguist,’ and he proceeded on to Berlin (p. 69). Two or three years in Germany, working in laboratories with German researchers, did little to improve his mastery of that language. Though adequate for his work, a fellow student reported that when using German, Cottrell ‘completely dispensed with the problem of assigning nouns their proper gender in favor of the simpler system of rendering them all as feminine’ (p. 91). Cottrell was a man of great energy, and he adopted the notion of an international auxiliary language with enthusiasm. First he persuaded his wife Jessie Fulton Cottrell (c. 1875–1948) to study Esperanto. Then he attempted to interest the American Association for the Advancement of Science, as well as the Smithsonian Institution, in the question of an international auxiliary language (p. 202), but the responses were wary and skeptical. The IRC was his first public success, and he used his position as chair of its committee to seek financial support for research on the matter. In the first two years of his appointment, he raised— and spent—only $3,000 (p. 228). He turned to wealthy individuals when he could, but his contacts in society were limited—until Jessie Cottrell happened to meet Alice Vanderbilt Morris at a Pompton Lakes, New Jersey, sanitarium where both were staying for health reasons in 1921. According to Cottrell’s biographer, it was here through Mrs. Cottrell—and not earlier, as the Morris daughter recalled in later years—that Alice Morris began to study Esperanto (p. 240). Whatever the origin of her interest, it now brought the Morrises and the Cottrells together in common cause, and in March 1923 a series of informational and organizational meetings to promote an international auxiliary language was held in New York—at the homes of Mr. and Mrs. Dave Hennen Morris and Mrs. John Henry Hammond, who was Alice Morris’s cousin Emily Sloane Vanderbilt (Cottrell 1923:6–13). Among the sponsors who issued invitations to the meetings Cottrell had organized were Mr. Morris; Alice Morris’s sister Louise (Mrs. William J. Schieffelin); the head of her secondary school Clara B.Spence (Miss Spence’s School, New York); and several prominent women leaders from the New York area, Mrs. James Lees Laidlaw of the Women’s Pro-League of Nations Council, and Mrs. Charles L.Tiffany of the New York League of Women Voters. Joining these were some of the most important educational figures in New York: the philosopher John Dewey, professor at Columbia University; Stephen P.Duggan, director of the Institute of International Education; Virginia Crocheron Gildersleeve, professor and dean of Barnard College; Sidney E.Mezes, president of the College of the City of New York; Henry Noble MacCracken, president of Vassar College. The representatives from higher education were particularly significant for Cottrell, for in his continuing role within the Research Corporation and 41

ALICE VAN DERBILT MORRIS

throughout his life, he held an abiding faith in universities and in scientific research. In his ‘Report of Progress’ of the IRC Committee, he proclaimed: ‘what is most needed at present is to secure the serious study of the subject [of international auxiliary language] by educational authorities and institutions’ (Cottrell 1923:6), and this was the theme of the 1923 New York meetings. At the first, which took place at the home of Emily Hammond, more than 200 people unanimously adopted a resolution calling for ‘serious and competent consideration…[of] the subject of an international language…under the auspices of one of the well established and recognized institutions for impartial research and dissemination of knowledge’ (p. 7). Two days later seventy seven people joined Dave and Alice Morris for dinner at their residence and formally endorsed this resolution. The next day a group of twenty took up Cottrell’s position in agreeing ‘that the way to proceed was to take up in the universities and colleges the research aspects of the international auxiliary language question’ (p. 11), and soon two committees were formed to undertake the work. Dave Morris was a member of the New York Chapter Committee; Cottrell and Alice Morris were on the General Advisory Committee. While most of those on the New York Chapter Committee were affiliated directly with the academic world, the General Advisory Committee drew more on the public community and philanthropic organizations. Members included Mrs. Laidlaw and Mrs. Tiffany, as well as Dr. Arthur A.Hamerschlag, president of the Research Corporation; Dr. Frederick P.Keppel, president-elect of the Carnegie Corporation; John J.Carty, vice president of American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T); John H.Finley, associate editor, and later editor-inchief, of the New York Times; James G.Harbord, president of the Radio Corporation of America (RCA); and Clarence H.Howard, of the International Chamber of Commerce. The two committees, with membership from academe and business, evolved into the Board of Directors and the General Advisory Committee, respectively, of the International Auxiliary Language Association in the United States, known as IALA (and, according to the association, pronounced ‘ee-ah’lah’), formally established the next year. 2 The three founders remained affiliated with the organization until their deaths two decades and more later. Cottrell—and his Research Corporation—played an important part in the continued funding of IALA’s work, discussed below, but otherwise he was more observer than participant. Dave Morris became IALA treasurer. Alice Morris had the official title of honorary secretary. It soon became clear that she was the prime mover within the organization.

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7

AUXILIARY LANGUAGES A brief history

Evidence of constructed auxiliary languages dates at least to the twelfth century when Hildegard of Bingen (1098–1179) invented a secret language recorded in two of the books found within her extensive body of work (Lerner 1993:49– 64), but the notion of constructed languages is much older. Hildegard’s work, for example, included studies on medicine influenced by the Graeco-Roman physician Galen (c. 130–200), who himself is reported to have envisioned an artificial language that ‘would remove all uncertainty from human communication’ (Pei 1958:142). The idea that such a language might have existed in the past or that it could be constructed for the future—but always that it would be somehow better, more perfect, or more suitable for communication than existing natural languages—over the centuries has attracted women and men from exceptionally diverse backgrounds and interests, among both those who have participated actively within the movement and those who, in recent times, have written about it in works ranging from popular to scholarly, from propagandistic to literary and historical (e.g., Pei 1958, Large 1985, Gopsill 1990, Yaguello 1991, Eco 1995). Emerging as a major theme in European intellectual circles in the seventeenth century, ‘philosophical languages’ developed from arguments by René Descartes (1596–1650) that a universal language should be based on an analysis and classification of the thoughts and ideas of the human mind, i.e. that a philosophical language depended upon ‘true philosophy’ (Knowlson 1975). Other proponents of universal language had other, more practical goals. In 1647, for example, Francis Lodwick (1619–1694) devised and published a ‘universal character’ that could serve as an international medium of written communication (Salmon 1972), and Slaughter (1982) describes seventeenth century attempts to create universal taxonomic nomenclatures for science. Thus, an inevitable tension between abstract theory and concrete proposals, between the academic and the practical, was in place quite early in the history of universal language movements. The widespread use of French by educated Europeans in the eighteenth century and the growth of nationalism in the nineteenth were largely responsible for decreased European interest in a constructed international 43

ALICE VAN DERBILT MORRIS

language (see Large 1985:43–63). Then, in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, two men, with no connections to the worlds of scholarship and science, single-handedly created artificial languages that captured the popular imagination. A German Roman Catholic priest, Johann Martin Schleyer, in 1880 developed Volapük, with a vocabulary based on English but altered beyond recognition and a complex morphology with four cases (nominative, genitive, dative, accusative) and extensive schemata for word construction. By 1889, proponents claimed a million users, though Large suggests one-fifth that number as more realistic (p. 67). In any case, support declined even more rapidly than it had developed, probably because of the difficulty people had in mastering the unfamiliar vocabulary and the complicated morphology. Volapük was soon replaced in the public’s affections by Esperanto, Zamenhof’s invention, first published in 1887, with an English version in 1889 (Large 1985:72). Esperanto vocabulary comes mainly from Latin and the Romance languages, with occasional items drawn from English, German, and Zamenhof’s native Russian, but efforts to regularize and simplify processes of word building (inflection, derivation, and com-pounding) render many items unrecognizable to readers who know such languages. The resulting morphology, while simpler than that of Volapük, has caused dissent even among Esperanto proponents. Until comfortable mass transoceanic travel in the early years of the twentieth century and then World War I brought large numbers of Americans into contact with the many languages in other nations, the notion of a universal language attracted relatively little attention in the United States, perhaps because the need for a constructed language had seemed more remote to the monolingual middle class of this predominantly English-language society than it had in multilingual Europe. Academicians, however, occasionally expressed interest. In the 1880s, the American Philosophical Society (APS), the oldest learned society in the United States, established a committee to consider an international language. Although opposed to Volapük, the Society was open to the adoption of an international language and discussed calling an international congress on the subject. As other adherents of such a meeting, the APS was able to list the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Georgia Historical Society, the Colorado Scientific Society, and the presidents of Lafayette College and the University of South Carolina (Brinton et al. 1888:7). But support for an international language remained scattered and sporadic in the United States until 1924, when the founding of IALA and the founding of the Linguistic Society of America (LSA) occurred within the same year.

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8

THE ACADEMY

Despite some signs of early interest, members of the American academy were generally leery of constructed languages. In his 1923 Report of Progress, Cottrell had noted: In face of the effort spent on the development of these material aids to human communication and the splendid results achieved we can hardly do otherwise than stand aghast when we consider that in all the world’s universities and research institutions language itself is still looked upon purely from the historical aspect as something handed down from antiquity and that even to parallel it experimentally with scientifically constructed systems of our own devising is considered a foolish waste of time not to say down right sacrilegious. (Cottrell 1923:1) It was IALA’s promise of scientific investigation that brought significant numbers of American linguists into the auxiliary language movement. Science was the heart of the linguistic enterprise. Building on nineteenth century belief in the power of science not only to describe how the world had evolved, but even to explain why, many linguists during the early twentieth century were engaged in a movement of their own—a movement to establish and promote a scientific approach to the study of human language, distinct from humanistic studies of language through literature, philology, and philosophy. In the United States, supporters of a more scientific linguistics came together in 1924 to found the Linguistic Society of America. In the first issue of the journal sponsored by the new society, Leonard Bloomfield (1887–1949), one of its founders, lamented that ‘The layman—natural scientist, philologian, or man in the street—does not know that there is a science of language’ (Bloomfield 1925b: 1). Nothing was more important to the early members of the LSA than the status of their field as a science, and few would knowingly engage in any public activity that might jeopardize that status. An instructive example comes from Roland Grubb Kent (1877–1952), professor of Latin and comparative philology at the University of Pennsylvania, LSA secretary-treasurer 1924– 1940 and 1941 president. 45

ALICE VAN DERBILT MORRIS

Kent had publicly supported ‘Latin as the international auxiliary language,’ and through a pamphlet of that title widely distributed by the American Classical League (Kent 1923) he became America’s foremost advocate of Latin for this special purpose. Among the natural languages, English was less suitable, Kent argued, because its ‘fewness of inflectional endings places an undue burden on position as a factor in conveying meaning…,’ although he did acknowledge that ‘English has the advantages of its defects; it offers few forms to learn, and few rules of syntax’ (p. 6). However, he stood nearly alone as a supporter of inflectional morphemes in an auxiliary language. ‘Few forms to learn’, ‘few rules of syntax’, but a vocabulary based on Latin—these became the guiding principles of efforts to build an international language in the United States. Publicly Kent wrote that he ‘would prefer almost anything’ to the ‘denaturalized Latin’ of Latino sine flexione [Latin without inflections] (Kent 1923:11), a language constructed at the beginning of the twentieth century by the Italian mathematician Giuseppe Peano (1858–1932). But within two years Kent was collaborating with a Mr. A.Fanti, a librarian at the National Bureau of Standards in Washington, D.C. Mr. Fanti was one of the few American advocates of Latino sine flexione, by now renamed Interlingua, and he was in the process of producing Interlingua-English and English-Interlingua manuscript dictionaries that eventually contained 50,000 words.1 The correspondence between the two men, beginning in December 1925 and ending in October 1937, reveals that Kent spent a dozen years providing Latin forms for Fanti’s Interlingua glossaries and dictionaries, using the letterhead paper of the Linguistic Society of America, in which he served as an officer throughout this period. Yet when Fanti attempted to recognize Kent’s contributions in the draft of an acknowledgments page at the end of a planned ‘Introduction’ for publications on Interlingua, Kent asked him to ‘submit to me the text of what you say…as I do not wish…that my connection…be misunderstood’ (RGK to AF 23 June 1927 LSAA). A 1927 draft of the ‘Introduction’ from Fanti’s papers shows original wording recognizing Kent’s ‘help’ but stating clearly ‘the fact that Prof. Kent does not favor the use of Interlingua, but of Latin, as an International Auxiliary Language.’ Even this disclaimer was too much for Kent. Corrections to the draft eliminate the references, and later versions, undated but probably 1938 and 1942, refer to Kent not at all. His involvement remained hidden until the correspondence was found in 1994 (Falk 1995b). Kent was in difficult financial circumstances, due partly to his wife’s poor heath, and it may be that his association with Interlingua was entirely mercenary. These years included the Great Depression when many faculty members endured salary reductions in the United States. Kent billed Fanti at the rate of $2.50 per hour for his lexical work and occasionally commented that Fanti should not bother to include rare and obscure words: ‘I must again urge upon you not to clutter up your IL dictionary with words that nobody 46

TH E ACADEMY

ever heard of; it is a foolish waste of time and money’ (RGK to AF 18 February 1937 LSAA). Otherwise, he seldom did more than provide corrected Interlingua forms for the materials Fanti sent. Kent’s reluctance to be publicly associated with Interlingua probably was also due to his position as a champion of Latin. The 1923 pamphlet continued to be available in classical and auxiliary language circles for several years; e.g., it was listed for sale in 1928 by I ALA, which also provided Kent’s name and address under the entry for Latin in its directory of ‘American Headquarters for Information about Different Interlinguas’ (IALA Sales Service, Bulletin No. 3, 1928). As a third factor, and the most significant, we cannot discount Fanti’s lack of academic status and the Italian mathematician Peano’s lack of standing in the field of linguistics. Kent was comfortable enough publicly supporting Latin as an international auxiliary language, for that was not incompatible with his academic position, but to be known as the associate of an amateur constructing an artificial language may have seemed to Kent an untenable position for a linguist. With their newly formed association, Kent and his colleagues were engaged in declaring their professionalism, the autonomy of their discipline, and its status as a science, and Kent in particular was wary of ‘branch[ing] out too much in the popularizing way’ (RGK to Reinhold Eugene Saleski and Edgar Howard Sturtevant 11 July 1930 LSAA). What distinguished IALA from Fanti and Peano, and from Schleyer and Zamenhof before them, what made it possible for linguists in America and in Europe to associate openly with IALA, was the scientific approach. From the beginning, IALA promised ‘extensive and broadly scientific linguistic research’ as the basis for eventual selection of a single international language from among those existing at the time (IALA 1924:10). Planning a course of action that would select several natural and created languages for analysis, comparison, and assessment, the organization at this time had ‘no intention of developing or promoting any new language’ (p. 11), but rather it looked ‘to gather evidence’ for the eventual selection of one auxiliary language on which all might agree. It was this program of linguistic research, of ‘basic study, experimentation and comparison of different systems and individual elements in each system’ (p. 12), that attracted so many members of the community of American linguists. A program of ‘scientific linguistic research’ promised to avoid the onus of popularization that many professional linguists feared. Furthermore, unlike its counterparts in the international auxiliary language movement in Europe, there was in IALA little of the fanaticism, the eccentricity, and even the mysticism that accompanied the promotion of languages such as Esperanto (see Large 1985: 93–130).

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9

IALA’S RESEARCH PROGRAMS

Under Alice Morris’s intellectual leadership—and with the financial support she, her husband, and Cottrell’s Research Corporation provided to IALA from its founding in 1924 to its dissolution in 1953—IALA developed quickly into a serious, scholarly organization that supported empirical research in three major areas: linguistics, sociology, and education. IALA’s sociological research (sometimes referred to as ‘social economy’) was its most limited and probably least effective program. It consisted of a single large study conducted by Herbert N.Shenton (1885–1937), a junior faculty member in sociology at Columbia University from 1912 to 1927, professor of sociology at Syracuse University 1927 to 1937, and an active member of IALA from its founding until his death. Shenton, in his position as IALA executive secretary, signed most of the association’s annual reports produced during his lifetime, but their form and content indicate that Alice Morris, as honorary secretary, had her hand in their preparation, as well, and it is not always possible to determine whose words and ideas we are reading. That would not have troubled Mrs. Morris, for she always saw her role in IALA as that of facilitator, bringing together those with disparate views, creating compromises, and even drafting documents for discussion and ultimate agreement on common means and aims for an international auxiliary language. C.K.Ogden (1889–1957) wrote of her: ‘Through her enthusiasm and generosity divergent interests have been brought together in the common cause of international understanding, to which a language that all might share would contribute so much’ (Ogden 1931:10). In Cosmopolitan Conversation (1933), Shenton outlined the development of multilingual international conferences from 1840 to 1931 and in nearly 800 pages presented the results of a survey of some 1,415 conferences held during the years 1923 to 1929. In this study, he examined the conference subject matter, the locations of the meetings, the nationalities of the participants, and the languages used, including official conference languages, translation languages, and formally permitted languages. Publication of the book was made possible by an IALA subvention; the study had been subsidized in its entirety by IALA, which also provided occasional research assistants and office 48

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staff; and the book was dedicated to Mr. and Mrs. Morris. Shenton’s conclusions and closing recommendation are thus not surprising. With the increasing nationality variegation of the conferences [in recent years], there has been a tendency to use two or three, or even more, languages as official or translation languages instead of depending on a single language as a medium of discussion… Withal, there are relatively few conferences that have experienced complete satisfaction with their present language procedures. (Shenton 1933:478) The most constructive solution would seem to be the development and adoption of a standardized, synthetic, international auxiliary language. (p. 479) Shenton’s survey provided substantial data on the language practices of international conferences, but there was little evidence that the multilingualism at these meetings constituted a problem for the majority of the participants. Educated people—those who attended—virtually all spoke and understood several languages, among them English, French, and German, the three most commonly used for such meetings (p. 342). While these data were later used by the sociologist Stanley Lieberson in analyzing the twentieth century shift from French to English in international discourse (Murray 1994:422–423), Cosmopolitan Conversation was unknown or ignored in most scholarly circles. Nevertheless, it was and remains widely available, the result of an IALA program placing copies without cost ‘in the public libraries of a large number of cities of the United States and in principal university libraries of Europe, Asia, and North and South America’ (IALA Report for 1936, p. 13). The intent behind the distribution of the book, and behind the entire research program in sociology, was to document and disseminate evidence of the need for an international auxiliary language. In fact, however, the book itself failed to demonstrate either the existence of a problem or any demand for its solution. IALA’s educational research program was focused on language learning, and specifically on the question of whether students could acquire a constructed language such as Esperanto more readily than a natural language such as English or French. Much of this work was carried out under the direction of the psychologist Edward L.Thorndike (1874–1949) at Teachers College, Columbia University. His associates were Laura H.V.Kennon and Helen S.Eaton, a full-time research staff member of IALA (see, e.g., Thorndike & Kennon 1927, Eaton 1927). Late in 1931, they submitted a 1,200 page report on the six years of IALA-funded research conducted on the relative ease of artificial and natural language learning by children, college students, and adults. A brief summary appeared in IALA’s ‘Report of Executive Secretary’ for 19 May 1930–31 December 1931 (p. 6): an average college senior or graduate in twenty hours of study will be able to understand printed and spoken Esperanto better than he 49

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understands French or German or Italian or Spanish after one hundred hours of study. Forty hours of teaching and practice will equip a pupil in Grade 7 or 8 to understand and use Esperanto as well as two hundred hours of teaching and practice will equip him in French or German. The experiments, measurements, and tests that produced these results had been described earlier (Thorndike & Kennon 1927) in a report that IALA made publicly available through its Sales Service Division, which also distributed a condensed version of the final report (Columbia University 1933). None of this research had any impact on the growing community of scientific linguists who formed the active nucleus of the LSA. Bloomfield, for example, made no reference to it in his 1933 book Language or in his later work on foreign language teaching (e.g., Bloomfield 1945). The studies on language learning had been carried out at the Institute of Educational Research, Division of Psychology, at Teachers College, and that distanced it from linguistics. As Bloomfield was arguing at the time: ‘we can pursue the study of language without reference to any one psychological doctrine, and…to do so safeguards our results…’ (Bloomfield 1933:vii). Further, few linguists would have welcomed results that challenged their own livelihood by claiming an advantage to an artificial language over the foreign languages normally taught in the United States. Virtually all linguists who had regular employment during the Depression years of the 1930s were engaged primarily as teachers in the ancient and modern language departments of colleges and universities. Linguists’ close connections to foreign language teaching continued into World War II when many were involved in developing language teaching materials through the Intensive Language Program sponsored by the American Council of Learned Societies through the LSA and supported by the U.S. military (see Cowan 1975, Cowan 1991, Falk 1993, Murray 1994). But despite that, they seemed uninterested in scientific research on language learning and teaching. As Murray aptly pointed out: for all the commitment to scientism of Bloomfield and his admirers, they evidenced no interest in measuring outcomes of training… Whatever their self-conceptions as empiricists, and even inductivists, Bloomfield and others applying ‘scientific linguistics’ [to foreign language teaching methods] resembled promoters of other educational innovations in their lack of concern for disinterested evaluation of results. (Murray 1994:150) The educational research program of IALA had no consequences for the way American linguists viewed foreign language learning. Although it might have served as a model of educational research in foreign language learning, it did not. There were, however, some short-term effects on the language teaching programs of schools, primarily in the New York City region, as Helen Eaton 50

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set up, and in some cases taught, courses in Esperanto and in Ido, another constructed language. These courses were designed not simply to instruct students in an artificial language, but ‘to provide classes for observation and… scientific testing’ through IALA’s educational research program (IALA Annual Report for 1926, p. 3). In the early years, all were conducted at private schools and colleges (e.g., Children’s University School, Beaver Country Day School, Friends’ Academy, Mt. Holyoke College, Vassar College), a consequence of the particular social milieu of IALA’s membership. Despite her research and extensive publications, little information is available about Helen Eaton, but there is evidence that she belonged to a privileged class with her ‘Diplomée Sorbonne’ title and former position as teacher at the private Milton Academy in Massachusetts. Her contacts were in private education and for a full decade, until 1934, so were IALA’s educational efforts. Eaton did try to disseminate information about auxiliary languages and IALA’s experimental studies throughout the foreign language teaching community. She published two articles in the respectable and heavily subscribed Modern Language Journal (Eaton 1927,1934b), as well as reports on her research in Private School News and High Points in the Work of the High Schools of New York City (IALA Report on Annual Meeting 19 May 1930, p. 8; Annual Report for 1935, pp. 8–9). The latter provided accounts of IALA’s sole venture in the public schools, teaching ‘general language courses’ in place of first term French for high school pupils on three occasions from February 1934 through Spring 1935. Although formally approved by the Superintendent of Schools, with credit allowed toward graduation by the New York City Board of Education, ‘school administrative problems…prevented continuation of the courses’ and the general language course disappeared from the school system (IALA Annual Reports for 1934, p. 13 and 1935, pp. 8–9). The concept of a ‘General Language Course’ was widely discussed in the teaching profession in the late 1920s in response to educators’ perception of ‘the lack of achievement in the ordinary two-year course [in a foreign language]’ (Fife 1934:43). Intended to parallel the course in General Science that had been introduced into the progressive curriculum, a General Language Course was to ‘give the pupil a comprehension of the field of language’ (Eaton 1929:1) through ‘the development of a consciousness of language organization, an awakening of interest in languages, [and] the recognition of principles common to all languages’ (Fife 1934:44). It would serve as the basis for future study in English and in any foreign language. Eaton’s work in this area was extensive. Not only did she organize and teach such courses, but she also prepared several textbooks, culminating in the General Language Course (Eaton 1934c), based on ‘the idea of using a constructed language [Esperanto] as an introduction to the study of foreign languages and as a tool for the better knowledge of the mother tongue’ (IALA Annual Report for 1934, p. 11). She had support from a number of prominent educators including Henry W.Holmes, Dean of the Graduate School of Education at 51

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Harvard University from 1920 to 1940, and such leading members of IALA from the academic community as Stephen Duggan, Henry Grattan Doyle, and E.L.Thorndike. All publicly endorsed Eaton’s textbooks amidst controversy within the field, where some teachers considered an auxiliary language to be ‘a “menace” to…existing natural language’ (Doyle in Eaton 1929:7). The General Language Course was focused on vocabulary. Each lesson began with a list of Esperanto equivalents to the most frequently used words in English, French, German, and Spanish, followed by a reading passage in Esperanto, and concluded with a paragraph on grammar or word formation. Eaton’s studies on comparative word frequency in these languages were part of IALA’s 1931 report on ‘Research in Vocabulary’ (Report of Executive Secretary 19 May 1930–31 December 1931, p. 7). Her results were published in preliminary form by the Committee on Modern Languages of the American Council on Education (Eaton 1934a) and in final form as Semantic Frequency List for English, French, German, and Spanish (Eaton 1940). All costs of the research and the publication were met by IALA. The Semantic Frequency List was a large descriptive study. It joined a series of publications, also issued by the American Council on Education, on the frequency of words, idioms, and even syntactic structures in a variety of commonly taught languages. The authors were usually well-known scholars, e.g. the leading linguists Charles C.Fries ([1887–1967] Fries 1940) and Hayward Keniston ([1883–1970] Keniston 1937), LSA presidents in 1939 and 1948, respectively. None of these works is considered important today. They were products of an era enamored with large scale studies, measurements, and counts. More recent scholars find little of significance in such work although it once may have been useful to those preparing teaching materials. And, of course, social and cultural changes in the half century since these particular works were prepared have left much of the material obsolete. Words concerning a royal court, to drive a horse, ladies and gentlemen, soldiers and war, the town square, lords and masters, and railroads all show up in the thousand most frequent concepts on Eaton’s list, which was based on counts for the different languages published between 1898 and 1932. Still, there was value enough in the work that Eaton’s book was republished in 1967. As with Shenton’s study of international conferences, however, there is little evidence that Eaton’s frequency counts attracted much attention in the world of scholarship. Margaret Schlauch did refer to it in a book popularizing the linguistic approach to language, but only in an appendix of suggested exercises for students (Schlauch 1955[1942]: 323). The Semantic Frequency List served its intended purpose as the chief basis for the vocabulary of Interlingua, an auxiliary language constructed by IALA during the 1940s. It was the sole practical product of IALA’s linguistic research. Within IALA, Eaton had the title ‘Linguistic Research Associate’ but she never earned a higher degree or held an academic appointment beyond a 1936– 1937 assignment to Thorndike’s division at Columbia, an appointment funded by a grant from IALA to Teachers College (IALA Annual Report for 1936, pp. 16–17). With the publication of Shenton’s book in 1933, Thorndike’s 52

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withdrawal following completion of his educational research report in 1933, and, as we will see below, the end of linguistic studies by Edward Sapir and his students, IALA had virtually no active university connections left by 1936. The grant that gave Eaton an appointment at Teachers College maintained a link to academia. Although IALA’s research programs in sociology and education were limited in the number of people carrying out studies, its research program in linguistics involved many prominent linguists from both North America and Europe. This program was developed by Alice Morris in consultation with William Edward Collinson (1889–?), Otto Jespersen (1860–1943), and Edward Sapir (1884– 1939). Collinson headed an IALA branch office in England at the University of Liverpool. Morris corresponded regularly with Jespersen, recently retired from his post as professor of English at the University of Copenhagen, and met with him on her frequent trips to Europe. The linguistic research that was done in the United States was directed by Sapir, who held appointment at the University of Chicago during his most active years with IALA. Eventually some thirty LSA members had a connection to the international auxiliary language movement through IALA in the years from 1924 until the organization was disbanded in 1953, less than three years after Alice Morris’s death. Their names and affiliations are given in Figure 9.1. These linguists’ work on auxiliary languages was not avocational. It was fully a part of their professional activities and represented the application of their scholarship to a subject of widespread popular interest and increasing academic respectability. But because it was conducted in cooperation with nonlinguists, amateurs, and enthusiasts, and perhaps also because it was directed toward a popular and applied goal, the existence of this work was ignored by other linguists at the time and over the years has become obscured within the discipline of linguistics. From scattered surviving documents, it appears that virtually all of the linguists associated with IALA were brought into the organization and its work through the direct efforts of Mrs. Morris who, with the assistance of her personal secretary, carried on extensive correspondence on behalf of the international auxiliary language movement. Even to scholars overseas, she usually wrote in English (‘in order to avail myself of stenographic help’) though in one letter to L. M.de Guesnet, honorary secretary of the French society promoting the language Ido, she stressed how much she enjoyed receiving letters not only in Ido but in the several other auxiliary languages that she could read ‘with ease’ (AVM to LMG 28 July 1924 IIP). Her letters and her annual summer trips to Europe brought her into contact with a number of European scholars already interested in the cause. She maintained no distinction between her personal life and her work for an international auxiliary language, sometimes inviting linguists to join her—at her own expense—at luxury hotels and spas where she was staying (e.g., AVM to LMG 21 July 1925 IIP). The European linguists who became affiliated with IALA were, for the most part, already committed to specific international auxiliary languages: Collinson 53

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Scholars are listed in approximate order of their first association with the international auxiliary language movement in the United States; their affiliations are those recorded at the time in LSA and/or IALA records. SC=Signer of the Call that established the LSA in 1924; FM=Foundation Member of LSA in 1925; otherwise, first year of LSA membership is given. The pre-IALA conference was a series of meetings in New York in late March 1923 that led to the formation of IALA the following year. IALA Consultants for Linguistic Research were scholars who had indicated their willingness to be called upon; there is no evidence that such a call was ever actually made to any of those so listed. Alice Vanderbilt Morris, independent scholar. LSA FM. Pre-IALA conference. IALA Cofounder and Honorary Secretary 1924–. Dave Hennen Morris, lawyer. LSA 1927. Pre-IALA conference. IALA Cofounder and Treasurer 1924–. Earle B.Babcock, Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures and Dean of the Graduate School, New York University. LSA FM. Pre-IALA conference. President IALA Board of Directors 1924–1935. John L.Gerig, Professor of Celtic Languages and Assistant Director of University Extension, Columbia University. LSA SC, FM. Pre-IALA conference. Co-signed Sapir 1925 Memorandum. Henry A.Todd, Professor of Romance Languages, Columbia University. LSA FM. PreIALA conference. Roland G.Kent, Professor of Comparative Philology, University of Pennsylvania. LSA SC, FM, President 1941. Listed as ‘American Headquarters’ for Latin as an IAL by IALA 1925; articles on Latin as an IAL sold by IALA 1928. No direct IALA involvement. Edward Sapir, Professor of Anthropology and General Linguistics, University of Chicago (later, Yale University). LSA SC, FM, President 1933. 1925 Memorandum reprinted and sold by IALA. Member IALA Advisory Board for Linguistic Research 1927–1939; Director of IALA Linguistic Research 1 October 1930 to 1 July 1931. Leonard Bloomfield, Professor of Germanic Philology, Ohio State University (later, University of Chicago, Yale University). LSA SC, FM, President 1935. Co-signed Sapir 1925 Memorandum. No direct IALA involvement. Franz Boas, Professor of Anthropology, Columbia University. LSA SC, FM, President 1928. Cosigned Sapir 1925 Memorandum; IALA Consultant for Linguistic Research 1927. George Philip Krapp, Professor of English, Columbia University. LSA 1925. Co-signed Sapir 1925 Memorandum. No direct IALA involvement. Helen S.Eaton, IALA Linguistic Research Associate. LSA 1927. Full-time IALA staff member 1926–, possibly began earlier. Member IALA Subcommittee on Linguistic Research 1930. William Edward Collinson, Professor of German, University of Liverpool. LSA 1931. Member IALA Advisory Board for Linguistic Research 1927–. Member IALA Committee for Agreement 1935–. Otto Jespersen, Professor Emeritus, University of Copenhagen. LSA Honorary Member 1927. Member IALA Advisory Board for Linguistic Research 1927–. C.K.Ogden, Director of International Library of Psychology, Philosophy and Scientific Method, London. LSA 1929. IALA Consultant for Linguistic Research 1927–1928.

Figure 9.1 Linguistic Society of America members and the auxiliary language movement in the United States. 54

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Anders Orbeok, Professor of English, University of Rochester. LSA 1929. IALA Consultant for Linguistic Research 1927–1928. James P.Wickersham Crawford, Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures, University of Pennsylvania. LSA FM. Member IALA Advisory Board for Educational Research 1927–1939. Hayward Keniston, Professor of Spanish, University of Chicago. LSA 1928, President 1948. Member IALA Advisory Board for Educational Research 1927–. Robert H.Fife, Professor of Germanic Languages, Columbia University. LSA 1943. Member IALA Advisory Board for Educational Research 1927–. Norman A.McQuown, began the study of Esperanto 1928. Later, Professor of Anthropology and Linguistics, University of Chicago. LSA 1937. No direct IALA involvement. Henry Grattan Doyle, Professor of Romance Languages, George Washington University. LSA FM. Chairman IALA Washington Regional Board 1928–; Chairman IALA Subcommittee on Linguistic Research 1930. Charles Hall Grandgent, Department of Romance Languages, Harvard University. LSA 1928, President 1929. IALA Boston Regional Board 1928–. Morris Swadesh, graduate student, Yale University. LSA 1931. Research funded by IALA 1931, ten month part-time assignment. Mary Haas Swadesh, graduate student, Yale University. LSA 1934, President 1963. Research funded by IALA 1931, eight month assignment. Henri F.Muller, Professor of Romance Philology, Barnard College, Columbia University. LSA FM. Director of IALA research division of Comparative Studies on ‘Word Building’ 1931–1932. George Trager, graduate student. LSA 1931, President 1960. IALA Research Associate 1931–1933, full time. Albert Debrunner, Professor of Indo-European Linguistics and Classical Philology, University of Berne. LSA Honorary Member 1927. Chairman IALA Committee for Agreement 1935–; IALA Advisory Board for Linguistic Research 1936–. Joseph Vendryes, Professor of Celtic Languages and Literatures, École des Hautes-Études. LSA Honorary Member 1938. IALA Committee for Agreement, 1936–. Nicolaas van Wijk, Professor of Baltic and Slavonic Languages, University of Leiden. LSA Honorary Member 1932. IALA Committee for Agreement 1938–. André Martinet, Professor of Linguistics, Columbia University. LSA 1947. IALA Director 1946–1948. Jean-Paul Vinay, Faculté des Lettres, Université de Montréal. LSA 1947. Co-author with Martinet of 1946 IALA questionnaire. Fred W.Householder, Jr., Department of Classical Languages, Indiana University. LSA 1944, President 1981. Reviewed IALA’s Interlingua dictionary and grammar 1951. Robert P.Austerlitz, Professor of Linguistics and Uralic Studies, Columbia University. LSA 1948, President 1990. Member Interlingua Institute Board of Directors 1975–1994.

Figure 9.1 Continued. 55

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The past century has witnessed an unprecedented intensification of the budding powers in man to become a coworker with the forces of nature. Consciousness, though bound within the outer world, has taken hold of that world, struggled with its elements until it made them do its bidding, and grappled with its ways until it discovered and learned to direct its laws…. This development of conscious control is brought about by what is called the scientific method of study and experiment. It first deals with things as they exist. It observes and records facts. Next it compares, classifies, and seeks to explain them. In its search for explanation it calls upon the imagination to postulate a working hypothesis. Then it checks up facts with hypotheses. When they disagree, it discards the hypothesis as false and tries another. When they agree, it knows the hypothesis to be true and renames it as law. From this point, the path of science is no longer confined to fields of discovery and observation but leads onward through fields of direction, modification, and construction…. There are over seven hundred languages into which the Bible, in whole or in part, has been translated. Are there any features which are common to them all? If an affirmative answer to this question can be found, then there is hope that we can discover guiding principles for the determination of the structure of an auxiliary language intended for universal use…. …an auxiliary language is interested primarily in the principle that there are certain conditions universal to mankind which provide a common basis for constructive work…. Thus we see the possibility of discovering the basic structure of language, the “pattern on the mount” upon which the earthly tabernacle, the structure of an actual international language, may be reared. The principle explained above, that the conditions common to mankind provide a practical basis for the fundamentals, the foundations, of grammar and language-construction furnishes a point of departure for a further quest. From such foundation, element by element, may there not be built a grammar which, although as of old still “the science of the right use of language,” shall be also the science of the clear expression of thought? Let us pursue the quest. On to a detailed study of language, in which analysis is based primarily not upon conventional rules of grammar but upon the psychology of thought. We must expect to find that in some instances the two coincide and that in others there are divergencies which spring from and cause confusion of thought or make expression difficult or cumbersome. We must be ready for some surprises, perhaps even a few shocks. But if we are free from prejudice and have a hospitable mind, if with patience we check and recheck facts with hypotheses, is there not hope that the study may be a contribution toward the development of an international language whose structure is a “grammar of thought?”

Figure 9.2 Excerpts from ‘Why Should We Cut Out Our Tongues?’ by Alice V.Morris (Morris 1927).

to Esperanto, C.K.Ogden to Basic English, Jespersen first to Ido and then, beginning in 1928, to his own creation Novial (Nov ‘new’+IAL ‘International Auxiliary Language;’ see Jespersen 1928). The Americans, however, tended to be more interested in the research surrounding the selection or creation of an auxiliary language, and none of those who signed on with IALA promoted any particular language. Even in more recent years, it is rare to find an American linguist supporting a constructed auxiliary language. A notable exception is Norman A.McQuown (b. 1914), longtime professor of anthropology and linguistics at the University of Chicago, who began his involvement with Esperanto in 1928 (personal communication 19 September 1996). The philosophical basis of IALA’s linguistic research program was articulated publicly by Alice Morris in a 1927 article in The Forum: A Magazine

56

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of Controversy (see Figure 9.2). Here she defined ‘the scientific method of study,’ proposed a research agenda to determine the ‘features common to…all’ languages, sought ‘the conditions common to mankind [that] provide a practical basis for the fundamentals, the foundations, of grammar,’ and anticipated ‘a detailed study of language, in which analysis is based primarily not upon conventional rules of grammar, but upon the psychology of thought’ (Morris 1927). The goal was ‘the development of an international language whose structure is a “grammar of thought”’ (ibid.). The editorial column on contributors to The Forum combined the personal status and the intellectual scope of Alice Morris and her work in the auxiliary language movement. Illustrated with the 1888 Sargent portrait, a clear allusion to her social standing, the note characterized her as ‘endowed with scholarly instincts and surgical judgment beyond the ordinary’ (The Forum 77:5.x[May 1927]). From the beginning, IALA saw language as primarily lexicon. Its linguistic research was envisioned as ‘the compiling of dictionaries, and the development and standardization of international technical vocabularies in science, industry and commerce.’ An IALA list of ‘elements and qualities’ of languages to be subjected to analysis and comparison was dominated by details concerning ‘Parts of Speech,’ ‘Word-formation,’ and ‘Vocabulary.’ Syntax was barely mentioned, covered in just three lines (IALA Outline of Program 1924, pp. 12, 19–20). In an article written specifically for IALA and published in the journal American Speech, Jespersen provided support for this focus on words. Under the title ‘Nature and Art in Language’ he argued that ‘the vast majority of linguistic facts have come about by…natural growth’ and that ‘[t]his is especially true of linguistic structure, or what we generally call grammar…[and of] most of our common words’ (Jespersen 1929:89–90). But ‘[o]n the other hand, there are many words that have been deliberately coined in recent times…[and] new terms abound in all branches of science’ (p. 90). This dichotomy between natural grammar and conventional, sometimes consciously created lexicon (see also Joseph 1994) constitutes a fundamental linguistic assumption underlying almost all work on artificial languages, both in modern Europe and in North America. The proponents, the creators, and the analysts of artificial languages all concentrated on lexicon and, less often, on derivational morphology. Syntax warranted no special attention. Assumed to be ‘natural’ it would surely take care of itself, or so it seemed to many of the enthusiasts most responsible for actually constructing auxiliary languages. Inflectional morphology was also dismissed by most Americans working on the international auxiliary language issue. The view that an ‘inflectional grammatical system’ was ‘a recurrence to obsolescent principles’ (Brinton et al. 1888:3) had dominated late nineteenth century linguistic thinking on the subject of the evolution of human languages. It was used by a committee of the American Philosophical Society as the chief criterion for rejecting the 57

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auxiliary language called Germanic-English created by the American Elias Molee (Molee 1888), as well as for opposing Spelin, a version of Volapük: ‘its synthetic and inflectional character is, in our opinion, a return to worn-out and barbarous expedients certain not to be acceptable to the civilized man of the future and contrary to linguistic evolution’ (Brinton et al. 1888:4). This view prevailed among some American linguists well into the twentieth century and is clearly reflected in the writings of Edward Sapir, one of the founding figures of twentieth century North American linguistics.

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Of all Mrs. Morris’s early correspondence, the most important was an exchange of letters with Edward Sapir in 1925 (Edward Sapir’s Correspondence [ESC], Canadian Museum of Civilization). Unlike many of his cohorts, Sapir was quite accustomed to dealing with members of the public on a variety of issues concerning language, poetry, music, and the many other topics that attracted his attention. It is not at all surprising that he felt comfortable working with Alice Morris. Sapir had paid no attention to the international auxiliary language movement in his 1921 book Language, although—had he been interested—it would have been an appropriate topic. In the Preface he described the work as dealing with language and ‘its relations to other fundamental human interests’ and his audience as ‘both…linguistic students and…the outside public that is half inclined to dismiss linguistic notions as the private pedantries of essentially idle minds’ (p. v). That he did not publish at all on this subject until 1925, following his contact with Mrs. Morris and then only as a direct result of their discussions, indicates that he came to his interest in auxiliary languages at least in part as the result of her influence. Sapir continued his association with IALA until his death in 1939. He never espoused any particular artificial language, but on several occasions he offered praise for Peano’s Latino sine flexione. On 24 February 1925, Alice Vanderbilt Morris wrote to Sapir in response to their first meeting and conversation in New York. At the time, he was located in Ottawa, Ontario, holding the position of chief of the Division of Anthropology at the Victoria Memorial Museum. He and Mrs. Morris may have met in New York when Sapir attended the first meeting of the new Linguistic Society of America, held there two months earlier on 28 December 1924 at the American Museum of Natural History. Indeed, it is even possible that Mrs. Morris attended that meeting, perhaps in the company of John L.Gerig (1878–1957) and Henry Alfred Todd (1854–1925), both of whom had been present at the meetings in Spring 1923 that led to the creation of IALA. The two professors registered for the LSA meeting, along with Mrs. Gerig, but judging from a note written the next month by Secretary-Treasurer Kent, not 59

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Figure 10.1 Alice Vanderbilt Morris. Photo courtesy of Frank Esterhill, Executive Director, Interlingua Institute.

everyone who attended had formally registered (Murray 1994:124). Lending support to the speculation that Mrs. Morris could have been at the LSA meeting is the fact that she became a Foundation Member of the Society, on its membership rolls by 31 March 1925 (Falk 1994). From their first letters, it is clear that Sapir and Alice Morris had already held rather extensive discussion on auxiliary languages and that Sapir had committed to preparing ‘a statement which would have the informal authority of the Linguistic Society of America’ in the form of a memorandum containing ‘a number of suggestions that may prove of interest to you and your Association’ (ES to AVM 27 February 1925 ESC). She tried to enlist him further by raising the possibility of ‘the compilation of what might be called a “universal grammar” or “world grammar”’ as part of research on the ‘impartial 60

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analysis and comparison of the structure of different languages and of language itself,’ and she suggested that, if she had understood him correctly, this might be ‘akin to what you have in mind…to analyze the concepts of thought itself and to create a language structure reduced to the minimum number of forms that will furnish every kind of concept with an adequate vehicle of expression’ (AVM to ES 24 February 1925 ESC). Some of the ideas Sapir expressed in response to the Morris letter found their way into his ‘Memorandum on the Problem of an International Auxiliary Language,’ written within the next few weeks and published several months later after Sapir incorporated suggestions from Mrs. Morris and Dr. Cottrell (AVM to ES 26 March 1925, 26 May 1925 ESC). The memorandum was cosigned by Sapir’s former teacher Franz Boas (1859–1942), John Gerig, George Philip Krapp (1872–1934)—all on the faculty of Columbia University—and by Leonard Bloomfield. All of these men had been Signers of the Call for the founding of the LSA. Despite Sapir’s hope for informal LSA support, the memorandum was published not in the journal of the Society, Language, but in The Romanic Review, edited by Gerig. Sapir had requested Bloomfield, who was then at Ohio State University, to pass the memorandum on to his colleague George Melville Bolling (1871–1963) for approval and signature, but Bolling returned it unsigned. Publication in Language, of which Bolling was editor, would have been difficult in any case but was made more so by the fact that Bloomfield, too, had reservations. He wrote to Sapir: ‘the political problem of putting over an int. lg. [international language] involves compromises & expenditure of energy in directions unhandy to men of science’ and ‘Hence I don’t want the LSA to be saddled with the problem’ (LB to ES 9 April 1925 ESC). Co-signatories aside, the memorandum was Sapir’s work, and it was work that he did for Alice Morris and IALA. Here he argued that ‘most of those who are interested in the International Language movements’ with ‘wider acquaintance with linguistic phenomena’ would have been able ‘to evolve far simpler and more readily acquired auxiliary languages than those which have actually been proposed [e.g., Esperanto]’ (Sapir 1925a:244). His model was Chinese, which ‘can do without cases, modes, tenses, and a complex system of derivations’ (ibid.). Sapir continued: In short, the ideal of effective simplicity is attained by a completely analytic language, one in which the whole machinery of formal grammar is reduced to carefully defined word order and to the optional use of “empty” independent words (like “several,” “did,” “of”). Inflection is reduced to zero. This is the ideal that English has been slowly evolving towards for centuries and that Chinese attained many centuries ago after passing through a more synthetic prehistoric phase. (p. 248)

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Much of Sapir’s argument and evidence for the ‘simplicity’ of Chinese was drawn from morphology, in keeping with a traditional Eurocentric view of ‘grammar’ as primarily inflection, of the kind found in Latin and ancient Greek. The syntax of Chinese was also often assumed to be simple—and invariant. Even in more recent work, this notion was proposed by the linguist Yuen Ren Chao (1892–1982). Chao, a specialist in modern Chinese dialects, may have underestimated both the complexity and the variations of syntax among the varieties of Chinese when he claimed that: ‘Apart from some minor divergencies [in the order of direct and indirect objects]…and slight differences [in the placement of the negative]…and apart from differences in suffixes and particles …one can say that there is practically one universal Chinese grammar’ (Chao 1968:13). From the perspective of the theory of Universal Grammar late in the twentieth century, these differences seem to be rather simple adjustments in parameter settings and many Chinese language experts continue to support Chao’s position. But not all. Stephen Matthews, for example, has argued that Chao was able to reach this conclusion only because (1) he disregarded the southern dialects that are most divergent, (2) he failed to distinguish adequately between literary and colloquial usage, (3) his structuralism limited his conception of syntax to basic word order, and (4) he held a long-standing commitment to the idea of a Pan-Chinese grammar (Matthews forthcoming). Indeed, in his autobiography Chao described his involvement in the compilation of a national Chinese dictionary, adopting the pronunciation of Beijing as a national standard and designing a national system for romanization (Chao 1991:61). The project seems to have been misunderstood at the time by at least some academics in the United States who confused it with the construction of an auxiliary language. In a chain of misunderstanding, a Norwegian exchange professor at Columbia University understood a psychology professor at Princeton who had known Chao at Harvard to have said that Chao had ‘got the charge of the Chinese government to try and construct up an auxiliary language for use of all Chinese’ (Anathon Aall to AVM 10 May 1925 ESC). This he conveyed to Alice Morris, who then extracted this passage from a letter and passed it on to Sapir, urging him to get in touch with Chao: ‘guide him away from starting up a language for China which is not to be the future world language. Urge him to use Esperanto now and its successor, the final IAL as soon as it is ready’ (AVM to ES 13[?] May 1925 ESC). Sapir did not favor Esperanto and was not responsive to her request, and it seems quite clear from Chao’s own account of this period that the entire incident was based on misunderstanding and confusion, so nothing much came of it1. However, it does illustrate the ignorance and the distortions of the Chinese language that were widespread among even well-educated people at the time. Sapir’s notions about Chinese grammatical simplicity were a part of this. That Sapir could support reducing ‘the whole machinery of formal grammar’ to ‘carefully defined word order’ in either a natural language or in a constructed one is not surprising when we consider how little work he and 62

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other American linguists of the time had done on syntax. But it is a striking fact that this linguist who devoted so much of his professional life to the study of Native American languages, with their often extensive morphological systems, seemed so ready to abandon inflection. In part, the explanation rests in Sapir’s attempt here ‘to cut to the bone of what is necessary in practical communication’ keeping in mind the ‘needs of aliens who have not grown up in our Occidental civilization’ and ‘to try to learn something from the structure of languages simpler than Italian or Spanish’ (Sapir 1925a: 244). In addition to Chinese, he cited the example of Chinook Jargon, a Native American lingua franca, ‘built on strictly analytic lines,’ used by ‘Indians themselves, who speak perhaps the most complexly synthetic languages that are to be found anywhere,’ and a language considered by its users ‘a perfectly adequate medium for intertribal communication’ (p. 251). Although Sapir concluded the memorandum with suggestions for experimental work ‘intended to substantiate or, possibly, disprove some of the points’ made earlier (Sapir 1925a: 253), his bias toward the analytic is clear: a highly analytic language, built on Chinese lines, is likely to be unconsciously resisted on emotional grounds as “ridiculous” or “too childish” for a while. After a short period of resistance, however, the advantages of such a language are likely to sink in at a rapid rate. (p. 254) Sapir’s assumption that evolution had led languages from the ‘synthetic’ to the ‘analytic’ was obviously very powerful and seemed supported by his understanding of the nature and history of Chinese. The role of Chinese as a model for properties of the ideal constructed language has a long history in the auxiliary language movement. Scholars in the seventeenth century had looked to Chinese writing for evidence of the feasibility of a common writing system (Knowlson 1975:25). In the nineteenth century, the isolating character of the Chinese language entered the linguistic debates on the nature of language change, in particular whether languages were ‘progressing’ or ‘regressing’ toward or away from greater or lesser use of inflectional forms. Sapir’s position on this subject is clear from the quotation. The absence of inflectional morphemes in Chinese and its limited use of derivational affixation stands in sharp contrast to the Indo-European languages most familiar to the developers of the constructed languages proposed for use in Europe and America. It was precisely this difference that served Peano in his promotion of Latino sine flexione. In the face of the heavily morphologized competing artificial languages Esperanto and Volapük, Peano pointed to Latino sine flexione as a ‘lingua sine grammatica’ [language without grammar]. Similar to Sapir’s ‘Memorandum’ of the following year, Peano said of English that it ‘habe pauco grammatica’ [has little grammar], while ‘Lingua de Sina (China) non habe grammatica’ [the language of China does not have grammar] (Peano 1957[1924], vol. 2:493). 63

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Peano’s interests were not only in mathematics, but in logic. He supported his view of the superiority of grammarless language with a quotation from The Principles of Mathematics by Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) about rules of logic: ‘“The excellence of grammar as a guide is proportional to the paucity of inflexions, i.e., to the degree of analysis effectued [sic effectuated] by the language considered”’ (ibid.). The philosopher Rudolf Carnap (1891–1970) had similar views. Carnap’s interest in an international auxiliary language began at the age of 14 when he first studied Esperanto (Carnap 1963:69). In his autobiography he writes of his successful experiences communicating in the language, especially at the Esperanto Congress held in Finland in 1922, shortly before the founding of IALA. Later he became interested in the more ‘theoretical problems of the points of view which should guide the planning of an international language’ and that led him to the study of Ido, Occidental, Latino sine flexione, and IALA’s Interlanguage (Carnap 1963:69–70). Although he was to conclude eventually that all five ‘are indeed so similar to each other that they may be regarded as variants of one language’ (p. 70), Carnap had earlier valued the ‘great simplicity of structure’ he perceived in Esperanto (p. 69). In May 1945 he wrote to Fanti seeking materials on Peano’s Interlingua, and upon receipt of the earlier Academia Pro Interlingua publications (1931a, 1931b), he wrote again praising Peano’s ‘great simplification of grammar’ but suggesting ‘that greater regularity and thereby greater facility in learning and using could be achieved by deviating in certain respects from the classical forms, e.g. in the formation of words’ (RC to AF 30 May 1945 LSAA). The similarity in Sapir’s and Peano’s argument was not accidental. Sapir repeatedly mentioned Peano and Latino sine flexione in his ‘Memorandum’ (Sapir 1925a:245, 251–252, 254, 255), pointing to Peano’s language as the existing auxiliary language that ‘best synthesized’ his own proposals, requiring only ‘simplifying it still further in the direction of a thoroughly analytic language, minimizing, so far as possible, the use of derivational suffixes’ (p. 252). Peano’s ideas on international auxiliary languages, including his notions of Chinese, were well known to the linguists involved in the movement. Jespersen was more critical of Peano than was Sapir, perhaps because Jespersen was promoting his own constructed language Novial, perhaps because he was more knowledgeable about Chinese grammar, perhaps because he had a greater interest in syntax. Discussing the choice among various proposed auxiliary languages before the Second International Congress of Linguists in 1931, Jespersen said: ‘The subject requires protracted serious study… I can assure you from personal experience that such a study pays in the long run. I should not have been able to do what little I have done in the way of general linguistics, not even in English syntax, had it not been for my study of international languages’ (Jespersen 1933:101). Earlier, he commented directly on Peano’s position: Peano’s ideal would be no grammar, or what he thinks is the same thing, the Chinese grammar; but no language can do entirely without 64

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grammar …Chinese grammar is simplicity itself, in so far as it has no inflexions of the European kind, but it uses other grammatical means, [such] as…tone …or…rules for word-order…not to mention the numerous particles used for grammatical purposes. (Jespersen 1928:47–48) But Jespersen, too, argued for morphological simplicity: ‘we must make the interlanguage of the future more perfect, i.e. simpler… The simpler the morphological structure is, the less inducement will there be to make grammatical mistakes’ (Jespersen 1928:25). In this, Alice Morris and her IALA linguists were of one mind. Although her own interests were primarily in lexicon, and especially in lexical roots, her goal of establishing a universal grammar was motivated by that desire expressed in her first letter to Sapir: ‘to create a language structure reduced to the minimum number of forms’ (AVM to ES 24 February 1925 ESC). On another matter, as well, Peano, Jespersen, and Sapir were in agreement with a position frequently stressed by Alice Morris—that an international auxiliary language should be built from existing linguistic material. Indeed, a dictionary of words adapted from lexical elements common to a number of the western European languages eventually became one of the main accomplishments of the International Auxiliary Language Association. Beginning in 1904, as a basis for the vocabulary of Latino sine flexione/ Interlingua, Peano constructed a comparative vocabulary of some 14,000 entries and 320 pages (Kennedy 1980:144–145), drawing words from Latin, Italian, French, English, German, Greek, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, and a very few from Sanskrit (Peano 1915). And Jespersen described the task of constructing an international auxiliary language as ‘not so much to invent a language as to find out what is already in international use, and to utilize that to the utmost extent’ (Jespersen 1928:39). He repeated his position in an article for the American popular press written specifically for IALA: ‘no single element of the language should be arbitrarily coined; everything that is already international should be used’ (Jespersen 1929:100). Sapir, in his work on the international auxiliary language question, developed a research program comparing existing languages to determine common elements of vocabulary and meaning. This work was guided by two decisions he explained in his report to the 1929 IALA Annual Meeting (Sapir 1929). First, Sapir had become convinced that auxiliary language work was an appropriate undertaking for a linguist. In remarks made at the meeting he attributed the ‘lukewarmness’ of other linguists toward the subject as ‘bound up with all kinds of romantic notions…of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries […that a] language was…something like a tree that grew up without human care and could not be interfered with without spoiling the growth’ (p. 17). Admitting that ‘I have been very much under the influence of this bad metaphor, myself,’ Sapir proclaimed that ‘I am trying hard now to get 65

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rid of it’ (ibid.). Thus, it was legitimate for a linguist to ‘interfere with’ language, and the aspect of language most amenable to control was lexicon, as Jespersen had said in his article that same year (Jespersen 1929). Sapir’s colleague on the newly established IALA Advisory Board for Linguistic Research, Jespersen, too, took a forthright position about linguists’ involvement in practical matters of language manipulation. In remarks to the Second International Congress of Linguists, he said that scholars should take an active share…in what is going on to modify and, if possible improve linguistic conditions. Too much is left in the hands of ignorant amateurs… Those trained in serious investigation of languages and their development should not keep aloof from such discussions, but should utilize their knowledge to the benefit of their own language—otherwise there is a danger that it will be deteriorated by the conscious influence of others who do not possess sufficient knowledge to be guides in these matters. (Jespersen 1933:96) Sapir’s second decision was to settle on an approach to the international auxiliary language issue that involved his knowledge and skills as a linguist, as well as his established interests in the psychology of language, but an approach that was markedly European in orientation and that made no overt use of his experience with Native American languages. Arguing that the existing auxiliary languages shared a ‘well-known character of the vocabulary’ and a ‘fundamental structure…similar to the structure that we are acquainted with—English and German and French,’ Sapir suggested that the ‘linguistic tools’ of ‘Occidental culture’ vary ‘slightly from place to place, but by and large…are remarkably similar’ (Sapir 1929:18). And so, he concluded, in considering an international auxiliary language, ‘why not use the common bound of experience which is implicit in the use of all these tools in a simplified and regularized form?’ To determine these similarities of language, lexicon, and experience, Sapir and several of his students, as well as Alice Morris herself, pursued comparative study of semantics in the European languages, always involving English, French, and German, sometimes including other European languages as well. The best known of these are Sapir’s two studies published with IALA funding as LSA Language Monographs (Sapir 1930b, Sapir & Swadesh 1932) and the posthumously published ‘Grading: A study in semantics’ (Sapir 1944), ‘all but finished’ according to Sapir in 1930 (Sapir 1930a: 15). Also funded by IALA and within the same research program were several unpublished manuscripts that were available through the Association in the 1930s (IALA 1936:26–27): Morris 1931, Swadesh & Morris 1934, Haas Swadesh 1934, and Eaton & Trager 1933. All except the last were supervised by Sapir. It is interesting that women were the authors or co-authors of all of these unpublished works: Alice Morris, Mary Haas Swadesh, and Helen Eaton. The fact that they remained unpublished was likely due, not to the gender of the writers as such, but to their nonprofessional status; 66

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Mary Haas Swadesh, Morris Swadesh, and George Trager were all students. The only similar studies to be published in academic journals were written by the established scholars Sapir and Collinson (Gollinson 1937). Beyond acknowledging the support of IALA and except for an ‘Editorial Note’ by Alice Morris in Sapir & Swadesh 1932, none of these published works makes any overt references to, or recommendations regarding, the creation or establishment of an international auxiliary language. Sapir seems to have been deliberately veiling the extent of his participation in the auxiliary language movement from the eyes of his American colleagues in the discipline of linguistics. The research appears to be purely descriptive, not applied or directed to any practical goal, and from reading only this linguistic work, one might conclude that Sapir was not committed to the cause but perhaps had used the support of Alice Morris and IALA merely to further his and his students’ research. But there is some evidence that his commitment was sincere, long-standing, and public, no matter what the later disclaimers of some of his students (see Darnell 1990:276). In addition to his two well-known papers on auxiliary languages (Sapir 1925a and Sapir 1931 b), Sapir took other clear public positions on the question for both lay and linguistic audiences, at least for linguistic audiences in Europe where a number of reputable linguists, Jespersen foremost among them, were advocates. An article in The American Mercury (Sapir 1931c), nearly identical to Sapir 1931b, states his position without reservation: ‘Wanted, a World Language’. And, also for a nonlinguistic readership, in the Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences, his entry for ‘Communication’ (Sapir 1931a) concludes: ‘The most important of these obstacles [to communication] in the modern world is undoubtedly the great diversity of languages… In the long run, it seems almost unavoidable that the civilized world will adopt some one language of intercommunication…’ (Sapir 1985[1931a]: 109). It may be surprising to find this student of Native American languages suggesting that linguistic diversity has negative consequences, but this entry was written at just the time when Sapir was most engrossed in IALA work. It is also noteworthy that he saw a single international language as inevitable for ‘the civilized world’ alone. Edward Sapir seems to have compartmentalized his research. Sapir made his IALA work highly visible to his international linguistic colleagues. In 1931, he submitted a statement on the subject of international auxiliary languages to the Second International Congress of Linguists. Published two years later in the Actes of the Congress, his remarks summarized the same major points he had made to the people at IALA: ‘a highly efficient and maximally simple international language needs to be developed… [which] capitalizes for common purposes the stock of words and grammatical techniques which lie scattered about in the more important of the national languages of Europe…’ (Sapir 1933a:87). And he repeated here for linguists the comment he had made to IALA in 1929: One should…refrain from…those romantic concepts in regard to language as an ‘organism’ which have already done so much harm in the study of linguistic processes. It is particularly we linguists 67

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who stand in danger of making a fetish of the materials of our study. (p. 88) From 1929 through 1933, Sapir reached a wide audience with his views on the subject of an international auxiliary language. He published in a popular magazine (The American Mercury), in a teaching journal (The Romanic Review), in a major American encyclopedia, in a British review of psychology (Psyche), and in the proceedings of the Second International Congress of Linguists. Yet in the United States, he never directly addressed an audience of linguists on this topic, at least not in print. In that, it is likely that the Linguistic Society of America and its major leaders played an inhibiting role. Kent was publicly supporting only Latin, Bloomfield expressed reservations when signing the ‘Memorandum’, and Bolling was opposed. These LSA leaders’ positions help to explain why Sapir did not directly engage the subject in the IALA-funded monographs that appeared as supplements to Language. Further, among other important LSA leaders of the time, Hermann Collitz (1855–1935), the society’s first president, while devoting his Presidential Address to the topic of ‘World Languages’, was actually quite hostile. As a member of the Modern Language Association committee on the advisability of teaching an artificial language in American public schools, he ‘felt obliged to sound a note of warning against such an experiment’ because: ‘At the bottom of the problem… [the] innate spirit of languages like Volapük or Esperanto is hostile to the study of languages. They were hatched in the belief that the study of foreign languages is an irksome and difficult task’ (Collitz 1926:11). Collitz’s remark accurately anticipated the results of IALA’s educational research program with its finding that students could master the constructed language Esperanto more quickly and completely than the natural languages taught in American schools. Edgar Howard Sturtevant (1875–1952) was politically the most important figure in the LSA during this time (Falk 1998a, 1998b), and he displayed no public interest in the subject whatsoever. That he was head of the small Linguistics Department at Yale University to which Sapir was jointly appointed beginning Fall 1931 may well have been one significant factor in Sapir’s decision to resign as IALA Director of Linguistic Research when he joined the Yale faculty. The LSA members who would, or might, have been supportive of Sapir’s interests in an international auxiliary language were in fact marginal figures in the field of linguistics during the 1930s. Earle Babcock (1881–1935), IALA’s president, was appointed in 1925 as Associate Director of the European Center of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Working in Europe until his death in 1935, he was removed from any role he might have played in American linguistics. Charles Grandgent (1862–1939), though LSA president in 1929, was nearing retirement at Harvard, and Morris Swadesh (1909–1967), Mary Haas (1910–1996), and George Trager (1906–1992) were still students. 68

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With cautious or outright opposition to the cause from several prominent American linguists, the impact of IALA and the auxiliary language movement on American linguistics was limited to the descriptive studies supported by Alice Morris and largely conducted by and under the direct influence of Edward Sapir. On the other hand, linguistics, primarily through Sapir, did influence IALA and the auxiliary language movement in America, although, in the end, Sapir’s linguistic goals came into conflict with the practical aims of the movement. To begin with, the interest of Sapir, Babcock, Todd, and Gerig, along with the others who signed Sapir’s ‘Memorandum,’ gave substance and encouragement to the founding of IALA and the early years of its activities. Once these linguists in America, and Collinson and Jespersen in Europe, became formally associated with IALA, the organization and the movement could—and did— claim scholarly legitimacy for its linguistic research in a way that would not have been possible for the work of Eaton and Morris alone, neither possessing the credentials required for academic recognition. In the first three months of 1929, Sapir and Collinson took leaves from their universities to concentrate on research for IALA. Like much of Sapir’s auxiliary language work, this special arrangement was not well known and is unmentioned in the major biography of his life and work (Darnell 1990). Sapir then assumed the official title of Director of Linguistic Research, a position he held with IALA from October 1930 through 1 July 1931, during which time most of his auxiliary language work was written.

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Even before Sapir’s formal appointment, conflicts arose that were eventually to produce irreconcilable differences between the auxiliary language movement and the academic community of scientific linguists in the United States. The most significant conflict was between the practical goals of the movement and the descriptive research aims of the linguists. Reporting on his research program called ‘Foundations of Language’ to IALA’s annual meeting on 19 May 1930, Sapir spoke of the work of the Committee on Linguistic Research, composed of himself, Collinson, and Mrs. Morris. He stated what he saw as their goals: to give the whole question of linguistic form a thorough logical and psychological overhauling, and to make references to national and proposed international languages only in the most incidental way as illustrative of the various fundamental points that can be made. (Sapir 1930a: 14) This separation of linguistic research from the practical aims of IALA turned out to be a fatal division for the cooperative effort of linguists and the other members of IALA. Sapir either misunderstood or chose to ignore IALA’s fundamental mission. Acknowledging that the research already conducted for the project had ‘revealed in the clearest way the extraordinary and unlocked for complexity of all phases of the question of linguistic form, logic, and psychology’ (ibid.), Sapir had learned an important lesson from his comparative semantic research for IALA. No longer could he be under illusions regarding the extent and the difficulty of the task in which he was engaged, and once the studies already underway had been completed, Sapir himself never again explored comparative semantics. In 1930, however, he still had some hope of progress although he was under pressure from others in the organization to move more quickly and directly to the selection and promotion of an international auxiliary language. He disregarded that pressure and closed his report with a plea: ‘The collaborators feel that they have every right to be encouraged and beg leave to suggest to 70

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the International Auxiliary Language Association that the work which has been initiated be continued’ (Sapir 1930a: 15). The plea was too late. IALA wanted practical results. Sapir had none to offer. At the same meeting, Alice Morris reported that ‘many a puzzling question and a disconcerting fogginess surrounding certain aims and methods still baffled and challenged’ (Morris 1930:15). Although she did not say who was baffled and challenged, she and Mr. Morris had held a private meeting the previous September with IALA’s Vice-Chairman of the Committee on Cooperative Service and Research, Kwan-Ichi Asakawa (1873–1948), at the time an associate professor of history at Yale University. Together these three nonlinguists separated Sapir’s ‘Foundations of Language’ research from the ‘Comparative Studies’ that were designed to provide concrete criteria for eventual selection of an auxiliary language. In a series of decisions, events, and conferences, the practical ‘Comparative Studies’ attained primary emphasis and priority over the more theoretical ‘Foundations of Language.’ Among those who supported this change, and its consequent demotion of Sapir’s work from central concern within IALA, were Sapir’s fellow LSA members Henry Grattan Doyle (1889–1964), the chairman of IALA’s SubCommittee on Linguistic Research, and Helen Eaton, the only other subcommittee member. The final blow came from a number of European linguists meeting at a major conference funded by IALA in Switzerland: the Meeting of Linguistic Research held in Geneva 20 March–2 April 1930. This meeting, organized by Alice Morris and funded by IALA, ultimately changed the course of the international auxiliary language movement in the United States. Although it brought more linguists into contact with IALA, the effect was eventually to end linguistic research on universals of language in favor of the creation of an artificial language. Morris apparently did not see this. She called the separation of ‘Foundations of Language’ and ‘Comparative Studies’ approved in Geneva ‘a coordinated plan of linguistic research.’ At the same time, she acknowledged that the plan had only one goal: ‘producing material which would be of value as the basis for the most suitable kind of international language’ (Who Was Who among North American Authors 1921–1939, Vol. 2:1037–1038). Chaired by Otto Jespersen, key figures at the Geneva meeting were Mrs. Morris, Helen Eaton, Babcock, and Collinson. The creators of several artificial languages were in attendance; Giuseppe Peano was ‘[p]resent intellectually… He had accepted IALA’s invitation to participate, but he was unable to obtain permission from the Italian government to leave Italy. He kept in touch through correspondence’ (Morris 1930:17). Most important for the future of IALA’s linguistic research was the presence of a number of European linguists based in and near Geneva: Charles Bally (1865–1947), Albert Debrunner (1884– 1958), Otto Funke (1885–?), Eduard Hermann (1869–1950), Serge Karcevski (1884– 1955), and Albert Sechehaye (1870–1946). Mrs. Morris reported that these non-IALA linguists ‘were not yet interlinguists’ (p. 18), and apparently none ever joined the movement. However, according to her account: 71

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the philologists… [were] unanimous in recommending that the general direction [of IALA’s research] be centralized in the United States, that the direction of some individual projects be entrusted to scholars in other countries, and that linguists and interlinguists collaborate. They also prepared a carefully selected list of European scholars whom they consider competent for much of the work in mind. (p. 21) Thus, by the time Sapir was officially appointed Director of Linguistic Research for IALA, his own agenda had already been compromised internally by IALA’s practical goals and externally by the European linguists’ efforts to create a role for themselves within the organization’s funded research program. Sapir managed to continue research within the IALA framework for another year, and his many publications on the subject of an auxiliary language in 1931 may have been motivated in part by a desire to restore the prominence of the ‘Foundations of Language’ work within the association. But his new position at Yale in Fall 1931 brought additional responsibilities and opportunities, and Sapir resigned as director of Linguistic Research. There are signs that he was disengaging even as his IALA studies were appearing in print. He was not present at the 1930 annual meeting in New York, nor had he attended IALA’s Geneva meeting earlier that Spring. The next year he did not attend the Second International Congress of Linguists in Geneva (25– 29 August 1931), although he did send written remarks on the question of a constructed international language (Sapir 1933a). Whatever the reasons, these absences kept Sapir from protecting his research program from encroachment and prevented him from establishing supportive relations on this subject with his European colleagues, especially at the Second International Congress, attended not only by Alice Morris, Babcock, Collinson, and Jespersen but by all six of ‘the philologists’ who had moved into IALA circles at the IALA Geneva meeting the year before. The Congress, presided over by Bally, was of particular importance in lending academic legitimacy to the auxiliary language movement. There was extended discussion on participants’ views on the adoption of an artificial auxiliary language (International Congress of Linguists 1933:77–94, 98–107). This provided the foundation for even greater European engagement with IALA. Though Sapir continued on IALA’s Advisory Board for Linguistic Research until his death in 1939, his involvement—and his influence—with the organization declined sharply and his studies in comparative semantics came to an end. When Alice Morris joined her husband in his new appointment as ambassador to Belgium in late spring of 1933, the funding that they personally had been providing for linguistic research decreased abruptly. No major American linguist ever assumed Sapir’s place in IALA or elsewhere in the movement in the United States. Nor did anyone take Alice Morris’s place in guiding IALA in the United States during the four years that she and Dave Morris were stationed in 72

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Belgium. Much of IALA’s work shifted to Europe, where Mrs. Morris hosted meetings and met with proponents of different artificial languages and the linguists with whom she had become acquainted at the Geneva meeting and at the Second International Congress of Linguists. Back home, local promotional activities, previously headed by Mrs. Morris, now fell to the women in her family. A new New York Committee of Interest and Support was chaired ‘temporarily’ by Emily Hammond, Alice Morris’s cousin (IALA Annual Report for 1934, p. 16).1 Luncheon meetings were held at Mrs. Hammond’s home, and at the homes of Mrs. Morris’s daughter Emily Hadley and sister Louise Schieffelin (IALA Annual Report for 1935, p. 10). Mrs. Hammond hosted some two hundred people in her home for the 1935 annual IALA meeting on 27 May, with Dave and Alice Morris, back in New York for their usual three month summer vacation, as two of the featured speakers. Most IALA meetings, however, previously conducted at the Morris residence, were now held in the offices of the organization and its supporters: at the Research Corporation 12 June 1934, at IALA’s offices 18 December 1936 and 30 December 1937, and at John Finley’s offices at the New York Times 27 January 1937. In 1935, still posted to Belgium, Alice Morris formed a Committee for Agreement on a single auxiliary language. This group consisted entirely of European scholars with herself serving ex officio. The first Committee members were Collinson, Debrunner, and an economist from The Hague, William de Cock Buning, and in 1938, the Committee expanded to include Nicolaas van Wijk (1880–1941). They were joined the following year by Joseph Vendryes (1875– 1960). All but Buning had been part of the IALA Geneva meeting and/ or the Second International Congress of Linguists. With this committee in place, IALA withdrew entirely from the kind of research Sapir had directed: Emphasis was turned from fundamental research to consideration of the ways and means for obtaining agreement among those who can participate effectively in the formulation of an acceptable auxiliary language and those in a position to bring about the general acceptance of such a language. Research activities became increasingly focused upon the practical end they are intended to serve, namely, the formulation of a definitive constructed language (based on existing languages) which shall conform to acceptable linguistic and psychological criteria. (IALA 1935:5) The goal was now to formulate a new auxiliary language, no longer to select one that had already been constructed. The criteria were to be practical. The socalled ‘linguistic criteria’ were nothing more than commonality of lexical roots among several of the major languages of Europe. There was work to be done on this, but linguists were no longer needed for the tasks that remained. 73

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Mrs. Morris made one more effort to engage Sapir in IALA’s work. In 1937 the Committee for Agreement prepared and published a set of criteria for an international auxiliary language (IALA 1937). Morris sent portions of a draft to Sapir who was instrumental in separating the ‘linguistic criteria’ from the ‘learning criteria,’ again distinguishing the descriptive from the practical. But this last effort was to no avail. The final report directly contradicted the point Sapir had tried to make. It stated: ‘Particularly should it be borne in mind that most linguistic criteria might be classed also as learning criteria in the sense that such linguistic criteria are at the same time norms of ease of learning’ (IALA 1937:10). In a very real sense, Hermann Collitz’s fears had been realized: ‘ease of learning’ had replaced ‘the study of languages,’ and the international auxiliary language movement in ‘spirit’ had become ‘hostile’ to linguistics. In 1936, IALA had produced ‘A Plan for Obtaining Agreement on an Auxiliary World-Language,’ and then in 1937 ‘Some Criteria for an International Language and Commentary.’ The plan was implemented and the criteria were presented to individuals and organizations through a series of thirty three ‘conferences’ conducted in New York and, until the start of World War II, throughout western Europe between 1936 and the end of 1940. From IALA’s annual reports for these years, its seems that little of substance was accomplished. Alice Morris, Helen Eaton, and a few others from IALA met and discussed the criteria and the goals with a variety of interested parties, but there were no new publications or products except for the Semantic Frequency List on which Eaton had been working for nearly a decade. With Sapir’s removal, no American linguists were engaged in the subject, and despite their earlier attempts to insert themselves into IALA’s funded research, none of the linguists from the Geneva meeting produced any work that can be identified with the movement.

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THE FINAL PRODUCT

The completion of Helen Eaton’s Semantic Frequency List (Eaton 1940) seems to have been the starting point for what was to become IALA’s product, a newly constructed auxiliary language named Interlingua. Drawing heavily on lexical items common to the Romance languages, English, and German, and with few grammatical morphemes for inflection and derivation, this Interlingua strongly resembled the Interlingua of Giuseppe Peano (previously called Latino sine flexione), at least in principle, although no connection between the two was either claimed or acknowledged by IALA. IALA continued its focus on vocabulary during World War I I. The association’s work in England was brought to an end by England’s entrance into the war in 1939 and by Collinson’s military service. All contact with linguists on the European continent was lost, and work was consolidated in New York. An enlarged staff of fifteen ‘linguistic workers’ moved to bigger offices located ‘in the center of the building [to] provide safely for the staff and research material in the event of air raids’ (IALA Annual Report for 1941, pp. 5, 7).1 They applied themselves ‘to the production of a standardized vocabulary for an international auxiliary language’ (IALA General Report 1945, pp. 20– 21).2 At the end of the war, vocabulary remained the dominant topic. IALA’s General Report issued in 1945 devoted eight pages to vocabulary, two to morphology, and just a fraction of a page (144 words) to syntax (pp. 31–41). Beginning in summer 1946, IALA activities in New York came under the direction of the French linguist André Martinet (b. 1908) who had first come into contact with the association in the late 1930s when he several times substituted for Vendryes at IALA-sponsored European meetings (Martinet 1993:54–59). Brought to New York by Alice Morris specifically to become the new director of IALA research, Martinet publicized the organization and its objectives with articles in French addressed to the linguistic community (Martinet 1946, 1948, 1949a, 1949b), an approach bound to have minimal impact on mainstream American linguists. From the outset, Alice Morris had always maintained that the vocabulary of an auxiliary language that appealed to the public would ‘be settled by those who use [it] and not by mere theory’ (AVM to Edward Sapir 24 February 1925 75

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E SC). Martinet, working with Jean-Paul Vinay (b. 1910), designed a questionnaire to assess support for four different versions of an ‘Interlingua’ developed by IALA (Martinet & Vinay 1946). The choices reflected vocabularies that ranged from ‘naturalistic’ (and therefore somewhat irregular) to ‘schematized’ (and thus more regular). The questionnaire was distributed during 1947 and 1948 to proponents of an international auxiliary language in six countries (France, Great Britain, the United States, Chile, Czechoslovakia, and Denmark) and the outcome was disagreement. Martinet then left IALA to concentrate on a faculty post at Columbia University, and the work at IALA was taken over by Alexander Gode (1906–1970). Gode, whose education was in German literature, not linguistics, led the final stages in the creation of IALA’s Interlingua. That work culminated with a grammar and a dictionary. The new Interlingua is almost entirely analytic, with ‘minimum grammar.’ A sample appears in Figure 12.1. There is no grammatical gender, no case, no agreement of articles or adjectives. Verbs are not inflected for person. In other words, there is little inflectional morphology. The 27,000 word Dictionary consists of lexical items common to English, German, and the major Romance languages (Gode 1951). Further, in Interlingua: A Grammar of the International Language, ‘there is no section concerned with problems of syntax’ since ‘parts of speech…involve all syntactic questions of practical import’ (Gode & Blair 1951:x). The fact is, of course, that the syntax of Interlingua is very close to the syntax of the European languages from which it draws its vocabulary; it appears to have no ‘problems of syntax’ simply because its syntax is familiar to its proponents. The underlying principles seem not unlike those articulated a quarter century earlier in the correspondence between Alice Morris and Edward Sapir and expressed by Sapir in the ‘Memorandum’ that followed. American linguists have not participated in the promotion of Interlingua. Indeed, most have ignored the movement entirely. The 1951 publications were reviewed only by Martinet in Word (Martinet 1952) and Fred W.Householder, Jr. (1913–1994) in American Speech (Householder 1951). Both showed respect for ‘the idealism, methodological care, and hard work’ of the proponents (Householder 1951:199), but they expressed serious doubts about the feasibility of the project. In his review, Martinet described his departure from IALA as follows: This writer, who for a time was research director of the International Auxiliary Language Association, tendered his resignation when it became clear to him that the founder, leader, and main financial supporter of the Association had neither the intention of sponsoring such a programme [to create a demand for an international auxiliary language], nor probably the means needed for its execution. (Martinet 1952:164) IALA correspondence from the time indicates that Martinet’s departure from the salaried position of IALA research director was deemed necessary in light 76

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Interlingua Le unitate del civilisation occidental corresponde in grande mesura a un unitate linguistic. Le linguas que nos distingue como francese, anglese, espaniol, germano, italiano, etc, ha in commun un fundo si extensive de ideas e principios, de formas e constructiones, que on se senti fortiate reguardar los como variantes del mesme standard. Iste standard es interlingua, le ‘lingua general’ que differe del linguas coordinate in illo solo como un typo differe del individuos que illo representa. English The unity of western civilization corresponds to a great extent with a linguistic unity. The languages that we distinguish as French, English, Spanish, German, Italian, etc, have in common so extensive a base of ideas and principles, of forms and constructions, that one feels oneself forced to regard them as variants of the same standard. This standard is Interlingua, the ‘general language’ which differs from the languages coordinated in it only as a species differs from the individuals that it represents. Interlingua paragraph quoted from Introducing Interlingua by Brian C.Sexton, page 4 (Sheffield: British Interlingua Society, 1988). In a letter dated 5 September 1995, Mr. Sexton informs me that it was originally written by Alexander Gode and was printed on the backs of IALA letters at one time. The English translation was provided by Mr. Sexton, secretary-treasurer of the British Interlingua Society.

Figure 12.1 An Interlingua sample

of his acceptance of a full-time paid post at Columbia University (personal communication from Frank Esterhill June 1998), so the parting may not have been entirely amicable. In any case, once he was no longer employed with IALA, Martinet seemed to lose interest in the cause. Language, the journal of the Linguistic Society of America and without doubt the leading linguistics journal of the day, never reviewed either the Dictionary or the Grammar. The journal was not in the habit of reviewing nonprofessional books, and that was—and remains—the status of the Interlingua works.

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Shortly after the founding of IALA in Spring 1924, the Reverend Edward P. Foster of Waverly, West Virginia reported in his monthly newsletter Roia ‘news …from Switzerland’ that ‘Mrs. Dave H.Morris (nee Alice Vanderbilt [sic]) of New York City, has established a fund of $2,500,000 for the solution to the world language problem’ (No. 13, p. 5 [October 1924]). There is no evidence to corroborate this figure, and Foster, who had been working on his own created language Ro since 1904, may have been more hopeful than accurate in his announcement. But in an odd coincidence, the $310,000 that can be documented as IALA’s expenditures for the period 1924 through 1941 is roughly equivalent to $2,500,000 in 1990s currency, and much of that money did come from Alice and Dave Morris. Exactly how much is very difficult to determine. The 1920s and 1930s were decades of wild financial changes in the public sector, but in the private world of the extremely wealthy, neither the Stock Market Crash of 1929 nor the Great Depression that followed had much of an impact on the personal affairs of the privileged. They certainly did not reveal the details of their profits, losses, and expenditures to strangers. IALA’s financial records, however, do provide some indications that the association was scarcely touched at all by the hardships suffered by so many during these troubled times. Although there was a decline from 1932 to 1935 in individual contributions to IALA, always the association’s main source of revenue, that had more to do with shifts in priorities within the organization than with the financial situation of the contributors whose wealth made possible a quarter century of research on international auxiliary languages. The Morrises clearly encountered few financial problems. Alice Morris continued to spend three months in Europe nearly every summer, Dave Morris contributed heavily enough to Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s first presidential campaign to warrant an ambassadorship, and in the mid to late 1930s, when all the children were grown, there were still twelve servants in the New York household (AVM 1937 and 1938 Alumnae Information Forms, Radcliffe College Archives). IALA’s financial records—published annual reports from Treasurer Dave Morris—are most complete and consistent for the years 1929–1938.1 Prior to 78

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1929, for the association’s first five years, either there are no reports or the reports that exist are only partial (e.g., for 1927 Morris reported only some expenditures and gave no information at all on receipts). During this ten year period, however, expenditures are systematically divided among the three research categories (educational, linguistic, sociological) and receipts are identified as grants or individual contributions. For the years that followed, until World War II disrupted all reporting and then Mr. Morris died in 1944, there are categorized receipts but expenditures were no longer given by research area. Thus, in determining funding sources and monetary support for IALA’s different projects, it is sometimes necessary to extrapolate from the figures that are known. For the fifteen years in which at least some information is available, from 1927 through 1941, IALA’s budget was never less than $21,500 nor more than $45,500 per year. In all, there is documentation for total expenditures of some $310,000 during this period. Much more was actually spent, however, since the expenses for linguistic research were entirely off-budget in the early years. This money was contributed, anonymously but without doubt, by Alice Morris. Revenue came primarily from the contributions of individual members. The only major exception was Frederick Gardner Cottrell’s Research Corporation, which provided regular grants of $4,000 per year from 1929 through 1937 and then $5,500 each year through 1941 when documentation ceases. This was a significant amount not only in terms of IALA, where it averaged 15 percent of the annual budget, but also for the Research Corporation itself. With assets nearing $100,000,000 in 1995 and annual awards just under $5,000,000, the Research Corporation in the 1990s remained an important private funding source for the teaching of science and for small scientific research projects in American colleges and universities (1993 Annual Report, Research Corporation). But in the 1920s and 1930s, it was still a struggling philanthropy. Its first specific grant was not made until 1920, nearly a decade after its incorporation, and from 1928 to 1940, the average total was $55,000 a year (Research Corporation Report for 1989, p. 7). The grants to IALA thus constituted approximately 10 percent of the Research Corporation’s annual giving program. In accounts of its own history, however, the Research Corporation makes no mention of these contributions, nor of Cottrell’s roles in founding and supporting IALA.2 In its entire history, IALA reported only three grants other than those from the Research Corporation: $2,000 from the Carnegie Corporation in 1929 for Thorndike’s educational research at Teachers College; $434.98 that Cottrell transferred in 1936 from the defunct account of the old Committee on International Auxiliary Language that had led to IALA’s founding; and an amount unspecified in IALA’s public records from the Rockefeller Foundation in support of Collinson’s work in Liverpool, England. Rockefeller Archive Center documents show this to be a one-time Grant-in-Aid of $5,000 to the University of Liverpool for the period 1 February 1937 through 31 December 79

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1938 (Rockefeller Foundation Record Group 1.1 [Projects], Series 401R [England-Humanities], box 65, folders 854–855 [University of LiverpoolLinguistics], Rockefeller Archive Center, North Tarrytown, New York). Interestingly, the grant could have come a year earlier but IALA had persisted in seeking funding for an extensive schedule of international contacts and conferences by its Committee on Agreement (Rockefeller Foundation loc. cit., Detail of Information RA-H-119, 19 February 1937). Only when this larger goal was formally rejected by the officers of the Rockefeller Foundation did IALA request the support for Collinson that the Foundation had encouraged initially. Funding for the various categories IALA established among its research programs followed the pace of activity discussed earlier, with the educational research conducted at Columbia University by Thorndike, Kennon, and Eaton through 1930 receiving the heaviest contributions, some $ 10,000 each year in the early years, eventually totaling at least $60,000, possibly as much as $75,000. This included Helen Eaton’s salary and support for her Semantic Frequency List, which could have been reported in the linguistic research category. She was, after all, IALA’s Linguistic Research Associate and a member of the Advisory Board for Linguistic Research. Herbert Shenton’s sociological work was funded only modestly by comparison, receiving an average $2,500 each year, with added subventions for the publication and distribution of Cosmopolitan Conversation in 1933–34. In all, expenditures designated for sociological research totaled no more than $25,000, but it must be recalled that Shenton made use of the IALA support staff for his book and his expenses as executive secretary of the association were covered in the category of general administration, so the actual amount of support that he received was higher. The funding pattern for linguistic research is even more difficult to determine because the term itself was used in both a professional and a lay sense. Further, between 1932 and 1933, this research was relabelled ‘division of interlinguistics’ and came to include all work on a proposed auxiliary language, whether linguistic or not. It is clear, however, that the work carried out by Sapir and his students came to exceed both educational and sociological research in priority and in funding in the early 1930s. Linguistic research received $10,000 and $7,500 in 1931 and 1932, respectively, three to four times the funding of the other research categories for those years. In all, we can document just over $40,000 for linguistic/ interlinguistic research, but the actual amount was surely much greater. It was the linguistic research that most interested Alice Morris, especially in IALA’s first decade. She herself attempted such work, starting as early as 1925 when she wrote to Sapir about ‘a preliminary study…a sketch’ for a universal grammar that she had started writing with the ‘hope that our work may dovetail and that scientist and layman may collaborate’ (AVM to ES 24 February 1925 ESC). By the mid 1930s, she had authored and co-authored several unpublished studies for the Comparative Studies project (Morris & Faegre 1930, Morris 1931, Swadesh & Morris 1934), edited two volumes of work published as LSA monographs (Sapir & Swadesh 1932, Collinson 1937), and written and presented 80

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the reports on linguistic research at IALA’s annual meetings. In the absence of financial records for IALA’s linguistic research from 1924 through 1929, we can only speculate on amounts spent, but it seems fairly certain that Mrs. Morris provided the funds, and that she provided generously for work in which she herself was engaged. Her husband’s Treasurer’s Reports stated only that the ‘Cost of linguistic research has been covered by funds outside of IALA’s treasury’ (for 1927) and ‘Linguistic research carried independently’ (for 1929). Following the formation of the Committee for Agreement in 1935, with its European membership, and IALA’s turn ‘from fundamental research to…the formulation of an acceptable auxiliary language,’ expenditures shifted from the research categories to a series of conferences designed to implement the 1936 ‘Plan for Obtaining Agreement on an Auxiliary World-Language,’ on which nearly $15,000 was spent from 1936 to 1938. Although the treasurer discontinued reporting such categories of expenditures after 1938, rapidly rising salary costs ($30,777 for 1941, nearly 50 percent more than in 1939) certainly reflected the enlarged staff of ‘linguistic workers’ who were then engaged in preparing the vocabulary for what soon became IALA’s Interlingua. With no Treasurer’s Reports available for the years after 1941, it is impossible to estimate the full cost of Interlingua. We do know that on 8 February 1945, just one year after Dave Morris’s death, Alice Vanderbilt Morris executed an indenture establishing a trust on behalf of IALA in the amount of $100,000 (IIP). Following her death in 1950, the principal passed in full to IALA in March 1951, at which time the Interlingua dictionary and grammar (Gode 1951, Gode & Blair 1951) were published by a company founded specifically for that purpose by Gode, IALA’s director at the time (Report on Interlingua Activities in the United States during the Calendar Year of 1968, by Alexander Gode, December 1968 IIP). With funding exhausted, and the three original founders deceased, IALA was dissolved in April 1953. It had always depended on special contributions from individuals who were never identified. Regular dues began and remained at $3 to $5 per year, with other classes of membership available for larger contributions: $10 to $20 Subscribing Member, $25 to $300 Sustaining Member, $500 Life Member, $1,000 or more Founder. While the association announced two Founders, three Life Members, and 40 Sustaining Members in 1927, dues never played a significant role in supporting IALA’s work. It was the special— and always anonymous—individual contributions that really mattered. Until 1936, Treasurer Morris combined receipts from membership dues and contributions from individuals into a single figure for his reports, a figure that ranged over the years 1929–1935 from $11,500 to $21,500. But beginning in 1936, he reported these funding sources separately and it became clear that special contributions were the real basis of IALA’s support. Membership dues never exceeded $645 in any one year, while during the same period special contributions for five of the six years were $15,000 or more and in 1941, the last reported year, they reached $29,050. 81

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Who were these generous contributors? No names are ever given in IALA’s financial statements. In the beginning, Mrs. Morris solicited contributions from her circle of friends and neighbors, those who had been invited to the organizational meetings in 1923. John D.Rockefeller, Jr. (1874–1960), invited but unable to attend, responded to a pledge request ‘that he would match every contribution up to $2500’ (Cameron 1952:241). There is no record of whether such matching funds were actually provided and, if so, in what amount, but the contact alone is significant, for it represents the way in which friends and acquaintances were drawn into the project. Rockefeller and Alice Shepard were born in the same year and spent the later years of childhood as neighbors, growing up just two blocks apart in New York City, he at 10 West 54th Street, she at the Fifth Avenue house between 51st and 52nd Streets (see Fosdick 1956:22). It was just such contacts that Cottrell had sought unsuccessfully until his wife met Alice Vanderbilt Morris. Later, members of the association’s Board of Directors and General Advisory Committee from business and industry made contributions beyond the minimum membership level. These men saw profit in an international auxiliary language in an era of expanding new communications technology. So, for example, IALA Vice President John J.Carty, vice president of AT&T, once sent a message to every telephone subscriber in the state of New York conveying his vision of the future: ‘I have faith that we shall some day build up a great world telephone system making necessary to all the nations the use of a common language which will join all the peoples of the earth into one brotherhood’ (IALA Annual Report for 1932, p. 5). Dave Morris himself was motivated in his promotion of an international auxiliary language by the new technologies. In 1935, as American Ambassador to Belgium, he delivered a Columbus Day radio address (see Figure 13.1) proposing ‘a simply constructed secondary language, one world language for all, for direct communication among all mankind’ (D.Morris 1936:387). James G.Harbord, president of RCA (Radio Corporation of America), chaired IALA’s Budget Committee in the 1930s, just as radio was entering its golden years, a decade after the first public radio station in the United States began broadcasting in November 1920 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Another wealthy IALA supporter was Thomas J.Watson, president of IBM, who became a member of the Board of Directors in 1935. Virtually all of the remaining positions on IALA’s numerous boards and committees, however, were filled by professors, none of whom had any obvious wealth. Their contributions to IALA came from their knowledge, their scholarship, and most of all from their connections within the academic world, especially to academic journals that served as outlets for IALA’s work and publicity. These were times when even the most important scholarly journals were not usually refereed in the modern sense. When there was a process of review and screening that took publication decisions beyond the judgment of the editor, the reviewers knew who had authored a manuscript and the author 82

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Figure 13.1 Radio address delivered from Brussel 12 October 1935 by Dave Hennen Morris, American Ambassador to Belgium (D.Morris 1936:386–387) 83

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often knew who had served as reviewer. In other words, this was not the ‘blind’ process used today by major journals to assure fair external peer review. Generally, there was no review at all. Editors had virtually absolute authority to publish (or not to publish) the submissions of their colleagues. From the beginning IALA benefited from this system since many of its academic members happened to edit journals. Sapir’s ‘Memorandum,’ with John Gerig as one of the co-signers, was published in The Romanic Review, a journal founded by early IALA supporter Henry Alfred Todd, Professor of Romance Philology at Columbia University, and edited by Gerig himself. IALA member Henry Grattan Doyle, Professor of Romance Languages at George Washington University, was the managing editor of The Modern Language Journal, venue for two of Helen Eaton’s articles (1927, 1934b), and James P.Wickersham Crawford, also an IALA supporter and Professor of Romance Languages at the University of Pennsylvania, sat on its Editorial Advisory Board. Extending this particular network even further, another member of that editorial board was Algernon Coleman, who compiled the volume containing Eaton’s preliminary semantic frequency study (Eaton 1934a). Robert Herndon Fife, who chaired the Committee on Modern Languages of the American Council on Education which issued both the preliminary and final versions of Eaton’s work (Eaton 1934a, 1940), was a member of IALA’s Advisory Board for Educational Research. As for the three volumes of IALA research published by the Linguistic Society of America (Sapir 1930b, Sapir & Swadesh 1932, Collinson 1937), Sapir himself was the connection, as LSA president in 1933 and a member of its Committee on Publications in 1925 and again from 1929 through 1939. Later, when André Martinet became IALA’s research director, he published his first American statement about IALA’s work (Martinet 1946) in a journal that he helped to edit —Word, the journal of the Linguistic Circle of New York, where he was a member of the Executive Committee. The academic members of IALA contributed little to the organization financially, and many conducted little actual research on international auxiliary languages, but their interlocking network of editorial posts provided the outlets that made IALA’s work far more widely available than publication by IALA itself could have done. IALA’s strength within the academic world and its respectability beyond were due to these connections. When the connections declined in the 1940s, so did IALA’s prestige and impact. The academics’ contributions to the international auxiliary language movement in the United States brought them little professional benefit beyond the usual rewards gained within the scholarly community through editing and publishing activities. Some scholars sought further benefits, but their efforts were ill-timed. In 1930, Helen Eaton, Otto Jespersen, and Edgar de Wahl, creator of the artificial language Occidental, in following up on suggestions from the European linguists at the Geneva meeting, drew up ‘definite and detailed plans …for a quarterly Journal of Linguistic Research,’ while back in 84

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New York, the sociologist Herbert Shenton proposed a Communication Foundation to be supported either through a seven-year fund raising campaign or by trying ‘at once to raise a capital fund’ (IALA Annual Meeting 1930, pp. 20, 33). IALA had already experienced success in placing papers for publication and there was no demonstrated need for these new endeavors. In addition, the proposals came just as the Depression was deepening in the United States— hardly propitious times for fund raising—and nothing came of them. Shenton persisted in yet another attempt at greater gain. In 1930, he was professor of sociology at Syracuse University as well as IALA’s executive secretary, and he suggested to Syracuse Chancellor Charles W.Flint that the university bestow an honorary Doctor of Letters upon Alice Morris in recognition of her work with IALA and with the Young Women’s Christian Association (Syracuse University Archives [SUA] Byrd Library, Syracuse, New York). Letters of endorsement were sent by Earle Babcock, Stephen Duggan, John Finley, and Edward Thorndike, all associated with IALA, and the degree was conferred by Chancellor Flint at commencement exercises on 1 June 1931. Behind Shenton’s recommendation was the expectation that the honorary degree to Alice Morris would provide an occasion to influence Dave Morris, who had been appointed chairman of the Board of Directors of the Macy Foundation. A year earlier Shenton had written to Flint about this, expressing his hope for Macy Foundation support for projects he was working on at the time (HS to CWF 4 June 1930 SUA). Shenton took pains to assure Flint that Mrs. Morris was ‘undoubtedly worthy’ of an honorary degree, but he also noted that the awards ceremony would give the dean of the Medical School an opportunity to present the school to Mr. Morris (HS to CWF 1 May 1930 SUA). Whatever the motives behind the granting of this degree, Alice Vanderbilt Morris was as accomplished and as worthy as many who receive such honors. Her work with the YWCA was extensive: she served on its national board for a decade beginning in 1912, chaired its finance division, founded its War Work Council. In addition to her IALA research, organizational work, and financial backing, she spread her message on the need for an international auxiliary language at meetings at home and whenever she traveled in the United States and abroad. She occasionally wrote short articles for magazines, as well: ‘Why Should We Cut Out Our Tongues?’ in The Forum, ‘A Voice in the World’ in Quest (Morris 1927, A.Morris 1936). Morris’s byline for the Quest article read ‘Dr. Alice Vanderbilt Morris.’ Along with her registration as a special student at Radcliffe College and her enrollment in the Women’s Law Class at New York University, this formal link to the world of higher education was one of the treasures of her life. Although she never held a paid position, she did not consider herself a homemaker. Her work was her involvement with IALA. On the Radcliffe College Alumnae Information forms, when asked whether she administered a household, she answered ‘yes’ but to the following question—‘Is it your chief occupation?’— her response was ‘no.’ Asked next to list leisure activities, she left blank the 85

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spaces for sports, art, and miscellaneous and completed the segments for intellectual interests, publications, and memberships in learned societies and professional organizations, all with details of her IALA work. She did not fill in the section for family income which was to be reported ‘in nearest $500 block’ (Radcliffe College Archives). Alice and Dave Morris never revealed the details of their wealth. Newspapers speculated, of course, but actual figures are simply not available except for the terms of Margaret Louise Shepard’s will which specifies the inheritance left to her children (NYT 15 March 1924, p. 13; 18 December 1925, p. 18). Alice, her two sisters Louise Schieffelin and Edith Fabbri, and brother Elliott Fitch Shepard, Jr. were recipients of approximately equal shares of their mother’s estate and of the trust fund that had been established by their grandfather William Henry Vanderbilt. In 1925, Alice Morris inherited $1,355,200. There is no doubt that a substantial portion of this money was used to fund IALA. There are simply no other candidates for the position of anonymous major benefactor of IALA in general and special funding for linguistic research in particular. All of the evidence points to Alice Vanderbilt Morris, who possessed the financial resources, who is known to be the source of one $100,000 contribution in the 1940s, and for whom IALA was a sustained commitment of personal time and energy for a quarter century. Her daughter Alice later described IALA as ‘my mother’s work’ (Alice Morris Sturges to Gabriel Verd 22 October 1979 IIP). Alice Vanderbilt Morris died in 1950 and her legacy to IALA was exhausted with the production of the Interlingua dictionary and grammar in 1951. At that point, IALA collapsed. Gode, its last director, continued to promote Interlingua through a division of Science Service until 1967, when it too was dissolved (Gode op. cit. IIP). Then in 1970, Gode, Henry Fischbach (b.1921), and Alice Morris Sturges (1911–1986), daughter of Alice and Dave Morris, founded the Interlingua Institute. During her lifetime, Mrs. Sturges provided some funding in support of the Institute’s work, a few thousand dollars at a time (Frank Esterhill to AMS 27 December 1983 IIP). Interlingua Institute promotes the use of Interlingua to this day. There are also Interlingua associations and societies in Great Britain and Western Europe. Membership numbers are closely held, but it appears that each organization depends on the dedicated work of a small number of people. The only American linguist involved with Interlingua since Martinet left the movement in the mid 1940s was Robert P.Austerlitz (1923– 1994), who in 1975 joined the Board of Directors of the Interlingua Institute. Primarily, Austerlitz lent his name. Though he regularly attended directors’ meetings, he did not work actively for the cause, and the Institute’s executive director suggests his association with IALA was ‘due to historical considerations’ (personal communications from Frank Esterhill, executive director, Interlingua Institute, 16 December 1994 and 13 March 1995). As a student in the late 1940s and early 1950s in New York, Austerlitz had studied under Martinet at Columbia.

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The international auxiliary language movement and American linguistics were able to maintain a connection only so long as American linguistics was not fully professionalized. Indeed, the first fifteen years of IALA’s existence happened to correspond exactly to a fifteen year window-of-opportunity for cooperation — from 1924 to 1939—that is, from the founding of the LSA to its declaration of autonomy in 1939, the year it held its first independent meeting, not conducted in conjunction with any other professional society. Over the intervening years, the Society sought widely for cooperation and interaction, meeting at different times with the Modern Language Association of America, the American Philological Association, the Archaeological Institute of America, the College Art Association of America, the National Association of Teachers of Speech, the American Association of University Professors, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Society of Biblical Literature and Exegesis, and the American Anthropological Association (see sections on ‘Proceedings’ for the annual meetings in Language through 1935, LSA Bulletin thereafter). The International Auxiliary Language Association, with its membership drawn from the academic community, as well as from the worlds of business and society, was not entirely out of place in such company. Further, in its formative years, the LSA actively encouraged private and nonprofessional memberships. Unlike other associations and learned societies of the time, the LSA did not restrict its membership to those with academic appointments or records of publication in scholarly journals. Certainly Alice Morris had felt welcomed in the LSA. In a letter to Edward Sapir written just at the time she became an LSA Foundation Member, she referred to herself nearly in the Society’s own words, as a ‘layman’ engaged in ‘a preliminary study of the structure of both ethnic and “made” languages’ (AVM to ES 24 February 1925 ESC). Helen Eaton, too, with neither a higher degree nor a university affiliation, joined the LSA in 1927 and even participated in discussion of a paper entitled ‘Why Esperanto?’ at the Society’s third annual meeting (Language 3.29, 30, 39[1927]). But as the years passed, the LSA became increasingly concerned with professionalization. As early as 1932, the Society was poking fun at its less 87

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scholarly constituency. There is no misunderstanding its tone of amusement when, with ‘no resentment toward the author,’ it published a letter sent by a former member, resigning because: ‘With all due respect to everybody concerned, I find most of the articles [in Language] intensely uninteresting and valueless, to me. They are too far removed from the real world; any practical use’ (Language 8, p. 60[1932]). The LSA ‘reciprocated by reading the card at the recent joint dinner …and by publication here. But we wonder what our ex-member would have liked to find in the Society’s publications’ (ibid.). The American linguists who were initially willing to have their names associated with IALA when it was founded gradually withdrew during the 1930s. By 1936 none but Sapir remained active in any way, and his commitment had declined almost to the point of disappearing. By 1939 there were no prominent American linguists active within IALA, nor were IALA’s nonacademic members active in the LSA. The ‘linguistic researchers’ employed by IALA beginning in 1939 as it created its own Interlingua were not drawn from the students of what was becoming the mainstream of American linguistics. Indeed, at first none of these young people, whose names begin to appear in a list of ‘Research Assistants’ in IALA’s annual report for 1939, even held American degrees, though, as America entered World War II, IALA, with its New York headquarters, began to draw on recent graduates of nearby Barnard College and Columbia University. This, too, reflects an important difference between IALA and American linguistics. When the LSA was founded in 1924, more than half of those signing the call for its creation were located in a narrow corridor along the East Coast, stretching from Washington, D.C. to Boston, Massachusetts, and centered in New York City. IALA, too, had its headquarters in New York. But whereas linguistics also had an important presence in middle America and on the west coast, in such universities as Ohio State, Chicago, and California, IALA never did. It remained essentially a local organization and thus lost ground as linguistics gained in strength beyond IALA’s regional sphere of influence. Although Columbia University, from which IALA was drawing staff, had once been a center for American linguistic research, in particular the anthropological linguistics of Franz Boas’s program, by the mid 1930s the academic centers of American linguistics were places such as Yale University and the Universities of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and California, none of whom supplied workers to IALA. Changing, too, was the conception of science held by one of the leading linguists of the time. In 1924, when the LSA was founded, Leonard Bloomfield wrote in Language: ‘The science of language, dealing with the most basic and simplest of human social institutions, is a human (or mental, or, as they used to say, moral) science’ (Bloomfield 1925b: 1). Followed by the statement that linguistics stands as ‘the connecting link between the natural sciences and the human’ with its ‘methods…resembl[ing] those of the natural sciences’ (ibid.), Bloomfield’s views would not appear to conflict in any way with IALA’s emerging ‘scientific research’ program (IALA 1924, p. 10) or with Alice 88

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Morris’s interest in constructing a grammar of thought (AVM to E S 24 February 1925 ESC). Bloomfield had co-signed Sapir’s ‘Memorandum’ (though with reservations). He even brought up the subject of auxiliary languages in his article inaugurating the LSA journal Language where he worried that ‘such movements as…for an international auxiliary language are carried on…without the counsel of our science’ (Bloomfield 1925b: 5). His conclusion would seem most encouraging for cooperative work with IALA: Not only the furtherance of our science, but also the needs of society, make it the duty of students of language to work together systematically and with that sense of craftsmanship and of obligation which is called professional consciousness. For this they need a Linguistic Society, (ibid.) But, in fact, the ‘needs of society’ soon gave way to ‘professional consciousness.’ And Bloomfield replaced the ‘mental science’ with a strictly mechanistic approach. A few years later, in ‘Linguistics as a Science’ (Bloomfield 1930a), he described recourse to the human mind as pre-scientific animism. The shift left IALA behind, its scientific approach no longer in accord with that of many American linguists. In particular, the grammar of thought was far removed from the kind of linguistics Bloomfield was developing and the kind he presented, so convincingly at the time, in his influential textbook Language (Bloomfield 1933). Sapir, who had initially accepted Alice Morris’s term ‘Grammar of Thought’ as the title for his IALA research, was no longer willing to be associated with this designation and, indeed, was withdrawing from active IALA participation. In yet another change, the focus on western European languages that had earlier characterized much of American linguistics also began to shift. First the languages of Native Americans assumed increasing importance as more and more students of Boas and Sapir began to conduct linguistic fieldwork. Native languages of Mexico and Central America were studied by linguists of the Summer Institute of Linguistics, formed in the late 1930s. Then, during World War II, linguists worked in cooperation with the American military to prepare descriptions and teaching materials for a number of languages, including many from the further reaches of Europe, Africa, and Asia. But IALA continued to grow its ‘international’ language on strictly western European roots. At first, the European languages had served as a bridge between the academic world and the lay supporters of IALA; eventually they became a barrier. In part, IALA’s persistent focus on Europe, on the languages of so-called ‘civilized’ countries, connected to the social legacy and the business and economic needs of it major nonacademic supporters. For the wealthy, European languages were those of most interest. Alice Morris, her friends, and family still traveled regularly in Europe, despite the Great Depression and then the encroaching war. Earlier they had a history of marrying Europeans and 89

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even mimicking European royalty. Her uncle, George Washington Vanderbilt II, for example, at the time of her wedding to Dave Morris, was building in North Carolina the largest private home in America, ‘a real château set in countryside similar to France’s Loire Valley [and] patterned after three of the greatest of the French châteaus—Chambord, Blois, and Chenonceaux’ (Vanderbilt 1989:275). Another of George Vanderbilt’s claims to fame was his purported fluency in eight foreign languages (p. 271). The valuing of European culture extended to its languages in other ways, as well. Here was a nearly hidden motivation for the creation of an international auxiliary language, the protection of the ‘purity’ of English and French from changes that might occur through their use by those who would employ them for communication without full command. In an obscure article in a women’s club magazine, Alice Morris brought this view to light: ‘Then there is the danger of “pidginization”. How far will pidgin English and pidgin French gain ground as secondary language if an acceptably constructed language is not established to safeguard the purity of the great ethnic languages?’ (A.Morris 1936:15). Earlier, the connection to technology of some of IALA’s most prominent business members was noted, especially for the telephone and radio. These technologies, too, were under the control of the wealthier nations of Europe and America, despite talk of worldwide internationalism. Although the public rhetoric was international, the private practice of IALA was not. When Dave Morris broadcast his international radio address from his ambassadorial post in Belgium on Columbus Day, 12 October 1935, he argued: The radio is essentially international, so it needs an international language…it cannot be a national language. It must not be the language of one nation for use by all nations, but it must be a new product, a scientific invention for the use of all men, a linguistic instrument for mankind…(D. Morris 1936:387) But he spoke in English, and his personal funds were supporting research comparing only the languages of Europe as a first step to the creation of the new ‘linguistic instrument.’ Indeed, he published virtually the same message in a letter to The American Scholar, the magazine of the scholastic honorary society Phi Beta Kappa (vol. 5, no. 1, p. 125, Winter 1936), where he explicitly directed readers to IALA’s work. This was a narrow internationalism, utterly Eurocentric. Frederick Cottrell’s interest in languages other than English was also pragmatic. French and German were needed for his graduate studies in Europe, and, later, it was for scientific discourse with Europeans that he became interested in Esperanto. To some extent, the marriage of new technology and concern for international scientific intercommunication found in IALA calls to mind the 1950s when the new computer technology of that day was used in machine translation projects focused on the translation of scientific works from Russian into English. The slow progress of that work was due in large 90

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part to a still unsophisticated understanding of the nature of human language, especially the complexities of syntax. In contrast, Cottrell was remarkably advanced in his views of linguistics when first he proposed IALA’s research agenda in 1923. Cottrell went beyond enthusiasm and a humanitarian commitment to the improvement of international communication. He argued that modern languages could be compared scientifically and he cited the newly established ‘section on Linguistic Science’ of the American Association for the Advancement of Science where a recent speaker had presented a study comparing ‘the relative ease of learning an ethnic and a synthetic language and…a first step toward working out accurate statistical methods and technique for the comparison of languages and language elements…’ (Cottrell 1923:3–4). Such ‘thoroughly scientific and impersonal study’ (p. 4) was for Cottrell an antidote to the disdain he had encountered when raising the subject of a created international language within the academic community. He attributed scholars’ dismissal of Esperanto, ‘this apathy on the part of language academicians,’ to the humanistic, literary, philological nature of language study in his day: ‘To linguists it was a language without literature—nothing around which a graduate course could be built’ (quoted by Cameron 1952:202). Cottrell’s belief in a scientific synchronic comparison of modern languages served as the basis for IALA’s work beginning at the New York organization meeting in 1923. In this, he was far ahead of many linguists of his time, especially with regard to the languages of Europe, which were at the heart of IALA’s research program. For many linguists, these languages were indeed ‘still looked upon purely from the historical aspect as something handed down from antiquity’ (Cottrell 1923:1). Few were as venturesome as Edward Sapir, who took up IALA’s task of comparing them, perhaps because of his experience in both synchronic description and comparative analysis through his work with contemporary Native American languages. Other linguists in the LSA were not yet ready for scientific work on modern languages. As late as 1930, E.H.Sturtevant, with the inheritance of nineteenth century linguistics shared by his generation, was still uncertain that a scientific study of language could be nonhistorical. After noting that he and his colleagues, who had been directing the Linguistic Institutes of the LSA in the summers of 1928, 1929, and 1930, had ‘been rather severely criticized for our excursions into non-historical linguistic science,’ Sturtevant commented: ‘personally, I am perfectly willing to admit the possibility of constructing a linguistic science that shall not be historical, but I am not convinced that such a science is yet in existence’ (letter to Reinhold Eugene Saleski 13 November 1930 LSAA). Cottrell’s commitment to a scientific linguistics of modern languages must have been a factor in persuading the Research Corporation to provide the level of funding that it contributed to IALA. And it seems likely that Sapir drew support, as well, from Cottrell’s insistence that the linguistic work of IALA would be scientific. Certainly his studies of comparative semantics (Sapir 91

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1930b, Sapir & Swadesh 1932, Sapir 1944) would never have been conducted without IALA. The experiences of Morris Swadesh, supported through IALA as a student in the 1930s, comparing the vocabularies of modern European languages were surely also one basis for his later work on the technique and hypothesis for historical comparison known as lexicostatistics and glottochronology. These linguistic outcomes, along with other IALA publications along the way, including Helen Eaton’s Semantic Frequency List for English, French, German, and Spanish and Herbert Shenton’s Cosmopolitan Conversation, are all but forgotten by modern linguists. The difficulty in part arises from their provenance as applications of linguistics, applications developed in cooperation with a nonprofessional organization during just those years when linguistics in America was attempting to establish itself as an autonomous academic specialization. The international auxiliary language movement in the 1920s and 1930s had engaged the attention of many of the men and a few of the women within American linguistics, but the subject passes nearly unmentioned in linguistic historiography. Even some of those who were supported by Alice Vanderbilt Morris failed openly to associate their work with the movement. Mary Haas never discussed her year of IALA research; Edward Sapir did not acknowledge the connection between his studies on English semantics and the funding he had received for the construction of an international auxiliary language. Not only did Alice Morris disappear from the record but so did the entire subject. Without this exploration of the leadership of a single woman working from outside academia, modern linguists would know almost nothing of the international auxiliary language movement and the role it once played during the formative years of twentieth century American linguistics.

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Part III

GLADYS AMANDA REICHARD

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Gladys Amanda Reichard (1893–1955) was a part-time linguist. Her doctoral degree at Columbia University was in the field of anthropology, and throughout her career, she worked in both ethnography and linguistics, with the emphasis varying from one to the other depending on the particular research in which she was engaged at any given point. Beginning with graduate school, over the course of her first decade of professional studies, she covered an impressively diverse agenda of research—on the endangered language Wiyot, Navajo social life, Melanesian design, and the grammar of Coeur d’Alene. Each of these studies resulted in the publication of a book (Reichard 1925, 1928, 1932, 1938). Her major professor, Franz Boas, assigned some of these topics and arranged for funding to support Reichard’s work. For the Navajo study, however, Reichard was encouraged, as well as funded, by Elsie Clews Parsons, whose own research was often directed to the Pueblos of the Southwest. Parsons and Reichard were following—unwittingly—traditions established in the nineteenth century by women who were among the intellectual pioneers of Native American studies. Conditions for Native Americans in the final decades of the nineteenth century made strong claims upon the attention of progressive, educated, and independent white women. United States government policies after the Civil War (1861– 1865) alternated between attempts at peace through the displacement of Indians onto reservations, especially in ‘Indian Territory’ (now Oklahoma), by the Department of the Interior and aggressive military action by the War Department. In 1871, Congress enacted the Indian Appropriation Act, which nullified prior treaties and made the entire Indian population of 300,000 wards of the nation. By 1880, public knowledge of the situation came from newspaper accounts, often sensationalized; from government hearings and reports, sometimes distorted; and from pleas of protest by Indians themselves. The Poncas, for example, were forcefully relocated to Indian Territory from their ancestral home in the Black Hills following the discovery of gold in the Dakotas. Hearing a Ponca delegation tell their story, Helen Hunt Jackson (1830–1885) took up their cause.1 95

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Born Helen Maria Fiske in Amherst, Massachusetts, she was from childhood a friend of the poet Emily Dickinson with whom she shared a commitment to writing. Fiske’s father, Nathan Welby Fiske, was professor of languages at Amherst College. She was well-educated in several seminaries for young women in New England and New York but did not attend college, perhaps because the support for education provided by her father ended with his death in 1847 when Helen was just sixteen. After teaching for a term, she married an officer of the United States Army, Edward Bissell Hunt, a West Point graduate and an engineer. They lived a peripatetic military life for eleven years until his death while testing a submarine he had invented during the Civil War. The couple had had two children, but one died in infancy and the other soon after his father. It was then that Helen Hunt took up writing professionally, using pseudonyms that disguised her gender. Her works during this time included travel essays, children’s stories, and poetry. She continued her writing in Colorado after a second marriage in 1875 to William Sharpless Jackson. Although she had lived in the American West, none of her life experiences had affected or prepared her for the story of government mistreatment that she found when she conducted research at the Astor Library in New York after meeting Standing Bear, the Ponca chief. In A Century of Dishonor, originally published in 1881, Mrs. Jackson attempted ‘only a sketch, and not a history’ of the ‘causes for national shame in the matter of our treatment of the Indians’ (1965 reprinting: 7). It was her goal to change government policies, and she sent a pre-publication copy of the book to each member of the 1880 Congress, ‘bound in blood-red cloth’ and on the cover the words of Benjamin Franklin embossed in gold: ‘“Look upon your hands! They are stained with the blood of your relations”’ (Mathes 1990:36). Well researched, the book was also passionate, and some critics called it ‘sentimental,’ ‘saccharine,’ and ‘more intuitive than analytical’ (Rolle 1965:xvi), terms commonly used by men to dismiss women’s writing at the time. Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919), twenty-sixth president of the United States (1901–1909), whose own distorted account of the white conquest of native peoples and lands was published in 1889, took Jackson’s work seriously enough to warrant strong critical comment in the first appendix to The Winning of the West (Vol. I, Appendix A to Chapter IV). She is his prime example of: ‘The purely sentimental historians [who] take no account of the difficulties under which we labored, nor of the countless wrongs and provocations we endured, while grossly magnifying the already lamentably large number of injuries for which we really deserve to be held responsible’ (Roosevelt 1889:333–334). Citing a similar passage in which Roosevelt challenges ‘sentimental historians,’ John Milton Cooper, Jr. countered that Roosevelt’s own work was ‘Eurocentric, racist, male-dominated, and environmentally obtuse from a latetwentieth-century point of view’ and an instance of ‘ethnocentrically triumphalist histories that either ignored alternative arguments or contemptuously dismissed them’ (Cooper 1995:xi). Some of that contempt was obvious as Roosevelt politely praised Mrs. Jackson’s personal qualities—her 96

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‘pure and noble life,’ her ‘most praiseworthy purpose,’ her ‘high character’ and ‘excellent literary work in other directions’ (Roosevelt 1889:334)—and then damned her serious study as ‘thoroughly untrustworthy from cover to cover…not a single statement it contains should be accepted without independent proof’ (p. 335). Although there was a good deal of adverse criticism even at the time of its publication, A Century of Dishonor, along with Jackson’s many magazine articles, letters to editors, and personal contacts, had an effect, and in March 1881 Congress passed a bill partially rectifying the particular situation of the Ponca people whose cause had first attracted her attention (Banning 1973:149–160). She turned further west and in 1884, after several trips to California, published Ramona, a novel depicting the lives of the Hispanic and Indian peoples of southern California. The work still has standing in American literature. At the time of its publication, ‘the North American Review called this book “unquestionably the best novel yet produced by an American woman”, ranking it with Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin as one of the two great ethical novels of the [nineteenth] century’ (Rolle 1965:xix). This indeed had been Jackson’s model and goal, but many readers found her book nothing more than a love story, missing entirely her intent at a reform message of protest against the taking of Indian lands by white settlers. At the time of its publication, the public had widely distorted views of Native Americans, ranging from ‘the savage’ Sioux and Cheyenne of ‘Custer’s Last Stand’ in the Battle of Little Bighorn (Montana) in 1876 to the fantasies offered by ‘Buffalo Bill’ Cody’s Wild West Show, which began to tour the nation in 1883. The romantic Ramona was well received and later made into at least three Hollywood films (Mathes 1990:159); the book has had more than three hundred printings. Until quite recently, Helen Hunt Jackson’s works of history and literature were largely ignored by the academic world. Early on, this may have been due in part to her own reluctance to reveal details of her personal life (see Pound 1931 b). No biography was available until Ruth Odell’s study in 1939, more than a hundred years after Jackson’s birth. As American interest in minority peoples and in civil rights grew in the 1960s, however, A Century of Dishonor was reprinted, first in 1964 by Ross & Haines of Minneapolis, Minnesota. There was no introductory essay or other context provided and the printing was ‘limited to 2,000 copies’ (p. ii). This was soon followed by a larger printing from Harper & Row in their Torchbook series in 1965, with an introductory essay by Andrew F.Rolle but without the fifteen documents that served as an appendix of supporting evidence in the original work and its first reprinting. Neither reprinting can be considered a serious, scholarly reissue. It was not until the 1980s that more extensive attention to Jackson and others like her began to appear in academic journals, inspired by the women’s movement of the 1970s. In the most critical and detailed study yet completed of Helen Hunt Jackson’s work, Helen Hunt Jackson and Her Indian Reform Legacy, Valerie Sherer Mathes explores the impact of Jackson’s writings (Mathes 1990). Her focus is 97

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on Ramona and the work of the Women’s National Indian Association which ‘took up Jackson’s crusade…in behalf of the [California] Mission Indians’ (p. 95). Mathes devotes only one chapter to A Century of Dishonor, describes its reception as lacking enthusiasm, and suggests that while Jackson’s ‘work had definitely acquainted the public with the deplorable condition of the American Indian,’ its greater importance was in laying ‘the groundwork for Jackson’s next Indian crusade’ (p. 37), the novel in which Jackson ‘undertook the tremendous task of alerting the public to the condition of the Mission Indians—a task she succeeded at eloquently’ (p. 162). While the nonfiction account did not attract the same wide readership nor achieve the same public acceptance as the novel, A Century of Dishonor was much more than a foundation for later work. Jackson’s first reform book reached every member of the U.S. Congress and was known to American presidents from Rutherford B.Hayes (1822–1893), in office at the time of its publication, to Theodore Roosevelt, who never revised or reassessed his opinion of Jackson’s work, allowing his remarks to stand through later printings of his book. Helen Hunt Jackson’s use of both nonfiction and fiction to bring Native American experiences to the white world anticipates the work of a number of later women scholars who used the same device in the twentieth century, writing parallel studies based on well-researched facts, one fiction, the other nonfiction. Like Jackson’s work, their efforts often encountered disinterest and dismissal— disinterest in the scholarly study by both academics and the lay audience, dismissal of the fiction by critics even when it found acceptance among the public. Jackson used both genres to address a general readership, although the nonfiction A Century of Dishonor was also aimed directly at figures of power and authority in Congress. One difference between Jackson and the later Elsie Clews Parsons and Gladys Reichard is that Jackson was a writer without training in an academic discipline. Thus, she lacked an academic readership, whereas their professional background both enabled and constrained them to divide their writings more strictly by audience and by genre. The tradition of academic women involved in Native American studies is particularly well documented for anthropologists of the Southwest (see especially Babcock & Parezo 1988, Parezo 1993a). The earliest figure now widely known was Matilda Coxe Stevenson (1849–1915) (Parezo 1993b), a contemporary of Jackson. Born Matilda Coxe Evans, she too was an Easterner, raised and educated in New Jersey, Philadelphia, and Washington, with a father who was a member of the local intellectual community. Although she never earned a college degree, she studied law, chemistry, and geology and was well prepared when she accompanied and assisted her husband, James Stevenson, on geological surveys in the Rocky Mountain region during the years immediately following their marriage in 1872. In 1879 they went to the Southwest on an expedition funded by the new Bureau of Ethnology, and Matilda Stevenson soon produced several studies on women and children. The fact that she was a woman enabled 98

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her to collect information that would not have been available to men, but Stevenson’s ‘main research interests focused on religion rather than issues dealing specifically with women, children, or socialization’ (Parezo 1993b: 41), and her later work was done closely with Zuni men. Stevenson continued her Southwest anthropological studies until her death in 1915. Stevenson’s work presaged that of later women anthropologists in a number of ways. Concentration on ‘women’s issues,’ especially when beginning fieldwork, gave women access to topics that were there for the taking, work that their society considered suitable to their interests and talents, work that did not place them in direct competition with their male colleagues. Interest in Indian religions and religious ceremonies was also common among those who came after Stevenson in the Southwest. Religion had become a ‘woman’s topic’ following the nineteenth century ‘feminization of American religion’ (Welter 1976:83–102). Indeed, women whose work was motivated by Helen Hunt Jackson’s writings supported a Christian missionary approach to reform through the Women’s National Indian Association (see Mathes 1990). Like Elsie Clews Parsons and Gladys Reichard, Stevenson focused on amassing detailed records and descriptions of many aspects of life in the Southwest. ‘She was an assembler of facts’ (Parezo 1993b: 59). Such a statement has been used by others to dismiss or diminish women’s scholarship, but ‘facts,’ when gathered with care and accuracy, remain interesting and useful, often for long periods of time, although in histories of a discipline, theories usually get more attention. Parezo notes how often Stevenson was overlooked in accounts of anthropology written after World War II but remarks: ‘Today we use her work for facts, data to support or refute current ideas, or to find out what the Zuni were like in 1879’ (p. 58). Stevenson’s work was motivated by what would later be called ‘salvage ethnology:’ ‘In her writings she continually stressed that ethnographic data must be collected before they were irretrievably lost’ as Native Americans assimilated to the dominant Anglo-American society (Parezo 1993b: 45). So intent was she on this mission that she sometimes attempted to mislead and deceive her subjects in order to gather information, sketching secret ceremonies, interviewing people in hiding. But she was not alone in these techniques; her male contemporaries used them, as well, as did later scholars. The irony, of course, is that Indians tried to hide information about their ceremonies and rituals from white anthropologists and other outsiders—and ‘salvage’ work was necessary—precisely because of nineteenth century policies of Christianization, detribalization, and forced acculturation pursued by the white government, the white churches, and even the white reformers. In addition to her ethnographic interests, Stevenson’s anthropological work on more than one occasion involved the study of Native American languages as she collected the special vocabularies of mythology and legends, religion and ceremonies, and cultural artifacts. Later scholars published word lists and dictionaries, even grammars, but Stevenson did not. Her Zuni word lists are 99

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still on file at the Smithsonian Institution (Hinton 1993:236), and some of her unpublished notes reportedly have been found in the manuscripts of her protégé, the linguist John P.Harrington (1884–1961), cut and pasted into his own work, then published without attribution (Parezo 1993b: 53). It has been said of Stevenson that ‘Though she dealt with linguistic data, her work cannot be considered linguistic in orientation because she made no attempt to understand the structure or semantics of the language’ (Hinton 1993:236). Stevenson did not claim to be a linguist, but later women who did were not always accepted as such by their contemporaries. The questions of how ‘linguistics’ is defined, of what is meant by ‘understanding structure or semantics’ or even ‘language,’ and of who has the right to create and apply such definitions continue to underlie any account of women, language, and linguistics in the twentieth century.

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ELSIE CLEWS PARSONS Scientist, benefactor, institution

Elsie Clews Parsons (1874–1941) came to the Southwest and to anthropology in search of a scientific way to understand the individual in relation to the conventions and ceremonies of society. Her earlier writing was focused on women and social issues. A frequent contributor to both popular magazines and the journals of the intelligentsia, Parsons also published a number of books for general audiences, presenting controversial ideas that challenged some of the most firmly established conventions of early twentieth century American society.1 Most of all, however, she was a key figure in the anthropology of her day and ‘the archetypal modern professional woman—physically and intellectually adventurous, independent, many-sided, mobile, adaptable’ (Deacon 1997:xiii). Elsie Clews was born in New York City within a few blocks and within a few months of Alice Vanderbilt Morris. There were connections between them. Elsie’s father, Henry Clews (1834–1923), was a banker and New York’s leading stockbroker, as well as friend, business associate, and financial advisor to William Henry Vanderbilt (Clews 1908), the grandfather whose trust fund formed the bulk of the inheritance that financed Alice Morris’s support for IALA. Henry Clews, like Morris’s father Elliott Shepard, was a strong Christian capitalist (Hare 1985:25), but he and particularly his wife Lucy Madison Worthington Clews (1852–?) enjoyed his greater wealth and the ostentatious lifestyle it permitted. So Elsie spent her summers at the family ‘cottage’ in Newport, Rhode Island (‘The Rocks’) near the even grander ‘cottages’ of Alice’s uncles Cornelius II (‘The Breakers’) and William K. (‘Marble House’). Along with Cornelius’s daughter Gertrude, Elsie was mentioned in the society pages as a prime candidate for ‘belle of the season’ in the summer of 1895 (Hare 1985:28). Elsie’s parents were scarcely more supportive of higher education for a young woman than Alice’s parents, but her father did not offer outright objections. Hare suggests that he ‘took considerable pride in his eldest child’s scholarship’ (p. 27) and ‘since he believed that Wall Street was “no place for women,” he may have been more inclined to tolerate Elsie’s scholarly zeal’ (p. 26). Her mother regarded the daughter’s interest in study as ‘mysterious’ and thought work to be ‘unhealthy for girls’ (p. 28). Elsie, however, was set on 101

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attending Barnard College, then newly founded for women. She graduated in 1896. Following a master’s in sociology and a doctorate in education from Columbia University in 1897 and 1899, she taught sociology at Barnard until 1905 when she left paid employment. A prolific writer throughout her adult life, her early intellectual pursuits and passions focused on feminist issues regarding the status and conditions of women in American society and on comparative sociological studies that sought to illuminate and improve those conditions by considering the lives of women in other cultures. Her grandnephew Peter Hare saw her entire life as ‘concern for the ways in which the expression of an individual’s personality is affected by the conventions of society’ (Hare 1985:19). Desley Deacon, a more recent biographer (1997), saw her as the essential modernist. Parsons rebelled against traditions and conventions in her personal life and in her work, even— perhaps especially— when her unconventional ideas and behavior attracted public attention. Hare opens his biography of his grandaunt with an account of the furor occasioned by the 1906 publication of Parsons’s book The Family, which she considered to be ‘her contribution to sex education…and questions of sex morality’ (Deacon 1997:64). Parsons was accused of advocating ‘a disgusting theory,’ of giving ‘an indecent performance,’ of being ‘[a]bsurd, preposterous, diabolical’ (Hare 1985:11), primarily because of a passage suggesting the possibility of ‘trial marriage:’ ‘It would…seem well…to encourage early trial marriage, the relation to be entered into with a view to permanency, but with the privilege of breaking it if proved unsuccessful and in the absence of offspring without suffering any great degree of public condemnation’ (quoted by Hare, p. 12). Parsons’s own marriage to Herbert Parsons (1868–1925) survived for a quarter century, from their wedding in 1900 following the completion of her education until his death in an accident at their home in 1925. He was an attorney, Republican Party leader, and three-term congressional representative from New York (1905–1911). When in Washington, D.C., Representative Parsons was on calling terms at the White House, for he chaired the Republican Committee of New York County with President Theodore Roosevelt’s support (Zumwalt 1992:65–66). Elsie Parsons, too, knew the President, well enough to send him a personal note along with a copy of her ‘unhappily notorious book,’ and Roosevelt replied that ‘Very soon, I shall get you and Herbert to come around to lunch, and then we will talk it over’ (quoted in Hare 1985:13–14). But the couple increasingly led separate lives as their interests diverged and four of their children survived infancy (Zumwalt 1992:55–97). In 1911, with the birth of her last child, Elsie Clews Parsons was released from the domestic life she had maintained when there was time left over from her writing. A trip to the Southwest with her husband the previous year led her to readings on the ethnology of the area, and she returned on her own twice in the next three years, then again in 1915 to study Zuni ceremonies. Parsons had gradually come ‘to believe empirical anthropology provide[d] the best techniques for 102

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studying the ways that self-expression are [sic] checked by social forces’ (Hare 1985:135). During these years, as she moved increasingly away from sociology and toward ethnology, she formed various professional and personal relationships with the men and women of American anthropology at Columbia University. Frequently absent from her homes in New York, Connecticut, and Maine, she left daily care of the children to her husband, the servants, and schools while she traveled to research sites, living and conducting fieldwork for weeks at a time in native communities. World War I further estranged her from her husband. When it began, Elsie was a vocal and public pacifist; Herbert volunteered for combat in France (Zumwalt 1992:90). By the time peace came, Elsie Clews Parsons had become a driving force in the intellectual community that centered around Professor Franz Boas (1859–1942) and his students at Columbia (see Deacon 1997:145– 163). Her degrees, her fieldwork, her long record of publications, and her newfound commitment to Boasian ideas and goals all made Parsons an accepted member of that community. Her only formal academic appointment beyond the earlier post at Barnard came in 1919 when she taught a single course at the Free School of Political Science in New York, later the New School for Social Research (Deacon 1997:233–235). Her intellectual contributions, energy, active research program, strong sense of direction, and generous financial support of the research of others all made her a leader. Parsons’s interests explain a significant amount of both what was accomplished in American anthropology over the next two decades and what was not. In her earlier sociological work, Parsons had drawn sweeping conclusions from her studies of the customs and conventions of different cultures, often with grand generalizations about underlying similarities that she uncovered through comparative work (see Zumwalt 1992:98–122). But as she engaged in her new ethnological work, Parsons—‘who had once written books of broad and provocative speculation’ (Mead 1959:8)—seemed to abandon generalizations and the universal and to focus instead on details and the particular. In an obituary, her close friend, colleague, and literary executor Gladys Reichard explained: She was above all things a respecter of evidence, and never did she skew it to bolster some preconceived or later deduced theory of her own… Dr. Parsons told me that she thought of her work as a mosaic and that she hated to omit any detail, even if at the time it might seem irrelevant, for she believed and often had had proved to her satisfaction, that the record of an apparently trivial detail might after many years furnish an invaluable clue to someone with a different point of view. (Reichard 1943:47) For Franz Boas, America’s leading anthropologist at the time, the careful recording of myths, rituals, and stories, the collection and description of 103

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cultural artifacts, and the documentation of languages were all part of the crucial task of preserving Native American cultures before they disappeared under the onslaught of Anglo-American ways. Parsons, however, did not see herself as a ‘salvage ethnologist.’ Her ‘unsentimental focus was on the living, changing culture’ (Deacon 1997:222). But Parsons did join Boas in the emphasis on data and description as a fundamental part of the ‘project of critical positivism in cultural anthropology’ in which he and his students were engaged (pp. 105– 106). Indeed, she became a central figure in this intellectual movement. Many of those who studied with Boas and were supported by Parsons devoted themselves to detail. Reichard, for example, placed a high value on detail, description, and documentation. Margaret Mead (1901–1978), however, whose own ‘“tendency was to generalize from ‘data’ to statements with global implications”’ (Lola Romanucci-Ross quoted in Howard 1984:258), acridly described Parsons’s course at the Free School: Mrs. Parsons was lecturing out of her discovery of anthropology as a matter made up of the very careful assemblage and analysis of details …From her, students learned that anthropology consisted of an enormous mass of little bits of material, carefully labeled by time, place, and tribe—the fruits, arid and bitter, of long, long hours of labor and devotion. (Mead 1959:8) This is a curious account, written nearly forty years after the fact by someone who was not present in the class, but it does make clear the fundamentally different approaches of these two powerful women anthropologists. Mead is correct in regard to Parsons’s stress on the careful collection and analysis of information, but she ignores Parsons’s work on comparisons of native ways, her search for connections among cultures through borrowing, and she fails entirely to convey the commitment and the joy that Parsons brought to her studies and to those whom she supported over the quarter century in which she was engaged in this work. Mead chose to pursue her own fieldwork in the South Pacific rather than the Southwest and, thus, was not a recipient of Parsons’s generosity. Indeed, the two seem to have had remarkably little contact despite their many mutual colleagues in the circle surrounding Boas, head of anthropology at Columbia University, and each woman passes nearly unmentioned in biographies of the other (e.g., Zumwalt 1992 for Parsons, Howard 1984 for Mead). Mead’s 1972 autobiography refers to Parsons not at all. Parsons’s papers at the American Philosophical Society contain no letters to or from Mead, although there is a group photograph taken by Gladys Reichard in the mid 1920s with Mead on the front steps of Parsons’s house in Harrison, New York (see Figure 16.1). In addition to their intellectual differences, it is possible that Mead resented Parsons’s financial support for Edward Sapir, with whom Mead reportedly had an affair (Howard 1984:67), and for Ruth Benedict (1887–1948), Mead’s first 104

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Figure 16.1 New York anthropologists on the porch of Elsie Clews Parsons’s home in Harrison, New York, mid 1920s. Photograph by Gladys Amanda Reichard. Identified by Desley Deacon (1997:256) as Parsons, in shadow at upper left; Pliny Earle Goddard seated at top of porch; seated on steps: Margaret Mead, Esther Schiff Goldfrank, Franz Boas; to the right is the wife of Nils Nelson; he is not pictured. Elsie Clews Parsons Papers, American Philosophical Society; reproduced with permission.

mentor in anthropology and, over time, closest friend.2 Sexual aspects of that relationship are often mentioned, for example, in the memoir by Mead’s daughter (Bateson 1994[1984]:140) and in Barbara Babcock’s characterization of Mead as Benedict’s ‘colleague, confidante, lover, and literary executor’ (Babcock 1993:112). Benedict’s own relationship with Parsons was strained (Deacon 1997:275–278). Despite an acquaintanceship of many years, they were never on a first name basis in their correspondence (APS). Mead, however, seems to go out of her way to criticize Parsons’s approach and methods (Mead 1959: 342). Indeed, Mead’s position could be viewed as a professional’s disdain for the amateur, a convenient ploy for dismissing a personal and professional rival, though not out of keeping with the times, when anthropology, as well as linguistics, was striving for greater professionalism. Parsons, however, was no amateur despite the absence in her background of the formal education in anthropology that Mead possessed. By 1918, after several years of travel to the Southwest, Elsie Clews Parsons had published more than a dozen articles on Zuni religion, magic, and 105

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ceremonies in magazines and scholarly journals such as Man, Science, Scientific Monthly, American Anthropologist, Journal of American Folklore, and Memoirs of the American Anthropological Association (see the bibliographies of her work in Deacon 1997: 485–499 and Reichard 1943). This was just the beginning of a tremendous spurt in output. Until 1915, Parsons had published some thirty books and scholarly articles over her career, but beginning that year and ending with several posthumously published pieces, she added well over two hundred more essays, reviews, and studies to her bibliography. Of these, about half were descriptive accounts of Native American cultures in the Southwest and in Mexico (see Figure 16.2). Parsons also had a strong interest in African-American and AfricanCaribbean folktales and made trips to the American South, the Bahamas, and the Caribbean during this time (see Zumwalt 1992:184–209), publishing overall more than two dozen essays and collections of the stories she gathered. In fact, it is in this work that we find one of her most perceptive observations about language. Parsons was unusually sensitive to what scientists today sometimes call ‘the observer paradox’ —the necessity of having an observer record and even elicit data which, because the observer is present, is likely to be changed in some way from its normal form.

Figure 16.2 Elsie Clews Parsons at San Gabriel Ranch, New Mexico, 1924. Elsie Clews Parsons Papers, American Philosophical Society; reproduced with permission. 106

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In Folk-Lore of the Sea Islands Parsons wrote: ‘The heaviest handicap that the white recorder is under, in taking down Negro tales, is the pressure which he exerts, willy nilly, upon the use of language…the temptation to try to use school-taught language in telling tales to a white is strong’ (quoted by Zumwalt 1992:198–199). The detail of which Mead was so dismissive served, in cases like these, to record exactly the language used by Parsons’s sources, even to the level of variants in form and content. Parsons’s most concentrated efforts were directed to the Southwest. In 1918 she founded the Southwest Society, through which she converted her personal funds into grants that for nearly a quarter century supported the field research and travel expenses of dozens of anthropologists. Like the International Auxiliary Language Association, with its public dues structure and private support from a single family, the Southwest Society, according to Reichard, ‘was something of an Aladdin’s lamp: the dues were a dollar a year, the membership was not more than twenty-five, the expenses were often several thousand dollars per annum, and yet the books always balanced!’ (draft of obituary for Parsons, n.d., ECPP). In both her areal emphasis and her generous funding for Southwest studies, Parsons led the way. It was not until the 1920s that other ‘eastern academic anthropologists and the Rockefeller philanthropies [of John D.Rockefeller, Jr.]’ concentrated on the American Southwest as ‘an important focus of interest’ (Stocking 1982:3). Parsons also paid many of the publication costs of the journals and the series that printed her own studies and those written through her support. In her obituary for Parsons, Gladys Reichard mentions that ‘for years [Parsons] had been instrumental in avoiding a deficit for the [American Folklore] Society’ (Reichard 1943:47), and Zumwalt recounts Parsons’s restrained reply to a suggestion that the Memoirs of the Society be curtailed in order to conserve resources: ‘Memoirs are printed only through special contributions. There is no memoir fund to be conserved’ (Zumwalt 1992:319). The source of these special contributions, of course, was Parsons herself. Because she funded the fieldwork as well as the channels that published its results, Elsie Clews Parsons controlled much of the subject matter of American anthropology in ethnography and ethnology. Her interests became the studies of those who accepted her support. More than a scientist and a benefactor, Parsons ‘was herself an institution’ (Reichard 1943:45). Mead (1959) quoted a letter Parsons wrote to Boas in 1923 in response to his efforts to engage her support for Benedict to study comparative mythology. Parsons agreed ‘there is that mythology’ but ‘also considerable work on kinship terms…and of course other subjects will develop for all of us’ (p. 342). Ultimately Parsons granted $ 1,000 to Benedict to study Southwest folklore and mythology (p. 66), Benedict’s first paid post. Benedict did some summer fieldwork, but the study was largely a ‘library project’ that she carried out in New York at the Columbia University Library (p. 344; also Deacon 1997:275– 278). The mythology project was compatible with Benedict’s interests and 107

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consistent with what, at the time, were constraints on the opportunities available to her. She had a hearing loss that, according to Mead, ‘barred [her] from linguistic work’ (Mead 1959:347). Benedict wrote to Mead, who was in Samoa, about the effects of her hearing problem on the study of the Zuni language during a summer field trip in 1925: ‘I shouldn’t learn Zuñi in three years…but then I compare our memory and our ears and am quite prepared to have you speaking it in three months. It’s lucky you never have been on a field trip with me, you’d be outraged at my slowness in language’ (Mead 1959:292). The barrier existed in part because of the particular type of linguistic work in which anthropologists were—and to a great extent still are—engaged. As Benedict lamented of the Zuni man with whom she was working: ‘if I could only take his “singsongs” in text’ (Mead 1959:292). The recording of oral texts and the analysis of the phonology, lexicon and morphology, and syntax of languages without indigenous writing systems and without written records was, and is, dependent, especially in the early stages, on the phonetic transcription of large quantities of linguistic material that can be used for the analysis of structures and patterns and for comparison with geographically and genetically related languages. This is especially true in those cases where the language is not spoken by the linguist, and few of those who studied in the Southwest in the 1920s and 1930s ever actually learned the languages of their hosts. Those who studied cultural anthropology relied on multilingual informants or on interpreters and translators. Those who did anthropological linguistics used phonetic transcription, sometimes devising orthographies, and eventually adopted the tape recorder. For the production of transcriptions, a hearing loss was a barrier indeed, although once the material had been elicited and transcribed, it would be little obstacle to analysis. Elsie Clews Parsons rarely displayed much interest in the languages of her research subjects and none at all in the technicalities of phonetic transcription or linguistic analysis. She did collect lists of common words and kinship terms, often when first meeting with a new source (Hare 1985:160), but this was simply a means to gain the confidence and cooperation of someone who might provide her with information on the rituals and secret ceremonies that were her focus. In funding her younger associates, her money followed her interests. She provided few opportunities for supported research on language, many for studies of culture. But there were occasional exceptions, in large part growing out of her friendship with Alfred Louis Kroeber (1876–1960), who urged her to support linguistic study, particularly among the Pueblo peoples (Deacon 1997:249). Gladys Reichard was one of the few women anthropologists of her day to do extensive linguistic studies, from her doctoral dissertation research in 1922– 1923 on Wiyot grammar (Reichard 1925) to the posthumous publication of a series of six articles on comparative Salish (Reichard 1958–1960). Much of her work was funded by Parsons, especially in the Southwest. In 1923 Parsons used her position as patron to encourage a redirection of the Navajo research 108

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of Reichard and her teacher and friend Pliny Earle Goddard (1869–1928) away from language to the more ethnographic studies that most interested Parsons herself. She wrote to Reichard: I am so glad to hear that you can go on the Navaho field trip. More than twice the amount of work will be done, as I have a notion you will stimulate your colleague to work harder than were he alone… I sent Goddard a list of Pueblo Indian ritual elements. Don’t let it be all language. (ECP to GAR 16 August 1923, Gladys A.Reichard Collection [GARC], Library of the Museum of Northern Arizona) Eventually, Reichard would devote much of her career to the study of the Navajo language, but on this first trip to the Southwest, she followed Parsons’s lead, writing in response: ‘You may be pleased to know that we are not going to do language at all, at least I am not, except of course as it is incidental’ (GAR to ECP 17 August 1923 ECPP).3 Parsons’s active involvement in research that she sponsored is reflected by the list she enclosed for Goddard in her letter to Reichard. The same letter ends with two hints: ‘An intensive clan and chieftaincy study would be valuable. Have you a list of Navaho kinship terms? Lowrie had one, in print I think.’ Here, the reference to Robert H.Lowrie (1883–1957) is an example of Parsons’s role in creating and maintaining networks among those whose anthropological work connected to her own interests. In this letter she also suggested that Reichard contact Esther Schiff Goldfrank (b. 1896) regarding a Laguna hunt ritual, and then Parsons enclosed a copy of a short article of her own on a Navajo dance (Parsons 1921). It is no exaggeration to say that she was one of the most important intellectual leaders of anthropological research in the Southwest. While not a linguist herself, Parsons was a supporter of American linguistics (Falk 1994). In 1924 she joined the newly established Linguistic Society of America as a Foundation Member, possibly as a collegial gesture toward her friends Franz Boas and Alfred Kroeber, who were among those signing the call for its creation, perhaps in her role as president (1923–1925) of a sister scholarly organization, the American Ethnological Association. She remained an LSA member through 1932, as long as she herself was conducting Southwest fieldwork, and later, in 1938, spoke at a joint dinner of the LSA and the American Anthropological Association. She was also a member of the joint AAA/LSA Group for American Indian Languages. And funding from her Southwest Society did aid some linguists in their fieldwork. Parsons seemed neutral with respect to any theoretical aspects of those descriptive studies that she did support. She did not specifically fund theoretical work, but once she approved a topic for funding ‘never did she exert pressure on a worker or his theories’ (Reichard 1943:48). Given their exchange regarding Navajo studies twenty years earlier, Reichard here may be engaging in the hyperbole not uncommon in obituaries, but it remains quite clear that 109

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for Parsons, careful observation, detailed records, extensive data collection, and accurate description were what mattered most, in her own extensive contributions to anthropology and in the work she supported. In this, her approach was consistent with those anthropologists in the 1910s who had engaged in ‘wholesale critique and reconstruction of the central concepts and theoretical systems of nineteenth-century ethnology on the basis of careful empirical research and fieldwork’ (Deacon 1997:103). And in this regard her position was also entirely compatible with the work of contemporary linguists working within anthropology, as well as of those in university departments of classical and modern languages. American linguistics in the 1930s was a descriptive science where detail mattered. And yet, Gladys Reichard, who shared Parsons’s views on science, struggled throughout her career to attain acceptance by the other linguists of her day.

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PREPARATION FOR THE FIELD

From 1920 through 1940, the Department of Anthropology at Columbia University, headed by Franz Boas until 1936, awarded forty doctoral degrees, twenty to women, twenty to men (Goldfrank 1978:18). Many of these young scholars, especially in the early period, wrote ‘library dissertations,’ drawing on the artifacts and books to be found in the museums and libraries of New York City (Babcock 1993:127n. 5). Fieldwork usually came later, after the Ph.D. It was largely to remedy this lack of field training, common to many anthropology departments in the 1920s, that the Laboratory of Anthropology in Santa Fe, New Mexico, was established in 1927, with a field training school first operating on a small scale in the summer of 1929 (Stocking 1982). One consequence of this pattern was that, until the 1930s, anthropologists seldom encountered Native American languages until their formal academic coursework was over and their areas of specialization already determined. From the holdings of museums, it was possible to study weaving and pottery. From existing books and articles, like those written by Matilda Coxe Stevenson, one could begin a study of religion. Synthesizing others’ accounts, a study of comparative mythology was possible, as in Ruth Benedict’s first work supported by Elsie Clews Parsons. But a linguistic study of any kind was very difficult under such conditions. Library information on Indian languages was available, but it was scattered and highly varied. There were texts collected ‘under the aegis of the Bureau of American Ethnology (founded in 1879) and Franz Boas (beginning in the 1890s)’ (Kinkade & Mattina 1996:249). Word lists and descriptions from diverse and not always reliable sources included dictionaries and grammars compiled by linguistically naive explorers or missionaries. Writing to Margaret Mead from Zuni (New Mexico) on 19 August 1925, Ruth Benedict described one of the major problems presented by amateur dictionaries: I’ve been trying to get linguistic help out of a Zuñi dictionary, of the “nice missionaries” next door… They left the missionary business for trading almost twenty years back, and they are very companionable people—But this dictionary! It runs through aggrandize and aggravate; 111

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it includes evolution and harlot… It’s a silent monument to the difference in interest between two peoples. I don’t suppose one word in fifty is common in Zuñi talk, and certainly none of my constantly recurring tale-words are in it at all. (Mead 1959:292–293) Even in the field, such dictionaries were not always helpful. Back in New York City, linguistic work was virtually impossible. The situation is a major factor in explaining why so few anthropologists of this period began their work with a focus on language. Among the women entering Southwest studies from 1900 to 1940, for example, only eleven produced linguistic work and for many of those, linguistics was ‘a minor or ancillary subspecialty’ (Hinton 1993:241). Even later, Southwest linguistics did not attract many women; Hinton gives a total of 45 entering the field between 1901 and 1982, a figure to be measured against the 1,600 women that Babcock and Parezo number as having ‘followed in the path’ of Matilda Coxe Stevenson and other early archaeologists, ethnologists, and anthropologists who worked in the Southwest (1988:1). Why was the number of women studying language so small? There are several reasons, but two of the most compelling are funding and training. We saw above that Elsie Clews Parsons preferred to fund cultural, rather than linguistic, studies. Museums, too, were far more interested in artifacts and art than in language, and it was in museums rather than within the academy that many women found employment (see Parezo & Hardin 1993), including Margaret Mead, whose longtime supervisor at the American Museum of Natural History, Clark Wissler (1870–1947), ‘thought that museum work fitted women, [Mead] said, “because it was like housekeeping”’ (Howard 1984:101). Edward Sapir, among all of Boas’s students the most interested in linguistic study, might have aided the next generation. But he had limited access to funding and appeared not particularly supportive of women’s academic work. From 1910 to 1925, Sapir struggled with a small budget at the Anthropological Division of the Geological Survey of the Canadian National Museum. He himself was rarely able to conduct fieldwork (Murray 1994:81), and it was only with considerable difficulty that he obtained $1,000 to support Leonard Bloomfield on a field trip to study Cree near Regina (Saskatchewan) during the summer of 1925 (ES to LB, LB to ES 26 April through 24July 1925 ESC). Sapir himself turned to Elsie Clews Parsons for support for his students and colleagues. At his request, the Southwest Society financed field trips for Leslie White (1900–1975) and later paid for the publication of two of his monographs (Zumwalt 1992:271, 279n. 153, 325n. 37). It is noteworthy that neither was a linguistic study. Sapir also sought Parsons’s support for work in Africa by philosophy professor Alain Locke, ‘one of the spokesmen of the American Negro intelligentsia’ (ES to ECP 13 November 1929 ECPP), for work on Mexican languages and folklore by Paul Radin (ES to ECP 14 August 1930 ECPP), for doctoral dissertation work on Apache culture by Morris Opler (ES to ECP 1 June 1931 ECPP), for Mexican ethnographic 112

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fieldwork by graduate student David Rodnick (ES to ECP 29 November 1933, 9 March 1934 ECPP), and for continued study of economic aspects of Hopi culture by Ernest Beaglehole (ES to ECP 30 January and 9 March 1934 ECPP). For linguistic studies, Sapir was especially persistent in requesting funds from Parsons for Father Berard Haile, a Franciscan father who had been stationed in the Southwest since the turn of the century (ES to ECP 18 February 1929, 23 June 1930, 7 April 1932, 9 July 1936, 24 July 1936 ECPP). Haile’s studies were focused on Navajo. From letters of acknowledgment among Parsons’s papers, we know that in addition to White, she also funded Haile, Opler, and Radin. There are no requests on record from Sapir seeking grants from Parsons for women students or women colleagues, perhaps because those few in his circle were not engaged in the Southwest research that she tended to support. He was acquainted with Ruth Benedict, but Parsons funded her work in response to a request from Boas, not Sapir. From Margaret Mead’s An Anthropologist at Work: Writings of Ruth Benedict, Edward Sapir’s support for Benedict’s work has become widely known. But it is important to examine that support, for at the same time that he encouraged Benedict to write poetry, he all but dismissed her scholarly work. In an October 1925 letter he wrote: ‘“Zuñi myths are important toys, of course, but your verse, even when you’re not pleased with it, is a holier toy. You may quote this to Boas if you like”’ (quoted in Mead 1959:181). Several months later, in March 1926, the same point is stressed: ‘“I hope you are wise enough to continue writing [poetry]. It is no secret between us that I look upon your poems as infinitely more important than anything, no matter how brilliant, you are fated to contribute to anthropology”’ (Mead 1959:181–182). Sapir seems never to have encouraged either Benedict or Mead to undertake linguistic studies, and his attitude toward Parsons’s scholarship was sometimes coy, as when he wrote to Benedict about his review of Parsons’s American Indian Life: ‘“Watch the Dial [a magazine]. I have a little squib on Elsie’s book, which will make you smile. I’m curious to see how she’ll take it”’ (letter dated 22 October 1923, quoted in Mead 1959:159). Parsons’s book was a volume of collected stories and tales, some authentic, others partially fictionalized accounts created by anthropologists, that was intended to convey to the public a true sense of Indian life. Sapir himself had contributed to the book, which defies classification, being neither a straightforward presentation of ethnic texts nor pure fiction. In a volume of Sapir’s selected writings, the editor reflected this ambiguity by placing an excerpt from the review in the section on ‘Literature and Music’ (Sapir 1949). In the moving Preface to her book, Parsons noted the misconceptions and insensitivity that sometimes arose from popular fiction. She presented American Indian Life as a response ‘to the over-abundant lore of the white man about the Indian. In this book the white man’s traditions about Indians have been disregarded’ (Parsons 1922:2). Her justification for using fiction rather than a more direct anthropological approach grew out of an experience with the wife of a missionary in New Mexico whose sole previous knowledge of Native 113

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“SHE always says she will come, and sometimes she comes and sometimes she doesn’t come. I was so surprised when I first came out here to find that Indians were like that,” the wife of the Presbyterian Missionary in an Indian town in New Mexico was speaking, as you readily infer, on her servant question. “Where did you get your impressions of Indians before you came here?” “From Fenimore Cooper. I used to take his books out, one right after the other from the library at New Canaan, Connecticut, where I grew up.” At that time, during the youth of this New Englander past middle age, few anthropological monographs on Indian tribes had been written, but it is doubtful if such publications are to be found in New England village libraries even to-day, and it is more than doubtful that if they were in the libraries anybody would read them; anthropologists themselves have been known not to read them. Between these forbidding monographs and the legends of Fenimore Cooper, what is there then to read for a girl who is going to spend her life among Indians or, in fact, for anyone who just wants to know more about Indians? From these considerations, among others, this book was conceived. The idea of writing about the life of the Indian for the General Reader is not novel, to be sure, to anthropologists. Appearances to the contrary, anthropologists have an wish to keep their science or any part of it esoteric. They are ton well aware, for one thing, that facilities for the pursuit of anthropology are dependent more or less on popular interest, and that only too often tribal cultures have disappeared in America as elsewhere before people became interested enough in them to learn about them. Figure 17.1

From the Preface to American Indian Life, by Elsie Clews Parsons (Parsons 1922:1).

Americans and their lives had come from reading the novels of James Fenimore Cooper (1789–1851) (see Figure 17.1). Both in the popular press and in professional journals, the book was well received (see Deacon 1997:238), but Sapir’s review made fun of Parsons’s rejection of the conventional: ‘Few artists possess so impassioned an indifference to the external forms of conduct as to absorb an exotic milieu only to dim its high visibility…’ and then observed, in the usual language that dismissed women’s work at the time, ‘There is always something sentimental and unelemental about a tapestry’ (Sapir 1922a[1985]: 504). In the end, he almost acknowledged some value to the book but hedged any positive evaluation with phrases like ‘It would almost seem,’ ‘There are passages in the book that suggest that a great deal might be done,’ and ‘more than a hint 114

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of how compelling an imaginative treatment of primitive life might be’ (p. 504). From his letter to Benedict, it seems that Sapir thought his review was clever. Despite his private scorn and public criticism of Parsons’s effort to inform through authoritative but fictional writings, Sapir himself contributed to the volume (Sapir 1922b). His essay was joined by compositions from twenty two other anthropologists, many of them leading figures in the field such as Boas, Goddard, Kroeber, and Wissler, mentioned earlier here, and Robert H.Lowrie (1883–1957), Truman Michelson (1879–1938), Alfred M.Tozzer (1876–1954), and T.T.Waterman (1885–1936). Sapir seemed to be struggling at this time with the role of literary creativity in ethnography (see Leeds-Hurwitz & Nyce 1986), arguing in a letter to Benedict: ‘the baldly impersonal point of view we have all gone in for is good for still-born works only. I almost feel it needs a semi-literary outsider to do our writing for us’ (15 April 1923, quoted by Leeds-Hurwitz & Nyce 1986:502). Rather than continue to develop fictional structures for ethnographic accounts, however, Sapir turned to the life history as a basis for the study of the individual, in the 1930s supporting the publication of such works by several of his male anthropology students from Yale University (Leeds-Hurwitz & Nyce 1986: 517–519). To whatever extent Sapir’s attitudes toward American Indian Life were, at least in part, a reflection of his views on Parsons’s gender or perhaps on her lack of professional training in anthropology, he was not alone in according less respect to women than to men in anthropology. Zumwalt reports an important 1927 meeting organizing the Laboratory of Anthropology, a meeting that the archaeologist Alfred V.Kidder (1885–1963) arranged at the Yale Club, which did not allow women to enter (Zumwalt 1992:13). Two years later, Kidder, Sapir, and Kroeber, another Boas product who could have supported women in linguistic work, were the leaders of the Santa Fe Laboratory where ‘women had been excluded from the archeological group’ (p. 14). In both cases the men involved wrote personal letters to Parsons making light of her exclusion, but such private ‘apologies’ could hardly conceal from other women the public insults that had occurred. Writing to thank Parsons for a $500 grant to Haile just before the first Laboratory of Anthropology training session in 1929, Sapir suggested that Kroeber, Kidder, and his other male colleagues would not have turned down ‘a really strong woman candidate’ (ES to ECP 27 March 1929 ECPP). Of course, there were none. The three women Sapir named as ‘really mean[ing] business scientifically’ and ‘welcomed by all’—including Gladys Reichard and Ruth Bunzel—were experienced fieldworkers by 1929 and therefore they were not candidates for the summer fellowships. As for other women, Sapir argued: The share that women are taking in scientific work, particularly in field work, is just a bit more of a problem, it seems to me, than some 115

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are willing to admit… I am afraid there are some—and they may be among the ablest intellectually—who create highly disturbing and embarrassing problems which are only beginning to be estimated at their true seriousness. (ES to ECP 27 March 1929 ECPP) He offered no instances or examples of the problems that eliminated even the most qualified women, but no women at all were included in the group of students whom he directed that summer in Navajo linguistic fieldwork. Aware of this attitude, when the Laboratory held a conference at the end of the summer, Reichard wrote to Parsons: ‘I have had my revenge! Personal if not scientific’ (GAR to ECP 25 August 1929). She had brought two women students to the conference, one an archaeology major from the University of Arizona who spoke Navajo. Reichard reported: ‘All the men needed plenty of defense against my two girls. But that condition will probably be nothing in favor of them being taken on another year. At any rate all the diggers [the archaeologists] found out what they are interested in and what they want to do and they all liked them’ (ibid.). The Southwest attracted very large numbers of students and scholars. Babcock and Parezo report an intellectual force over the years of more than 5,000 (1988: 1). For all, the area provided ‘an exotic but safe “laboratory” for the young science of anthropology’ (p. 7). The Native Americans had relatively good relations with white authorities, traders, and settlers. Cultural diversity among the Pueblo peoples, and the presence of others, especially the Navajo, made this ‘laboratory’ particularly interesting to those who sought to determine the extent of human variation, a characteristic goal of the human sciences at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century. Elsie Clews Parsons, for example, found the area ideal for her studies of acculturation and ‘the study of cultural diffusion in process’ (Deacon 1997:175). As research questions grew deeper, asking how and why people lived and believed and perceived as they did, it became more important for scholars to live among their subjects, to not just pass through collecting artifacts and word lists. The Native American peoples of the Southwest lived stable lives, their communities well established. There was rail transportation to the region and a topography and climate that allowed travel by car and truck during most of the summer season when both academic and nonacademic anthropologists were free to conduct fieldwork. And those fieldworkers who had come before prepared the way for those who came later. Over time, the Southwest became ‘the most studied region in anthropology’ (Babcock & Parezo 1988:1). Women scholars’ relatively slight interest in the languages of the region during the 1920s and 1930s was due to lack of training as much as to the greater support available to them for cultural studies. More generally, American linguistics as a whole was still an emerging discipline with few adherents and it did not train its students specifically in methods of gathering linguistic data in the field until the 1930s. Mary Haas, a linguistics graduate student in the early 1930s working with Sapir first at the University of Chicago and then at 116

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Yale, recalled her student years: ‘We were all expected to go out and work in the field, and there was not too much training in that then’ (Murray 1997:699). Boas’s teaching of linguistics, too, had been ‘wholly inductive and empirical. He set before students an interlinear text [the original language with English translation interspersed line by line] and proceeded to analyze it, developing the structure of the language as he proceeded’ (Kroeber 1943:14). The summer Linguistic Institutes, sponsored by the Linguistic Society of America, offered a course in methods of linguistic fieldwork in 1928, but it attracted only a single student (LSA Bulletin 2.17[1928]). Not until 1937, when Sapir conducted a ‘Field Methods’ course, did formal classroom training become a regular part of Institute offerings (see Charles C.Fries to Edgar Howard Sturtevant 9 July 1937, Linguistic Society of America Archives). As discussed earlier, in the absence of extensive reliable data for many Native American languages, the anthropological linguist’s first task was to elicit words and oral texts, and the primary way of recording these was through phonetic transcription. Magnetic tape recorders did not become available until after World War II. Until then, many linguists did not use recording devices, preferring to rely on transcription. Cylinder phonographs had been available since the late 1800s and were quite inexpensive, but since they allowed only short recording times of three to nine minutes, they were used primarily to record songs, not myths and tales (Kinkade & Mattina 1996:255–256). Even in the early 1940s, some argued against the use of the more recent technology of phonographic disk recording. Raven McDavid (1911–1984) described it as ‘ineffective’ for dialect work, ‘very expensive,’ ‘difficult to transport’, and likely to distract informants; George Trager (1906–1992) called it ‘far inferior to the human ear’ and stated that recordings gave ‘a very poor representation of what is said’ (McDavid 1942:3–4). But phonetic transcription, the most acceptable means of recording in written symbols the sounds, words, and sentences of languages, required technical training. It was a special skill, one rarely taught at the time in American colleges and universities. Haas recalled that she and her fellow students at Yale ‘finally persuaded Sapir to give a phonetics course, a non-credit course’ (Darnell 1990: 361), while at Columbia ‘it was left to the student to pick up on his own the phonetics…required for understanding’ Boas’s classroom lectures (Kroeber 1943:15). In other cases, phonetics could be found as part of elocution or speech therapy, where the focus was on the sounds of English and the academic distance far from departments of anthropology and from those linguists who were housed in foreign language and classics divisions. Some linguists were actively hostile to ‘non-linguistic phonetic instruction,’ not without good reason. McDavid wrote: ‘[instruction] offered by elocutionists and other purveyors of “correct speech”… usually hinders the development of true phonetic skill, because it substitutes for a scientific interest in recording sounds as spoken an emotional attachment or revulsion to certain sounds for pseudo-aesthetic or pseudo-social reasons’ (McDavid 1942:5). 117

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Even when Sapir taught ‘Field Methods in Linguistics’ at the 1937 Linguistic Institute, his course description specified that ‘The phonetics needed to carry on the course will be developed as need requires’ (quoted in Joos [1986]: 60). This is how phonetics and phonetic transcription were learned, through handson experience, transcribing an actual language unknown to the students, under the supervision of a senior linguist. The pattern Sapir set was followed in 1938 when Leonard Bloomfield taught the Institute’s field methods class and again in 1939 and 1940 when ‘Recording and Analysis of a Living Language’ was offered at the Institutes by C.F. Voegelin (1906–1986), joined on the first occasion by Murray B.Emeneau (b. 1904) and George L.Trager (Joos [1986]:60, 62, 63). Enrollment records are not available for all of these courses, but one near-contemporary, the linguist Martin Joos (1907–1978), later observed of Sapir’s course: ‘Nobody seems to have been disturbed by the absence of women among the ten [students in the class]’ ([1986]:52). Phonetic transcription, of course, was essentially a tool to be used in gathering data, though without the tool, little linguistic work could proceed. But the real work of linguists exploring Native American languages at this time was the analysis of the languages, the search for patterns and structure among the sounds, words, sentences, and oral texts taken down in transcription from the utterances of native speakers, who were referred to as informants. In some cases, linguists taught speakers to write their native languages (Kinkade & Mattina 1996:251), and some of these wrote down texts that could later serve as data for linguistic analysis (e.g., Sapir 1933b). On this synchronic work, all those engaged in linguistic anthropology were generally agreed. But a second, diachronic, goal was more controversial and clearly separated Boas from his former student Sapir. Boas was very cautious about, even antagonistic toward, extending the methods of historical comparative linguistics, so successful in nineteenth century European linguistic work, to the languages of the Americas. Sapir, on the other hand, was daring, even radical, in applying such principles to establish the genetic classification of American languages (see, e.g., Darnell 1990:107–131). This controversy, at its height in the second decade of the century, resulted in strong tensions between Boas and Sapir and may well have affected the career and reputation of Gladys Reichard, Boas’s most dedicated and talented linguistics student in the early 1920s, a matter to which we return below. For the analysis and presentation of data and descriptions of Native American languages, especially synchronic studies, young scholars could turn to several models. Beginning in 1911, Boas had gathered grammatical sketches produced by his students and colleagues for The Handbook of American Indian Languages, which by 1938 consisted of three volumes of linguistic descriptions. ‘From the eve of World War I to the early thirties, descriptive linguistics in the American Indian field followed the Boas model [of the Handbook], or some abbreviation of it’ (Voegelin & Harris 1952:323; see also Voegelin 1952). 118

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On the west coast, Boas’s first doctoral student at Columbia, Alfred L. Kroeber, launched a publication series at the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley where he had been appointed Assistant Professor in 1906. Previously, he had spent five years there as an instructor paid outside the department budget by funds from Phoebe Appeson Hearst (1842– 1919), mother of publisher William Randolph Hearst (1863–1951) and an avid collector of Mediterranean archaeological artifacts (Steward 1973:8– 9), yet another instance in which private money from wealthy women supported academic work. In the University of California Publications in American Archaeology and Ethnology, Kroeber published linguistic analyses and texts of the native languages of California, as well as a wide range of ethnological studies of such matters as basketry, pottery, myths, and religion. Then in 1917, Boas and his colleague Pliny Earle Goddard launched the International Journal of American Linguistics, devoted entirely to the publication of descriptions of the native languages of the Americas. As the editors of these serial publications, Boas and Kroeber became gatekeepers of the linguistics of Native American languages. Volumes were filled with their own work and that of their closest colleagues and students. Content and format became standardized and the paradigms established then served as models for those who hoped to contribute to the field.

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Gladys Reichard was one of the most important women to study native American languages in the first half of the twentieth century.1 A student of Franz Boas at Columbia University in the early 1920s and then a teacher of linguistics and anthropology at Barnard College for her entire career, Reichard published grammars for three distinct languages: the northern California language Wiyot (Reichard 1925), Coeur d’Alene, a Salish language of Idaho (Reichard 1938), and, in the Southwest, Navajo (Reichard 1951). At the time her Navaho Grammar appeared, no other woman had yet published such an extensive body of linguistic studies on Native American languages, although a younger contemporary, Mary R.Haas (1910–1996), would eventually surpass Reichard in intellectual and institutional fame and influence. (For a bibliography of Reichard’s work, see Smith 1956; for Haas, see Dil 1978 and Parks 1997.) As the contributions of women to the discipline of anthropology were reviewed in the final decades of the twentieth century (e.g., Babcock & Parezo 1988, Parezo 1993a), Reichard’s work on Navajo culture—weaving and religion as well as language—became the focus of several important studies (Lyon 1989, Lamphere 1993 [1992]), but there is no full scale biography encompassing all of her linguistic research or exploring her earlier work, contexts and influences, and her relationships as they affected her linguistic studies and her academic and intellectual reception and reputation. In her work, Reichard differed from some of the most prominent linguists of her time. She saw language ‘as a living, cultural phenomenon’ (1951:4), and her linguistic studies are characterized by an effort to understand how language and life were experienced by the people whom she was studying. She began her public career, and she remained, a steadfastly synchronic linguist, at a time when Edward Sapir led the field with an interest in the historical, genetic classification of Native American languages. She never separated her linguistic work from her anthropological interests, at a time when Leonard Bloomfield and, even more, his students were intent upon establishing the autonomy of American linguistics. And she focused on the variation of human languages in their natural, everyday settings, at a time when many linguists were oriented to the development of American structuralism and of phonemic theory, tasks 120

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which came to assume a uniform grammar for each language, free of variation and the influence of extralinguistic context. In each of these characteristics, Reichard departed from the views of her contemporaries, and since the history of American linguistics has been reported largely as a history of such great men as Sapir and Bloomfield and as a history of their ideas, Reichard and much of her work are today nearly unknown among all but those who specialize in the languages which she studied. Reichard was both an anthropologist and a linguist and, for her, culture and language were thoroughly intertwined, as her approach to Navajo clearly illustrates. She first learned to speak the language at the same time that she learned Navajo weaving, while living with a Navajo family over the summers in the early 1930s. In letters to Parsons written at the time, she gave priority to her language work, but later, she described her Navajo grammar as ‘a byproduct of a project to investigate some of the inner meanings of Navaho religion, a study I felt could not be accomplished without some interpretation of the language’ (Reichard 1951:v). (The two spellings, Navajo and Navaho, are discussed below.) Indeed, the products of her two decade Navajo research project were two books published virtually in tandem, Navaho Religion (1950) and Navaho Grammar (1951). A similar though temporally separated pairing occurred for Coeur d’Alene, with the grammar in 1938 and then in 1947 An Analysis of Coeur d’Alene Indian Mythology, for which Reichard received the Chicago Folklore Society prize (Smith 1956:914). Only for Wiyot do we not find a separate volume of cultural studies, although the grammar here was accompanied by seventy five pages of cultural texts, including Wiyot tales and myths, Yurok tales told in Wiyot, and informal conversations, all transcribed in the original language and translated into English (Reichard 1925:141–215). Gladys Reichard came to college, and then to anthropology, as a young woman who had already spent six years teaching, first in a one-room country school and then in an elementary school in her home community of Bangor, Pennsylvania. Louise Lamphere quotes from an interview that Reichard gave in 1944: ‘“My father believed you should know what you wanted to study before starting at College”’ (Lamphere 1993:161). For Reichard, undergraduate study at Swarthmore College meant a major in classics with plans for a career as a doctor. Her later interests in healing ceremonies and the close association that she formed with the Navajo curer Miguelito and his family may be traceable to this early interest in medicine. Reichard moved directly from Swarthmore, where she received the AB in 1919 at the age of 26, to Columbia University in order to study anthropology with Boas. In Lamphere’s account, ‘during her senior year, after hearing several lectures from the anthropologist who taught at Swarthmore (Dr. Spencer Trotter), she converted’ from classics and medicine to anthropology (1993: 161). When she wrote to Boas applying for admission to graduate study at Columbia, she was, not surprisingly, unclear about her specific area of interest in the field (GAR to FB 18 May 1919, Franz Boas Collection [FBC], American 121

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Philosophical Society). At his prompting, she identified cultural anthropology as of greater interest than biological studies, and he in turn advised that in addition to courses ‘on the cultural side’ she should take work in linguistics ‘which is quite indispensable for thorough work in anthropology’ (FB to GAR 11 July 1919 FBC). Reichard was clearly an intelligent, serious student; not only had she been Phi Beta Kappa at Swarthmore, but she received a Lucretia Mott Fellowship in support of graduate study. This intelligence, her rapid progress in graduate work, a commitment to Boas, and perhaps her mature concentration on her studies, led to several opportunities that enabled Reichard to develop quickly into a practicing linguist. During her second year of graduate school, 1920–1921, she served as Boas’s assistant for the classes he was teaching at Barnard College, the women’s school associated with Columbia. In summer and fall of 1922 and in the spring of 1923, Reichard conducted fieldwork in northern California. The first trip was sponsored by Kroeber’s Department of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley. Expenses for the spring were defrayed by Elsie Clews Parsons, who responded to an appeal from Boas after the determined Reichard proposed hitchhiking north from Berkeley when her university funding was exhausted (GAR to FB 26 November and 22 December 1922 FBC). Wiyot Grammar and Texts (Reichard 1925) was the result of this fieldwork. The grammar followed the pattern established early on by Boas in his Handbook of American Indian Languages and the texts fit closely with the tradition Kroeber developed in the University of California Publications in American Archaeology and Ethnology. Reichard’s Wiyot work became her doctoral dissertation under Boas and was published in Kroeber’s series. A letter from Kroeber to Edward Sapir (3 March 1924) at the time Reichard was working on Wiyot, was apparently a response to a now-lost letter in which Sapir made some negative comments about an encounter with Reichard. Kroeber expressed concern that Reichard was too rigidly Boasian in her linguistic work: I rather liked and much admired her. Her work capacity is enormous. The chief fault I found was the super-impregnation with Boas, so that she neither gave nor received anything in her year with us. What she had, was el puro Boas; and she wanted nothing else. She did her Wiyot the way he would approve… She is hard and efficient and charmless… saturated with the old man… She’s neither quarrelsome nor dogmatic, but argument with her is useless because she has Boas lock her mind and keep the key. (Golla 1984:410) Perhaps it was Reichard’s age, 31 at the time, that led Kroeber to expect greater autonomy, but it must be remembered that she was a graduate student when she went to California. How else was she to write the grammar that would become her doctoral dissertation, other than ‘the way [Boas, her dissertation director] would approve’? Kroeber, on the other hand, had completed his own studies with Boas 122

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a quarter century earlier. Of course he would have become independent of his former teacher, just as Reichard herself would be a quarter century later. In her California research, then, Reichard was engaged in what might be called classic Boasian linguistics. It was certainly ‘salvage’ work, for, as she noted in her introduction, when she began the study ‘There were…not more than 100 persons living as Wiyot and of those very few knew the language…[which] is fast becoming extinct’ (Reichard 1925:5). Reichard identified eight people willing to serve as Wiyot informants. Her technique was to elicit texts, primarily from Jerry James, ‘a man about 63 years of age…[and] one of the few Wiyot living who learned the [traditional Wiyot] stories’ (Reichard 1925:141), and then to ‘check words, phrases, and facts’ with others, while also obtaining interpretations and translations (pp. 4–7). In this, her first linguistic work, Reichard encountered the kind of linguistic variation that was to make her forever wary of approaches that moved too quickly to generalization or theoretical conclusion. Both individual and contextual variation were immediately apparent as she collected her texts within the still living, cultural world of her Wiyot informants. On the one hand, she found that ‘Speech habits among Wiyot individuals, or rather families, differ so much as to become almost dialectic… Especially is this tendency noticeable in the vowels’ where some speakers used a lax mid front vowel that she described as ‘e open as in met’ where others used the low front ‘ä like a in hat’ (Reichard 1925: 8). On the other hand, speakers of Wiyot pronounced words differently when produced one at a time for the visitor, as opposed to in natural context, in conversations, narratives, or oral texts, a phenomenon common to all languages. In the oral tales there were assimilations and elisions, especially across morpheme boundaries (a phenomenon sometimes referred to by the Sanskrit term sandhi), processes that obscured the relationship between forms produced in isolation and those occurring in discourse or oral texts. So, for example, Reichard explains: ‘wa+wi becomes wi [in the word] ga’witiL, she became pregnant (for gawa-witiL)’ (p. 17).2 Reichard’s solution was to record the texts ‘exactly as given by the original informant’ (here, ga’witiL); for analysis, however, ‘the grammatical points are deduced from the more complete forms’ (in this case, gawa-witiL) (p. 7n. 10). This solution was not unlike the Samhita (or compound) text and the Pada (or word) text of Sanskrit, with the former displaying the phonetic form produced by morphophonemic processes while the latter presents a more abstract lexical representation. Neither provides the kind of phonemic transcription that was emerging elsewhere in linguistics at the time (e.g., Sapir 1925b). Reichard’s next major linguistic publication did not come until 1938, but it was based on research she initially conducted during field trips to study the Coeur d’Alene language in Idaho in 1927 and 1929, this time sponsored by grants from the Committee for the Study of Indian Languages, of the American Council of Learned Societies. Boas chaired this committee, and it was he who 123

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assured that she received the support. Variation was not so much an issue in this work, for she worked with only four speakers, of whom three were members of the same family. One, Lawrence Nicodemus, later came to New York in 1935 and 1936 and Reichard worked with him at Columbia (Reichard 1938:521). This later period of research was thus similar to the type of work pursued by many other linguists at the time, studying a language from a single speaker far removed from the normal linguistic and cultural environment of the language. It was the type of ‘fieldwork’ conducted in the following years at the Linguistic Institutes at the University of Michigan, where a speaker of Delaware or Chippewa might be brought to Ann Arbor to provide data to a field methods class (Joos [1986]: 62–63, 67–68). Under such circumstances, the usual variation within and among speakers is lessened or does not occur at all. In Reichard’s work on Coeur d’Alene, variation was further reduced because her texts were obtained from only two sources. The grammar of Coeur d’Alene that resulted (Reichard 1938), like the Wiyot grammar, was a standard Boasian description. Even the format remained virtually the same as for the Wiyot publication, beginning with an account of the fieldwork and speakers, then the sound system, followed by a section on grammatical processes, a detailed account of the verb, descriptive lists of affixes, and short sections on syntax. Of course there were some differences in the framework used for these two grammars published more than a dozen years apart and in different publication series. In addition to those occasioned by differences in the structures of the two languages, what were ‘phonetics’ and ‘phonetic laws’ for Wiyot became ‘phonology’ and ‘phonetic processes’ for Coeur d’Alene; discussion of verbs and affixes occurred under the heading ‘morphology’ for the latter. But there is no strong evidence that Reichard had undergone any fundamental shift in her approach to language description despite her use of more modern terminology. From Reichard’s correspondence, field notes, and the final products themselves, it seems clear that she found the linguistic work on Wiyot to be difficult. Indeed, Reichard’s Wiyot Grammar is sketchy, and later investigations by Karl Teeter indicate that she overlooked significant aspects of both phonology and morphology. Still learning during her first field experience, she sought detailed advice from Boas (e.g., GAR to FB 19 November 1922 FBC), and two years later, when she had the opportunity to conduct field studies on Navajo genealogy, she confessed: ‘I realize now the difference between doing straight ethnology and linguistic work. The latter is a dozen times harder than the former’ (GAR to FB 5 July 1924 FBC). When Reichard returned to linguistic work, studying Coeur d’Alene quite on her own at Tekoa, Washington, on the Idaho border, we find a much more confident linguist, especially in her second summer of fieldwork. Her letters to Boas are just as filled with the details of the language as were her earlier communications, but now she is reporting her findings, not asking for help (e.g., GAR to FB 3 July 124

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1929 FBC). And yet, the notion that Reichard somehow remained a timid student persisted for years, perhaps reflecting others’ ideas of women linguists at the time rather than the reality of this strong and independent woman. With the Coeur d’Alene work scheduled for part three of Boas’s Handbook of American Indian Languages, Reichard had many exemplars of his ‘general plan of presentation of grammar’ (Boas 1911:vi) to guide her in gathering data, analyzing her material, and organizing it for publication. C.F.Voegelin shows how closely Reichard followed Boas’s plan in her Coeur d’Alene grammar (Voegelin 1952). But he erred in identifying her work as among the four grammars in this volume of the Handbook that ‘were written by students under the direction of either Boas or of Edward Sapir’ (p. 442). Unlike the three authors whose doctoral dissertations appeared in the volume (Harry Hoijer [1904–1976], Manuel Andrade [1885–1942], and Ruth Bunzel [1886–1990]), Reichard was not a student at all. Rather, she was an established scholar with a Ph.D. in hand and a full-time academic appointment at Barnard when she began her Coeur d’Alene fieldwork in 1927. When her grammar actually appeared nearly a decade later (1938) she had a half dozen books in print. Identifying her as ‘a student’ writing under ‘the direction’ of Boas at this point fails to acknowledge her independent intellectual accomplishments. Throughout her career, Reichard remained devoted to detail, to recording languages as they were actually used. Fully aware of the interests of Sapir and others in determining the historical relations among Native American languages, she herself refrained from actual comparative work. In part for reasons discussed in some detail below, in the Wiyot Grammar she attempted to remain independent of controversy, pointing to a paper by Sapir (1913) presenting data to suggest that both Wiyot and Yurok were ‘members of the great Algonkin family’ and then to the ‘lively discussion between [Truman] Michelson and himself on the matter (Reichard 1925:6). She deferred to Michelson as ‘the present-day authority on Algonkin’ and established her own goal without directly taking a position on the historical relationships: This paper attempts to set forth the essential features of the Wiyot language as shown by texts and numerous grammatical questionings. Consequently, it has been deemed important to give as many stems and other elements in the vocabulary and grammar as have been procurable and found possible of analysis. (Reichard 1925:6) The same focus on synchronic description appears again more than a dozen years later in the grammar of Coeur d’Alene. There Reichard merely noted that ‘with the general and comparative problems of Salish in mind, illustrative examples have been selected with great care, and in many cases a large number have been given…when [elements] have suggestive comparative value, all the known examples have been given’ (Reichard 1938:522). But the Coeur d’Alene grammar is entirely a synchronic study. 125

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Even in her Navajo grammar, more comprehensive than those for Wiyot and Coeur d’Alene, Reichard did not attempt any historical comparison or reconstruction. Although she provided details of the living language that others might find useful for diachronic purposes, she was steadfastly a synchronic linguist: ‘I have tried to keep historical questions and references to a minimum, the major purpose being to present the Navaho language’ (Reichard 1951:4, emphasis in original). It was when Gladys Reichard engaged in the study of Navajo that language as a living, varying, cultural phenomenon became most compelling for her. Here her research was far more extensive than her studies among the Wiyot and the Coeur d’Alene. Reichard’s biographers, most of whom have been anthropologists, tend to focus on this Navajo work, and, within that, on the anthropological rather than the linguistic (see particularly Lamphere 1993). Even a brief summary of the story shows why this is so, for it was with the Navajo that Gladys Reichard’s personal involvement reached a depth achieved by few linguists, or anthropologists, of her time. To begin with, Reichard came to the Navajo in 1923 when she accompanied Pliny Earle Goddard (1869–1928) on a field trip funded by Elsie Clews Parsons. Goddard was curator of ethnology at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City where Reichard worked during her first years of graduate school (Goldfrank 1978:19). He had been Elsie Parsons’s first close contact in anthropology, showing her the Southwest collection at the museum and providing her with letters of introduction for a 1912 trip that she took to New Mexico (Zumwalt 1992:149). A few years later, Parsons chose Goddard as temporary chairman of her Southwest Society at its founding meeting in 1918 (Zumwalt 1992:270), and it was through the Society that she came to fund his work on Navajo, begun much earlier and later undertaken jointly with Reichard. Lamphere states that ‘Reichard and Goddard traveled as a couple’ and describes their fieldwork on ‘genealogies, data on Navajo clans, kin terms, Navajo names, and folklore’ (1993:164). Despite this partnership, they published nothing jointly prior to his death in 1928, though Reichard did edit a volume of Navajo texts published posthumously under Goddard’s name (Goddard 1933). In a brief listing of Reichard’s linguistic contributions to American Indian scholarship, Herbert Landar reported of this work that ‘Goddard’s Navajo transcriptions are primitive’ and ‘It was not until over a decade had passed that Reichard considered herself capable in Navajo transcription’ (Landar 1980:37). Reichard’s main problem was Navajo tone, which she eventually mastered, but from her early struggles at least one man who knew her in those years persisted for decades in calling her ‘tone deaf’ (personal communication from Pamela Amoss, January 1997). Reichard herself dated her linguistic work on Navajo, not to the experiences with Goddard, but rather to 1930 when she first went on her own to live with a Navajo family (Reichard 1951:v). Reichard’s study of Navajo began with learning the language while living with the family of the Navajo man Miguelito, a curer and sand painter, and Maria Antonia, the family matriarch. Their married daughter Marie Curley was a key figure in Reichard’s successful access to Navajo life: ‘[She] was my 126

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dependable mentor and guide…who taught me to weave and served as a buffer when I most needed it. She led me through my baby steps in Navaho…she told me “how to say so and so” [and…] corrected [my] mistakes’ (Reichard 1951:vi). Reichard’s first publication drawing on her experiences with this family was neither a dry bit of anthropological scholarship nor a careful linguistic account of grammar. Rather, she began with Spider Woman: A Story of Navajo Weavers and Chanters (Reichard 1934) where ‘[i]n a disarmingly straightforward and lively style, [she] interwove into analyses of Navajo society her own experiences with the daily pleasures, problems, and practicalities of family events…’ (Leacock 1988:306). Next came Navajo Shepherd and Weaver, dedicated to the memory of Maria Antonia (Reichard 1936), and then, not unlike Helen Hunt Jackson in Ramona and Elsie Clews Parsons in American Indian Life, Reichard turned to fiction, combining incidents and details drawn from her fieldwork with imagined characters and episodes to produce Dezba, Woman of the Desert (Reichard 1939a). In the same year, she published the nonfiction Navajo Medicine Man: Sandpaintings and Legends of Miguelito (Reichard 1939b). Lamphere describes Reichard’s weaving accounts as ‘three important books… each experimenting with a different type of description’ (1993:166). The term ‘experimenting’ here should not be taken as uncertainty on Reichard’s part. In each volume she was following a well-established genre, and in the case of Dezba she gives us a book-length account of exactly the kind of fictionalized, ethnographic studies produced in briefer form by so many leading anthropologists for Parsons’s American Indian Life more than a decade and a half previously. In letters to Parsons, Reichard discussed some of the tensions between popular and professional publishing. She had planned a single book on weaving but encountered problems over the rights claimed by Columbia University to portions of the material (since Columbia had sponsored some of her fieldwork, as had the Southwest Society). So the original book became ‘twins,’ with Macmillan publishing Spider Woman, ‘the bedtime story part’ (GAR to ECP 20 January 1933[?]). This Reichard dedicated ‘To The Southwest Society whose greatest gift is understanding’ (Reichard 1934:[v]). She affectionately called the work Parsons’s ‘godchild,’ acknowledging that ‘not an anthropologist has read the book except yourself and you had it more or less slung in your teeth!’ (GAR to ECP 14 March 1935). The second, more technical volume, Navajo Shepherd and Weaver, was ‘turned down by a number of commercial publishers,’ but it was not technical enough for Leslie Spier (1893–1961), editor of the American Anthropologist (GAR to ECP 26 August 1935). Spier reserved the Memoir series of his journal for ‘strictly technical papers’ and wrote to Reichard that ‘the book ought to appeal widely for use in classes in textiles, to the public interested in the Southwest, and to anthropologists for its detail on the Navajo,’ all of which ‘militates against it as a Memoir’ (Spier to GAR 22 August 1935 ECPP). Reichard commented to Parsons: ‘I realize it is alarming to contemplate an anthropologist opening a Memoir and finding it interesting! I think I could assure Leslie that they 127

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would not because nothing could get most of them interested in a technical process’ (GAR to ECP 26 August 1935). The next year, with Parsons’s advice, the book was printed by J.J.Augustin with support from Columbia. The material for these ethnographic books was gathered by Reichard during four summer stays with Miguelito and Maria Antonia’s family from 1930 through 1933. She had sought help from Father Berard in finding ‘a good family with interpreter…to live with’ that first summer, but when his response mentioned ‘a nice house with curtains, easy armchair, etc.’ she decided that ‘except for linguistic help I can count him out’ (GAR to ECP 24 February [1930]) and turned to Roman Hubbell, an established trader in Ganado, Arizona. He ‘knew just the family’ and helped her make the arrangements with Miguelito that continued over many years. She described the setting to Parsons, who funded this summer through the Southwest Society: they had a storage house, bran [GAR’s spelling] new and unbuggy— but somehow I never think of bugs now!—which is built just like a hogan only it is dug out and has no smokehole. It is much better protection from wind and rain (if any) than a shade could be. There is lots of wind and papers do fly around. So I have all my things in this house which is only 6 mi. from Hubbell’s. (GAR to ECP 6 July 1930) What pleased Reichard most about her Navajo household was that the daughter Marie and her husband both spoke English, and thus could interpret for her, while the rest of the family spoke only Navajo, thereby providing her with constant exposure and opportunities to learn and use the language. Although she spent many hours weaving each day, the rest were devoted to working on Navajo: I have never been so intrigued by a job as by this one, for after all gathering genealogies [on her earlier trips with Goddard] was a bore, second to none I know of except recording texts! The weaving is a foil for the language study. …There are times when the language has me stopped. At such times I go to Hubbells’[,] stay over night, get mail, food, etc. and start in fresh and early the next morning… I love the language but have to learn it blindly. None of Sapir’s stuff is available. I stopped in Chicago a mere half day and his help was out of all proportion to the time spent, but after all Nav. is a hell of a language what with length, pitch accent, verbs with a dozen principal parts…and all the rest. The FF [Franciscan Fathers’] vocabulary is very helpful but the grammar is nil. So I collect necessary phrases and learn them, even use them, and weeks after it dawns on me what they mean analytically. Well, perhaps that is the way to learn a language properly. (GAR to ECP 6 July 1930) Even in her ethnographic works, Reichard’s primary commitment to a linguistic approach comes through clearly. Lamphere comments that ‘Reichard’s 128

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texts contrast in important ways with classic ethnographic writing’ such as Margaret Mead’s Coming of Age in Samoa (1928) where the ‘unified voice…of the ethnographer represent[s] beliefs, practices, and behaviors’ (Lamphere 1993:168). Reichard’s Spider Woman and Dezba, on the other hand, both present a ‘dialogic text’ (pp. 168, 178). Lamphere does not explain this crucial difference between these two anthropologists’ writings. That Reichard gives separate voices to her subjects and makes use of conversations in addition to descriptions can be attributed directly to the fact that, from her earliest fieldwork with Wiyot, she was interested in language and its variations among people, settings, and situations. Deeply immersed in Navajo life and attuned to language as ‘a living, cultural phenomenon,’ she was able to both recall and create authentic dialogue. Reichard was a linguist. This grounding in actual experience comes through consistently in Reichard’s more overt linguistic studies. In Navaho Grammar, she writes of trying for several years to learn the language ‘by a practical application of available sources, or of papers proposed for immediate publication’ (Reichard 1951:1). The papers were those of Sapir, whom she consulted on several occasions at the University of Chicago. But linguistic analysis is an unsatisfactory path to language acquisition, as Reichard recognized: At the same time I was seeking a basic pattern for the language, I was trying to speak it. As time went on, I realized, too slowly, that the structural pattern I was struggling with did not have a practical application, that is, the forms were too theoretical to be understood by the Navaho. This unsatisfactory result was not due to mispronunciation …The forms simply did not fit the formulas given. (Reichard 1951:1) Much earlier, when she first turned her attention to the Navajo language, she had observed in letters to Boas that ‘one has to get a feel for’ the forms as they are used, and for this ‘Sapir is of no use at all’ (GAR to FB 2 July 1933 FBC). The ‘grammatical outline [of Navajo] and an extensive Navajo stemlist’ that Sapir had made available to her during the years between 1930 and the summer of 1934 (Reichard & Bitanny 1940:1), and to which she was referring in her letter, contained no information about usage and little on the complexities of meaning, both of which were—for Reichard—critical to any understanding of a language. Reichard noted that such cultural objects as Navajo rugs, the belief systems and ceremonies of Navajo religion, and the Navajo language were all ‘parallel’ and could not be ‘satisfactorily’ considered separately (GAR to FB 2 July 1933 FBC). She had become a linguist through her work with Wiyot and Coeur d’Alene, but she was also an anthropologist, and she continued both kinds of research and publication to the end of her life. It was Reichard’s intimate knowledge of Navajo language and of Navajo culture that led her to question ‘the Sapir school in accepting as readily as they 129

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do the theory of alternants, the principle that several forms are interchangeable in meaning’ (Reichard 1951:6). For some of the reasons discussed below, as she usually did when attacking ‘the Sapir school,’ she referred solely to the work of just one of Sapir’s students, Harry Hoijer (1904–1976). Hoijer’s University of Chicago dissertation on the Native American language Tonkawa had been published in the same volume of Boas’s Handbook as Reichard’s study of Coeur d’Alene. It was not Hoijer’s Tonkawa work that troubled Reichard, however, but his 1945 Navaho Phonology and, on different grounds, his review of her own The Story of the Navajo Hail Chant, to which we return later. Reichard noted that the claim of the purported interchangeability of forms made by some linguists ‘[o]ften…has proved an evasion… It is true there are some alternants but, like all overlapping, there are limitations which must be discovered’ (Reichard 1951:6). Variation, in other words, is normally conditioned by factors that can be determined through detailed analysis and close consideration of the language in use in its living, cultural context. Forms that on first encounter seem to be merely alternants turn out upon closer analysis to be distinct. Context, emphasis, and a speaker’s intent all must be examined: …Navaho has such a rich vocabulary capable of expressing the subtlest nuance. One of the greatest difficulties in translating is the fact that the informant gives in rapid succession three or four forms for a word and says ‘they all mean the same.’ This is of course only roughly true. It means that several viewpoints may be taken and that each of the words expresses one of them. If however the words are found in context there are many situations in which only one of the group offered could be properly used…grill, grate: biká·’ ’at?e·sí something-on-which-roasting-takes-place; bik’i ’et?e·sí something-over-which-roasting-takes-place… The first word considers the grill itself and the emphasis is on the meat or food placed on it; the second describes the grate with reference to the fire. (Reichard 1945b:166) Reichard was critical of those who did not delve so deeply into meaning. She took Hoijer to task for an analysis that appeared in Navaho Phonology (Hoijer 1945a:36), observing his failure to note distinctions in meaning and use, as well as a rule of word formation, among several words concerning excrement (see Figure 18.1). Well before her Navaho Grammar, Reichard’s understanding of the nature of variation had led to Sandpaintings of the Navajo Shooting Chant (Newcomb & Reichard 1937), the ‘first book to look…at the variations in sandpaintings during the course of a ceremony,’ where she was able to correlate the different sandpaintings with different portions of the chant myth (Lamphere 1993:173). As with her use of dialogue in Spider Woman and Dezba, we have here an instance in which her linguistic perceptions interact with her anthropological work. The important principles of variation that Reichard observed are difficult to discover through brief contacts with informants, in environments distant from 130

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…Hoijer ascribes to alternants, without indicating change of function, the forms tca?·’ “excrement” and bitca·n “his excrement” neglecting to mention bitca?·’ “his excrement.” One explanation of these two forms lies in meaning and usage: tc?.’ “excrement” (possessive bitca?.’) is an inelegant “household” word, but bitca·n “its manure, ordure” may be used as a polite form. And not only is there a difference in usage, but there is also a rule that an unpossessed noun with form CV? has a possessive of form -CV·n to signify that it is not a mere possession, but a possessed part in relation to a whole… There is therefore a phonetic, morphological and semantic differentation.

Figure 18.1 From the Introduction to Navaho Grammar, by Gladys Amanda Reichard (Reichard 1951:6).

normal usage situations, in a search for phonological patterns that cares little for cultural context, or when using another person’s field notes. In Navaho Phonology ‘Most of the material…was collected by the late Edward Sapir’ (Hoijer 1945a: 5), although Hoijer did obtain additional data during the summer of 1941 while teaching in a field school at the University of New Mexico (p. 5). Whatever the reason behind Hoijer’s failure to detect the ‘limitations which must be discovered’ in this particular case, however, it is not an error that Reichard could have made, for she was always concerned with language as a complex and complete whole. She steadfastly refused to isolate any one part of a language from others: ‘Not etymology, semantics, phonetics, phonemics, or morphology alone, but all in their fascinating intricate association’ (Reichard 1951:11). This may well have been her greatest strength, but judged according to the standards demanded at the time by American structural linguists and their insistence on a methodological ‘separation of levels,’ it was seen as her greatest weakness.

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In the summer of 1934, with funding from the Department of the Interior Bureau of Indian Affairs, Gladys Reichard conducted a Hogan School at Ganado, Arizona. Named after an earth-and-timber Navajo structure, the purpose of this school was to bring literacy in the Navajo language to adult interpreters.1 In February Reichard had visited the new Commissioner of Indian Affairs John Collier (1884–1968) and reported to Parsons: One thing they want to do is to have the Navs write Navajo. I went to Washington to tell them in words of one syllable that the Government already had in its hands the means of recording Indian languages and had the symbols on its printing presses [at the Bureau of Ethnology]; they did not know this… I saved the Navajo from a fourth epidemic of bad orthography. I am going to simplify Sapir’s system which at its worse is not now very complicated… I am to spend three solid months on Navajo at the Government’s expense and am to teach at least twelve Navs how to write it. They will record for me and I will get texts about everyday affairs, and they will be able to teach others how to write… I have always thot [GAR’s spelling] I should like to run a school that had no administration or equipment and stressed teaching so this will be a chance to try. (GAR to ECP 25 February 1934) Here was Reichard’s first opportunity actually to analyze the Navajo language, not merely to learn to speak it, as she had been doing during her summers with Maria Antonia and Miguelito’s family. The Hogan School was set up close to their home. Reichard was appointed for three months, from 1 June through 31 August, at a salary of $325 per month (Memorandum of the ‘General Plan’ for ‘Dr. Gladys A.Reichard’s project for a summer school to teach Navajo to adult Navajos’ 28 March 1934 GARC). On 22 June she reported to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs: I have been on the job for three weeks now and think it time I sent you an informal report… I have covered some 1500 miles of territory 132

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and start out for the western part of the Navajo Reservation today to make my final recruiting trip. Everywhere I have encountered the greatest interest on the part of Indians and Whites alike on behalf of my project. I still do not think I am too optimistic in my expectations. The Navajo are the nicest people in the world to work with. For years they have felt the need to write their language… The camp is to be of a very informal sort and I feel that the camp part of the program appeals most strongly to the Navajo. I have solved the woman question also because I am to have several sets of mates, man and wife who will make their own camp. (GAR to Dr. Ryan 22 June 1934 GARC). Some eighteen students in all worked together at the Hogan School to determine the vocabulary and pronunciation that should be written and to ‘thresh out their differences together’ (Reichard 1945b:158). In this way, Reichard was introduced to the variations of Navajo spoken among the people, for the Hogan School students came from many regions and clans, ranged in age from 10 to 50, and had participated in white education and literacy in English to differing extents, some being barely acquainted with the system while one young man was already a sophomore at the University of New Mexico (GAR to FB 17 July 1934 FBC). Looking back on the experience a decade later, Reichard stressed its value and foreshadowed some of the difficulties her coming descriptions of the language would encounter: My primary work (which had among its objectives the linguistic analysis of religious materials) would have shown the diversity of speech, as would the [oral] texts [that she collected], but it would never have brought out the variation which contrasts the same forms when placed under scrutiny at the same time. It would always be subject to the doubt that authority for accuracy was accredited to an individual or that the recording was faulty. (Reichard 1945b:158) Always honoring the diversity that she found among Navajo speakers, years later Reichard returned to the topic raised so early at the Hogan School in an article titled ‘Linguistic Diversity among the Navaho Indians’ (Reichard 1945b). Characteristically, she related the high tolerance for linguistic diversity within the Navajo community to other cultural values, ‘the habit of ranging widely [throughout Navajo territory] and of respecting individualism, the one being the reason that variations are found widely interspersed among the whole population, the other explaining why they do not die out’ (p. 167). Reichard’s immediate linguistic tasks at the Hogan School were to test an orthography and to obtain some degree of agreement among the Navajo participants on spelling and lexical choices. Although she had come to the 133

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summer with a transcription system already prepared, its use to represent the forms of Navajo was in fact adjudicated by the native participants. As she told Boas, ‘the Navajo and even some Whites go around saying “How would you spell that?” And I answer, “How do you think?”’ (GAR to FB 29 July 1934 FBC). To Parsons she described how the students addressed their differences: ‘they may argue for 3 hr. about one word…quiet talk and laughter and razzing and at the end of the 3 hr. each writes his word the way he says it!’ (GAR to ECP 9 September 1934). She was delighted with the school and with the progress of its pupils: ‘Never have I had such satisfactory students’ (ibid.). From their experiences at the Hogan School, the students produced a Navajo newspaper (see Figure 19.1 on pages 136–7). Reichard wrote to Boas: ‘The cover was stencilled with the head of a darning needle… I cut the typed stencils but otherwise the work was all done by the students’ (GAR to FB 29 July 1934 FBC). In an earlier letter, she had described the scene that appears on the cover: ‘A goat looks in the door. A student looks up and says “Welcome”’ (GAR to FB 17 July 1934 FBC). The principle of active participation and decision making by native speakers of the language was, as Lamphere states, ‘an early version of Navajo bilingual, bicultural education of the kind that only began to flourish in the 1970s with the founding of several community-controlled schools that specialized in Navajo literacy’ (1993:171). In the interim, it seemed as though everyone but the Navajo themselves took on the creation of yet another transcription system, and, for the Navajo people, writing in their own language came to be associated with such alien organizations and individuals as the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Catholic and Protestant missionaries, white-run schools, and anthropologists and linguists studying Navajo language and culture as objects of scientific curiosity (McLaughlin 1992:9). Reichard herself quickly ran afoul of some of these interests, and especially of Edward Sapir and his associate Berard Haile, who had been working with Navajo through the Roman Catholic mission at St. Michaels, Arizona, since his arrival there in the year 1900. Father Berard had co-authored the Franciscan Fathers’ 1910 Ethnologic Dictionary of the language and then written his own Manual of Navajo Grammar in 1926 (Lyon 1989:150). He provided assistance when Sapir went to co-conduct the first summer session of the Laboratory of Anthropology in 1929, and then, with funding from Elsie Clews Parsons, he went to Chicago to work with Sapir on Navajo (Darnell 1990:242). The two men continued to correspond and to plan cooperative work on Navajo materials, but despite Darnell’s assessment that this was ‘the longest and most productive collaboration of his [Sapir’s] scientific career’ (p. 260), they published nothing at all jointly. Sapir, in fact, published very little on the Navajo language (see the bibliography in Krauss 1986). The major studies that bear his name (Sapir 1942, Sapir & Hoijer 1967) appeared posthumously, produced by Harry Hoijer, his literary executor for Navajo materials. During the thirteen years following his first work with a Navajo informant in 1926, Sapir produced 134

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only four scholarly articles with any connection at all to Navajo language: a three-page note on ‘Two Navaho Puns’ (Sapir 1932); ‘A Navaho Sand Painting Blanket’ with a few Navajo words (Sapir 1935); a ‘linguistic analysis of four Navaho words having cultural connotations’ that supported Sapir’s hypothesis ‘of the northern origin of the Navaho and Apache’ (Sapir 1936:234); and an account of glottalized continuants in the southern Athabaskan Navajo and two Wakashan languages of the Northwest, Nootka and Kwakiutl (Sapir 1938) .2 Now it should be recalled that Reichard had first encountered Navajo on her 1923 trip with Goddard. She returned in 1924 and 1925, and in 1928 published a study of Navajo genealogy and social life based on her fieldwork (Reichard 1928). She edited a volume of Goddard’s Navajo texts (Goddard 1933). By the time she was to conduct the Hogan School, she had lived with a Navajo family for three additional summers in the early 1930s and, according to Lamphere (1993:170– 171), had become fluent in the Navajo language. Reichard sent a copy of the transcription system she planned to use at the Hogan School to Haile and to Sapir. She must have been at least annoyed, perhaps even justifiably incensed, at Sapir’s patronizing reply. He, who had been in Navajo territory just once for a few weeks in the summer of 1929, and who did not speak Navajo (though he played the role of Navajo informant for his classes), not only offered recommendations regarding transcription but also gave her advice on working with speakers of the language: In matters of this kind one must always think from the standpoint of the native speaker. There are quite a few things that may seem simple or advisable to the outsider accustomed to another type of phonetic system, that are far from easy or self-evident to the natives, and, on the other hand, distinctions which you and I might be inclined to think necessary on general principles, would not always strike the native in that light. (Letter from Sapir to Reichard dated 30 April 1934, quoted in Lockard 1995:25–26) Haile’s response to her efforts at collegiality were apparently no better. In a study of Reichard’s Navajo work, William Lyon drew on letters from Haile to Sapir following a courtesy call Reichard had made in early summer 1934. Lyon concluded: ‘As far as Haile was concerned, she did not seek enough of his advice on the Hogan School’ (Lyon 1989:152). Lyon described Sapir’s efforts ‘to forestall the Hogan School’ and quoted Sapir’s view that Reichard’s ambitions about the project were ‘inordinate’ (p. 152). The following year there was no more funding for Reichard, but Haile received Bureau of Indian Affairs support for an Interpreters’ Institute that he conducted at Fort Wingate (Lockard 1995: 26–27). Neither Reichard’s system for transcription of the Navajo language nor a different one created by Haile and Sapir succeeded as a writing system. Robert W.Young, who began work on the matter in 1937 as a graduate student at the 135

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Figure 19.1 Cover and first page of newspaper White Sands News from the Hogan School conducted by Gladys Reichard in Summer 1934. Enclosed by Reichard in a letter to Franz Boas, 29 July 1934. From the Professional Correspondence of Franz Boas, American Philosophical Society Library.

University of New Mexico, described the many issues, factors, and alterations that occurred along the path of development of the orthography that finally emerged over the decades following Reichard’s Hogan School (Young 1977). By 1934, ‘Navajo had been written by ethnologists, linguists, and missionaries 136

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Figure 19.1

Continued

for a number of years in a wide variety of orthographic systems for academic and religious purposes’ (Young 1977:460), and that continued to be the case. Reichard needed a system for her school, one that could be used to record by dictation the texts and chants of Navajo religion that became her primary cultural interest after the early studies of weaving. The Franciscan Fathers had their own system, used for recording Navajo religious ceremonies and for the teaching materials they prepared for the instruction of young missionaries who would work with the Navajo people. Sapir wanted a system that would reflect the principles of phonemic theory, e.g., a system that would ‘provide a unit 137

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symbol for each phoneme, i.e., for each psychologically unitary sound, even though such a phoneme can be analyzed into two or more sounds from the strictly phonetic standpoint’ (Herzog et al. 1934:629). All three anticipated training Navajo speakers to use their system to record texts as ethnographic or linguistic documents for later analysis by (white) academic specialists. The United States government had another purpose entirely. Under President Franklin D.Roosevelt’s New Deal policies, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and its new Commissioner John Collier, the Navajo language—indeed, all Native American languages—were no longer to be forcefully suppressed but rather now were to be encouraged and ‘enhanced’ through literacy (Collier 1963). The goals were a practical orthography that could record the distinctive units of Navajo phonology, would be acceptable to Navajo people already literate in English, and that could be written on an ordinary American typewriter. Young, working with Navajo William Morgan and John P.Harrington (1884–1961), a linguist with the Bureau of American Ethnology, produced the new Navajo alphabet, drawing on all of the systems previously in use. The various Protestant missionary groups eventually abandoned their separate systems in favor of the new government orthography, but the ‘Franciscan Fathers and individual linguists retained their own systems of writing for scientific purposes’ (Young 1977:467). Reichard continued to use her own system, a slightly modified version of the transcriptions Sapir himself had used prior to late 1934. At that time, he published a set of principles for a revised orthography developed in order to incorporate certain aspects of phonemic theory, in particular ‘unit symbols for unit phonemes’ (Herzog et al. 1934:629). Since neither of them published much on Navajo language during Sapir’s lifetime, the two avoided direct public conflict over this issue. But following Sapir’s death in 1939, his former student and literary executor for Navajo materials Harry Hoijer began to publish texts and analyses of the language using Sapir’s notebooks and field records. And Reichard, too, started to publish on Navajo language. Conflict was inevitable. In addition to issues of linguistic theory, there was the variation so clearly discerned by Reichard at her Hogan School and now also the matter of which transcription system best represented the language. Further exacerbating an already tense situation were stresses arising from various personal and professional relationships that lay only slightly below the surface of the academic debates.

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Gladys Reichard’s insistent position that a human language is ‘a living, cultural phenomenon,’ with complex interactions across such structural components as phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics, and variations of form and usage across speakers, styles, and situations set her apart from many of the linguists of her time. Throughout her career she was well aware of the differences between her own views and interests and those of other researchers, in particular Edward Sapir and, later, his students, and she employed a variety of strategies to deal with the attendant controversies. From the very beginning, while she was still a Columbia University graduate student, Reichard was engaged with volatile issues and material, and her linguistic studies challenged the work of Sapir. Her Research Fellowship at the University of California in 1922–1923, when she worked on the Wiyot language for her dissertation, was arranged by Boas in the context of an intense, sometimes bitter dispute between Sapir and Truman Michelson over the question of whether Wiyot and its northern California neighboring language Yurok were related ancestrally to the Algonquian family of languages, 1 otherwise found east of the Rocky Mountains, from the Great Plains to the Atlantic Coast (see Teeter 1973 for an overview of this family). The dispute itself was recalled in a 1958 article by Mary Haas, titled, optimistically, ‘Algonkian-Ritwan: The End of a Controversy’ (see also Haas 1966). In 1913, Kroeber and Roland B.Dixon (1875–1934), an anthropologist at Harvard who had studied northern California languages, proposed Ritwan as a cover term relating Wiyot and Yurok (Dixon & Kroeber 1913). Simultaneously Sapir published an article arguing for a genetic relationship between these two languages and the Algonquian family (Sapir 1913). Both suggestions were based on what Haas characterizes as ‘scanty’ material, gathered a decade before by Kroeber. Sapir’s postulated relationship was ‘denied with considerable vehemence in a paper published in 1914’ by Michelson, an Algonquian specialist (Haas 1958:159). Several exchanges of views were published in the American Anthropologist, and then the controversy died down. However, Kroeber, although convinced by Sapir’s analysis, acknowledged that there was not ‘sufficient information’ on the Wiyot 139

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language (in a 1914 letter to Michelson, quoted by Golla 1984:154), and the stage was set for Reichard’s doctoral work eight years later. Reichard’s material on Wiyot could have been crucially relevant to the SapirMichelson debate, and Sapir followed her progress in his correspondence with Kroeber (Golla 1984:345, 350, 352), but none of the parties made any public reference to her dissertation after it was published. Before it appeared, Reichard had shared her findings with both Michelson and Sapir and reported in a letter to Boas: ‘Sapir was here [in New York] week before last and went over my paper with me, gave me some helpful suggestions. It is very amusing to me to hear their remarks. Michelson: “Absolutely un-Algonkin!” Sapir: “I don’t see how anyone can look at this and say it is not Algonkin”’ (19June 1923 FBC). In Wiyot Grammar and Texts, as noted earlier, Reichard herself deferred to Michelson, although Haas implied that, by including Wiyot material that explicitly paralleled data from Fox (an Algonquian language found now in Iowa, Kansas, and Wisconsin), Reichard may have been more aligned with Sapir’s position than she had openly acknowledged (Haas 1958:159). On the other hand, Darnell claimed that ‘In 1924, she [Reichard] attacked Sapir’s classificatory work on Algonkian—Ritwan…incensed at Sapir’s expectation that his judgment be accepted without evidence on controversial matters’ (Darnell 1990:253). In either case, Reichard was interested in the claims Sapir had made and, from letters she wrote in 1923 and 1924 to Sapir and to Boas, it is clear that she attempted to become engaged in the debate. From California she had written to Sapir requesting a fresh offprint of his 1913 article; she had so marked up Kroeber’s copy that she was embarrassed to return it (GAR to ES 19 February 1923 ESC). When her fieldwork was completed and she was fully involved in her analysis, she sent Sapir data on first and second person possessive forms in Wiyot, correcting earlier work by Kroeber that Sapir had cited, and suggesting a comparison Sapir might consider ‘if [the forms are] comparable to your Algonkin at all’ (GAR to ES 2 July 1923 ESC). Then in March 1924, Reichard mailed to Sapir ‘a copy of my paper on the Algonkin question’ which, she wrote, ‘is to be published in the International Journal of American Linguistics’ (GAR to ES 18 March 1924 ESC). Both Reichard’s paper, fifty seven pages long (Reichard 1924), and Sapir’s comments in marginal notes are highly charged. 2 Reichard, for example, challenged Sapir’s data on Wiyot, both in accuracy and in scope, argued that he gave insufficient weight to borrowing between Wiyot and Yurok, and suggested that Wiyot had as many, if not more, linguistic characteristics in common with other language families as it did with Algonquian. Sapir in turn criticized her analysis as ‘“unintuitive,”’ ‘pettifogging,’ and ‘belonging to the Library Bureau filing department of science.’ Reichard’s next letter (see Figure 20.1) reveals the growing tension between them. Reichard’s use of the word ‘spirit’ referred to one of Sapir’s marginal notes. Concluding the section of her paper where she compared verb and adjective stems from Wiyot with those of various Algonquian languages, Reichard had 140

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Figure 20.1 Letter from Gladys A.Reichard to Edward Sapir, 27 March 1924. Edward Sapir’s Correspondence, Canadian Museum of Civilization.

written: ‘Besides Sapir’s previous painstaking work, and we do not know how many stems he compared, Dr. Michelson and I have compared 1100 Wiyot stems with over 3000 Algonkin ones (Cree, Ojibwa, Sauk, Fox, and Shawnee)’ (Reichard 1924: 37). To this Sapir responded in the margin: ‘I am sure with another spirit you could have found a great many Wiyot-Alg cognates besides those I give.’ He probably intended ‘spirit’ to refer to Michelson, reflecting back to their old debate. It was his habit at the time to use the word to refer to people 141

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(e.g., he described Alice Vanderbilt Morris and Frederick Cottrell as ‘the active spirits in the International Language Association’ in a letter to Leonard Bloomfield, 28 March 1925 ESC). This was not how Reichard understood the word. Despite her expressed belief that this study was to appear in IJAL, Reichard’s paper on Wiyot and comparative Algonquian was never published. It may not be irrelevant that Sapir at the time was a member of the editorial board. Although the dispute over the relationship of Wiyot and Yurok to the Algonquian languages remained unresolved during Reichard’s lifetime, Sapir’s argument in favor of a genetic relationship ‘has subsequently been demonstrated to the satisfaction of all’ (Campbell 1997:152). When Kroeber noted in his March 1924 letter to Sapir, quoted earlier, that Reichard was too much influenced by her mentor Boas, he was surely concerned with her views on historical comparative work. Reichard, following Boas, maintained a fundamental suspicion of Sapir’s often radical attribution of similarities to genetic relationship rather than to the more conservative borrowing, or ‘diffusion’ in Boas’s terms. In any case, this was the issue that first came to divide Reichard and Sapir, with effects that lasted throughout her career. Whatever ambivalence Reichard may have had on the genetic classification of Wiyot, and however discouraged she may have become when her paper was not published, she clearly shared Boas’s more general antipathy for the comparative linguistics that seeks to determine familial relationships and to reconstruct the pre-history of Native American languages. Her reluctance publicly to pursue further the comparative Algonquian controversy may have been due in part to her status as a graduate student at the time, but even later in her mature years she did not engage actively in genetic classification or comparative reconstruction. Like her modernist friend Elsie Clews Parsons, Reichard was not much interested in looking back to the past. She did, however, routinely and expressly provide forms in her grammars that might be useful in the comparative work of others, and her articles commonly referred to ‘points important not only in the analysis of this language [in this case, Navajo] but significant in establishing genetic relationships as well’ (Reichard 1948:15). Not until the end of her life did Reichard turn overtly to comparative work, and even then it was more synchronic tabulation than diachronic investigation. A six-part article, edited by Florence M. Voegelin (1927–1989) and authorized by Reichard’s literary executor Nathalie Woodbury (IJAL 26:1.61 [1960]), was published posthumously in the International Journal of American Linguistics. Here Reichard compared five Salish languages: Coeur d’Alene, Chehalis, Tillamook, Kalispel, and Snoqualmie-Duwamish (Reichard 1958–1960). This was a mature Reichard, still careful about detail and reluctant to move too quickly to generalization: ‘The suggestions made here should be…tested and retested’ (Reichard 1958–1960 Part I: 293). Although drawing on Boas’s unpublished notes for Chehalis, as well as on some material he had published in 1934, she 142

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stated clearly that ‘This paper…departs markedly from some of Boas’ conclusions’ (p. 295). The independence that Kroeber had sought in Reichard in 1924 is apparent. By the time she conducted this comparative work Reichard had finally achieved a full professorship at Barnard (in 1951) and any hold that Boas had on her scholarship had diminished long before with his death in 1942. Little more ever came of Reichard’s work on Wiyot. She did not return to California and conducted no further studies on the language or on any of the Algonquian languages to which it is related. The Wiyot Grammar and Texts volume, thoroughly synchronic, was only occasionally cited, as in Haas’s 1958 article on the Ritwan-Algonkian controversy. It was eventually superseded by the work of Karl V.Teeter, first in his doctoral dissertation written under Haas’s direction, The Wiyot Language (Teeter 1964), more recently in the two volume Wiyot Handbook (Teeter & Nichols 1993). Teeter characterized Reichard’s study as ‘too inaccurate in transcription and unreliable in analysis for direct use’ (Teeter 1964:1). More recently, he expanded on the assessment: ‘She had a poor ear for phonetics, was the main problem— there are three separate phonemes in Wiyot: b (a fricative), m, and w, which she constantly confuses, and sadly, morphological analysis itself often depends on hearing these distinctions’ (personal communication 15 March 1996). Teeter’s concern about Reichard’s transcriptions presented him with a problem yet to be resolved, ‘how to list her notations in [his] own comprehensive Wiyot lexical database’ currently under construction (personal communication 16 March 1996). The issue of accuracy in transcription brings us back to the matter of variation. Reichard herself was well aware of potential difficulties with the sounds Teeter identified as particularly problematic. In her chapter on Wiyot phonetics, she wrote: The bilabials b, w, v, and m are often confused, especially the last two. This is due to the fact that v is very carelessly spoken by many of the Wiyot, particularly the younger English-speaking members of the tribe. They usually substitute m for this sound; but it is generally possible, with a little care, to differentiate between v, m, and w when talking with the older people who speak the language well. (Reichard 1925:9) And, referring to ‘individual differences of Wiyot speech,’ she acknowledged that ‘because of these variations…the chances for error are exceedingly great’ (p. 6). Teeter did not encounter [v] in his work on Wiyot and attributed it to a ‘mishearing’ by Reichard, perhaps of the voiced bilabial spirant that ‘in initial position…[is] in completely free variation’ with [m] (personal communication 24 August 1996). He wrote further that older speakers ‘have the same variations’ as younger, but he would have had no evidence for this among Wiyot speakers since virtually his only informant was in her eighties. 143

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Reichard obtained her data from eight Wiyot informants, mainly Jerry James, Birdie James, and Elsie Barto; basketry terms were given by Miranda Berry and her daughter Della Prince (Reichard 1925:4). Teeter was able to interview Birdie James on her deathbed in late Spring 1956 as he began his research, and then only Della Prince (d. 1962) remained. Mrs. Prince, at 80 years of age, was the last living speaker of Wiyot, and she ‘had not spoken her native language for twelve years’ when Teeter began to work with her (Teeter 1964:2). This raises serious questions about whether it was even possible for Teeter to encounter the full range of variation that might have existed when Wiyot was more widely spoken. As Kinkade and Mattina observe, ‘last speakers are more likely to have a more limited command of the language and all its nuances’ (1996:253). That Reichard would encounter variation in pronunciation across eight speakers in a language that was still in use, although severely endangered, is not unexpected. Similarly to be expected is the fact that Teeter’s necessary reliance on one primary informant resulted in ‘the recording and analysis of a single idiolect …providing us as consistent and self-contained a description as we have any reason to expect in regard to a language on the verge of extinction’ (Haas 1964: vii; emphasis added). When the two linguistic studies are compared, there are discrepancies between them. Which are due to variation among speakers, which to errors in transcriptions, is now for the most part impossible to determine. All we shall ever know of the Wiyot language is contained in a few early observations by Kroeber, in these two sometimes conflicting descriptions, and in tape recordings that Teeter made during sessions with Della Prince. Teeter, of course, vouches for his own work. Reichard surely would vouch for her own, but she died the year before he began his fieldwork. In support of her Wiyot transcriptions, we have her own discussion of variation in the volume itself and a few possibly relevant observations about this and other studies she conducted at the time. Scholars widely attest to her competence. Kroeber, the only linguist of the day with direct personal knowledge of Wiyot, was on hand to supervise Reichard’s work during her fellowship year at Berkeley. He wrote to Parsons that Reichard was ‘a most competent worker’ (ALK to ECP 30 September 1922 ECPP) and a few weeks later reported to Sapir that ‘Reichard has got some excellent texts of Wiyot and will get the language thoroughly cleared up’ (letter of 17 October 1922, in Golla 1984:405). Haas, who was familiar with Kroeber’s, Reichard’s, and Teeter’s work, had enough confidence in Reichard’s account of Wiyot to make use of her forms, as well as Teeter’s, in her article on the Algonkian-Ritwan controversy (Haas 1958). Haas also suggested that, had Michelson ‘reexamine[d] the problem after the Reichard material became available,’ which he apparently never did in any thorough manner, he would have become convinced of a remote relationship among the languages (1958: 159). There were questions about Reichard’s control of phonetic accuracy in her earliest work on Navajo (Landar 1980:37), largely because of Navajo’s distinctive use of tone. But for Coeur d’Alene, on which she worked most 144

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immediately following Wiyot, such questions arise to no greater extent than for any other linguist studying an undocumented language. M.Dale Kinkade, a leading Salish specialist, noted that although ‘Salishan languages are quite difficult phonologically…her [Reichard’s] transcriptions of Coeur d’Alene are reliable’ (personal communication 11 June 1997). In fact, Kinkade mentioned a number of Reichard’s contemporaries whose phonetic transcriptions ‘give only an approximation of how things should have been written’ and he concluded: ‘It’s too bad there weren’t more Reichards’ (ibid.). There is no substitute for phonetic accuracy in linguistic fieldwork, and the challenge Teeter made to Reichard’s Wiyot work is important even if it remains unanswerable. But it was not inadequate phonetics that led to his reexamination of the language. Haas explained in her Foreword to his dissertation: No modern grammatical description, of the type that was triggered by the development of phonemic theory in the 1930’s, was in existence for [Wiyot]… Wiyot had been accorded…a brief sketch by Kroeber [and]…also a more extensive (though still nonphonemic) treatment by Reichard… (Haas 1964:vi) …the developments of the 1930’s were so important for the recording and analysis of unwritten languages that recordings and descriptions prepared before (or without regard to) the development of phonemic theory can rarely be compared to those prepared after that time, for the simple reason that they exist on entirely different planes and are therefore noncommensurate… [Thus] an adequate description of Wiyot could be ensured only if Teeter started with an entirely clean slate, (p. vii) Teeter did not start with a clean slate. He consulted Reichard’s work and ‘utilized [it] whenever I could’ (personal communication 24 August 1996). The development of phonemic theory was widely perceived, during Reichard’s lifetime and thereafter, as the primary theoretical accomplishment of American linguistics in the 1930s, followed in importance by the related focus on the distribution of linguistic elements championed by Zellig Harris (1909–1992) beginning in the early 1940s (see, e.g., Voegelin & Harris 1952). Neither development held much attraction for those like Boas and Reichard who were as concerned with ethnology as they were with linguistic description. Boas maintained ‘complete familiarity with “phonemic” views, but he remained at least unreceptive (if not outright hostile) to the replacement of phonetic by phonemic transcriptions’ (Anderson 1985:206), and he ‘continued training students without benefit of the phonemic principle…in the anthropology department at Columbia’ (Voegelin & Harris 1952:325). Reichard’s graduate studies preceded the development of phonemic theory and she was never truly comfortable with the issues and arguments surrounding it. As she had done with comparative linguistics, reconstruction, 145

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and genetic relationships, Reichard acknowledged the widespread interest in phonemics. Especially with her Navajo studies, she tried to present her materials in helpful detail. ‘Significance of Aspiration in Navaho’ (Reichard 1948) opens with a capsule summary of the challenge to the linguist beginning work on an unknown language, not knowing which sounds are distinctive and yet eventually wanting to work ‘on a phonemic basis’ recording ‘only such sounds’ in transcriptions of forms and texts (p. 15). For Reichard, phonemics was primarily a question of transcription, and she was uninterested in and only modestly knowledgeable about the other issues involved. In fact, she was ideologically uncomfortable with the entire subject: ‘a major failing of the modern linguist is the overemphasis on phonetic—phonemic questions, an emphasis in many cases so exaggerated that one sometimes gets the idea that language is merely phonemics’ (Reichard 1951:5). A narrow focus on phonemics, reflected in a work such as Sapir’s student Harry Hoijer’s book Navaho Phonology (1945a), was in direct conflict with Reichard’s view of linguistics: The reports of the Sapir school indicate as a primary purpose the reconstruction of primitive Athabaskan; as another, the demonstration of the method of what has come to be called “structural analysis,” purposes which are largely theoretical. The interpretation of a particular language as a living, cultural phenomenon seems to be almost incidental. (Reichard 1951:4) Hoijer’s Navaho Phonology, based primarily on Sapir’s fieldnotes, conflicted in places in phonetic detail with Reichard’s own data (e.g., see Reichard 1948:17). Here is another instance where variations among speakers may have been the cause of discrepancies, for Sapir had collected his material from only a few Navajo speakers and had visited the field only once. In contrast, Reichard’s studies of Navajo traced back to the summer of 1923 when she first traveled to the reservation with Goddard, although she did not begin her pattern of living in the region during summer months and sabbaticals until 1930, a practice in which she engaged regularly for the rest of her life. By 1945, she had worked with ‘many informants—thirty five or more—from the various parts of the more than 25,000 square miles inhabited by the Navaho’ (Reichard 1945b:158). Drawing on data from all of these speakers, Reichard was steadfast in her attention to linguistic variation and dialect diversity and to what Uriel Weinreich (1926–1967) would later call ‘external dialectology’ as distinct from ‘structural dialectology’ (Weinreich 1954). Her 1945 article on linguistic diversity in Navajo remains of interest even today (Reichard 1945b). She celebrated variation and saw it as an inherent characteristic of living languages. This stood in marked contrast to the efforts of linguists who were developing the new American structuralism at the time. The fundamental difference in approach comes through clearly in a remark by George L.Trager in an editor’s note preceding a posthumously published article by Benjamin Lee Whorf (1897–1941) on his own eastern 146

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Massachusetts dialect: ‘We discussed some of the differences between our dialects in an attempt to reduce the whole to a single basic system’ (Trager 1943:21). Trager’s goal—to reduce dialect variation ‘to a single basic system’—appeared in various structuralist works of the 1940s. For example, Trager and Bernard Bloch concluded their study on ‘The Syllabic Phonemes of English’ with the remark that such phonemes in ‘all English dialects known to us…can be accommodated without forcing the general system here set up’ (1941:245). And Trager and Henry Lee Smith, Jr. made a similar claim in 1951 when they closed the introduction to their Outline of English Structure by claiming that ‘the analysis to be presented holds for as much of the system as any one idiolect includes, and for all the systems of all the patterns of idiolects—dialects—that we have observed. By extrapolation it is stated to be the analysis for the total pattern of all dialects’ (1957[1951]:9). In ‘Is a Structural Dialectology Possible?’ Weinreich tried to address this tension between heterogeneous speech patterns across a linguistic community and what he saw as ‘a fundamental requirement of structural description’—‘to insure that the material described is uniform’ (1954:389). But for the dialectologist Hans Kurath (1891–1992), responding to the position of Trager and his co-authors, no compromise was possible: ‘There is no such thing as a “total pattern” that can be imposed on all dialects of American English’ (Kurath 1957:120n.6). Kurath maintained that dialects had both ‘systematic features and sporadic unsystematic features’ and he labeled ‘spurious’ both the attempt to incorporate the latter into a system and the imposition of an overall pattern (ibid.). His concept of sporadic unsystematic features in a linguistic system flew in the face of deeply held findings dating back to the nineteenth century neogrammarians and was ignored by his contemporaries. The debate over how to incorporate dialect diversity into linguistic accounts of a language continued for years, with early work in generative phonology proposing distinct morphophonemic rules, sometimes applying in differing orders, to derive varying dialect forms from a single dictionary entry (e.g., Halle 1962, Keyser 1963, Falk 1965). The issue remains very much alive in modern sociolinguistics. Reichard did seek the general patterns of the Navajo language. Her Navaho Grammar did not appear until 1951, but she began publishing accounts of the language as early as 1940 with Agentive and Causative Elements in Navajo. This essentially semantic study was authored jointly with Adolph Bitanny, a Navajo interpreter whom she first met at the Hogan School in 1934 and who became not just one of her informants but, until the early 1940s when he joined the Army, a colleague in the analysis of the Navajo language (Reichard 1951:1–2). Reichard’s collegial collaboration with Bitanny was unusual for the time. Certainly it was not uncommon for Boas, Sapir, and their students to train a native speaker in transcription and then set him or her to work recording texts, but this practice imposed an academic system foreign to the language and the culture. Reichard, on the other hand, sought understanding of that culture’s 147

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own knowledge about and appreciation of the language, and, to this end, she cooperated with, rather than controlled, the speakers with whom she worked. Early evidence comes from the way in which she conducted the Hogan School. The approach also appeared early in her ethnological work, and the intimate access and insights that resulted are what made the weaving books so successful. Indeed, for her ethnological studies, this method was a triumph. Among linguists, however, it became the object of scorn. There is no mistaking Hoijer’s intent when, following a remark that ‘Reichard explicitly dissociates herself from “the modern linguist”,’ he said of her Navaho Grammar, ‘it is not without interest that Reichard ascribes “the foundation” of her work to Adolf Bitanny, one of her Navaho informants, who early became interested “in the analysis of Navaho and its relation to philosophy”’ (Hoijer 1953:79). It was an irony of the development of linguistic theory in America that the emphasis on phonemic analysis through distribution, on which Hoijer prided himself and on which he attacked Reichard, was soon to be challenged by the generative model that called into question the validity of the structuralist phoneme (e.g., Halle 1959) and that came to place a high value on native speaker insights and judgments, albeit the emphasis there began with the study of syntax, semantics delayed until the next decade. In Agentive and Causative Elements and in such later work as ‘The Character of the Navaho Verb Stem’ (Reichard 1949) and then the Navaho Grammar (1951), it is possible to see how very much Reichard’s approach differed from that of ‘the Sapir school,’ within which she included Fang-Kuei Li (1902–1987), Harry Hoijer, and, of course, Sapir himself (Reichard 1951:4). Reichard’s focus was nearly always on meaning, and she never forgot ethnology when presenting her linguistic studies: ‘The purpose of this paper is to indicate some of the essential stem meanings and to point out the contribution such an analysis may make to linguistics and ethnology’ (Reichard 1949:55). An example of her concern with meaning is given in Figure 20.2, excerpted from her description of Navajo verb stems of motion and action. As a result, Reichard took on some of the most complex and obscured aspects of language. The semantic patterns revealed through her analyses are rarely those consistent distributions often to be found in phonology or, for that matter, in the regular correspondences that serve as the very essence of the comparative method. Reichard sought to classify stems and affixes according to their meanings, to identify patterns of onomatopoeia and sound symbolism (see also Reichard et al. 1949, ‘Language and Synesthesia’), and to determine and describe the indigenous Navajo systems of classification and explanation for their language (see especially Reichard 1945b). In her paper on Navajo linguistic diversity, she began by reporting on the Navajo people’s conception of their own language: Since…the Navaho have such a strong regard for language, it is not a surprise to find that they combine their penchant for explanation with one of their outstanding cultural values. Aware as they are of language 148

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Figure 20.2 Excerpt from ‘The Character of the Navaho Verb Stem’, by Gladys A. Reichard (Reichard 1949:56–57). 149

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as an asset they analyze it and, finding that it differs from individual to individual, they use mythology to explain the differences they hear. (1945b:157) Given the diversity to be found among speakers, Reichard herself saw text and context as essential to the understanding of Navajo meaning. In one of her first publications to deal directly with the Navajo language, for example, Reichard presented not a linguistic analysis of phonology or morphology, but rather the complete text of the ceremonial ‘Hail Chant’ (Reichard 1944). Her brief analysis included anaphora, lexical meaning, and repetition. She pointed out that anaphora in Navajo goes far beyond the sentence unit; pronominal antecedents may extend back over stretches of text ‘as far as four pages’ in a transcribed chant (p. vii). She saw the meaning of some nouns as encompassing ‘the general or the particular, depending upon the context. Thus djic may mean the chanter’s bundle including the container and all its parts, the container alone, the parts contained as a whole, or one of the items kept in the bundle’ (p. ix). Repetition in chants can be monotonous to the non-Navajo listener and was sometimes omitted from transcriptions, but Reichard included all repetitions in a text because they showed which phrases were stressed by a particular chanter and thus conveyed the importance of those phrases to the listener (p. viii). For the then-new generation of American linguists, those educated in the 1930s, students of Sapir and Leonard Bloomfield, however, Reichard’s interests were widely seen as old-fashioned, unscientific, amateurish. Hoijer, in a review of her Navaho Grammar, barely disguised a sneer as he commented that ‘Reichard’s method, in contrast [to ‘modern’ linguistics], places a heavy emphasis on meaning as a major key to linguistic analysis’ and he attributed her specific ‘errors’ and more general failure ‘to isolate the essential structure of the Navaho verb’ to ‘her use of meaning as a primary guide to analysis’ (Hoijer 1953:79, 82). He concluded: ‘The result is a book that might have been acceptable in the pioneering days of American linguistics but is today wholly inadequate’ (p. 83). It is an instructive lesson in history that in the late 1960s Hoijer’s own most comprehensive study of Navajo (Sapir & Hoijer 1967) would be termed inadequate, offering ‘few new insights,’ neither ‘sophisticated’ nor ‘revealing,’ and ‘a disappointment’ —assessments in large part made on the basis of theoretical developments in linguistics with which he was not engaged (Stanley 1969). Hoijer’s published condemnation of Reichard’s linguistic work on Navajo goes back to an earlier review of a slim, mimeographed volume, The Story of the Navajo Hail Chant, typed by Reichard and published at her own expense. This was an oral text that Reichard had recorded by dictation in the winter of 1938 from the Navajo singer whose name is anglicized as Hastiin Klah (Reichard 1944). Reichard’s text (1944), Hoijer’s review (1945b), and Reichard’s response (1947b) reveal two people with different experiences and different goals. Reichard published the Hail Chant ‘primarily for ritual content to be used in conjunction with my contemplated monograph, Navajo Religion: 150

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A Study of Symbolism, but it is hoped that it may have some linguistic, especially semantic value’ (Reichard 1944:1). In other words, her goal was essentially ethnographic. Hoijer, to the contrary, reviewed the work as a linguistic text, focusing on ‘faults which seriously lessen the value of the monograph as a source of linguistic data’ (Hoijer 1945b:123). He devoted most of the review to challenging ‘the accuracy of her descriptions of Navaho phonemes’ and ‘obvious errors,’ ‘mistakes,’ and ‘typographical errors’ in ‘her Navaho phonetics’ (pp. 124, 125). Reichard took up these issues in her response. As we saw with her Wiyot work, variation among informants is one factor behind the discrepancies between her materials and those of her colleagues, but it is not the sole basis for disagreement. While admitting to three inaccurately reported forms pointed out by Hoijer, Reichard noted his failures to distinguish forms that have distinct meanings, as with ‘-ke·’ foot, hoof, moccasin, shoe and -ké·’ track, footprint’ (Reichard 1947b: 195). She was not intimidated by his challenges. On another case, she wrote: ‘This stem is so recorded because that is the way it was most commonly pronounced by the informant…and commonly in the vicinity of Nava, New Mexico, where he lived’ (p. 194). Hoijer had even gone so far as to correct Reichard’s transcription of Klah’s name, and to this she responded bluntly: ‘I have never heard tl?a· for this. The name of my informant was tl?a·h, so pronounced by all I heard use it’ (p. 194). The transcription difference for Klah’s name involved both the tone of the vowel (low versus rising) and the absence or presence of final [h]. Related to the latter is another serious disagreement between Reichard’s sources and those of Sapir. She began by citing Hoijer: ‘Elsewhere he writes [in Hoijer 1945a] that Sapir’s data contain the statement “my informants never objected to the substitution of h for x in prefinal syllables…” My own informants not only objected but objected strongly, to such substitution’ (Reichard 1947b:194). At issue here was the phonemic analysis of [h] and [x], specifically whether in this portion of their distribution the two sounds were in so-called ‘free variation.’ The debate on [h] and [x] between Reichard and Hoijer became chronic (see Hoijer 1945a, Hoijer 1945b, Reichard 1945b, Reichard 1947b, Reichard 1948, Reichard 1951, Hoijer 1953), with Reichard arguing not only that her informants differed in their usage from that reported by Hoijer and Sapir, but also —drawing on native speakers’ judgments regarding their own language—that ‘x [and]…h [are] each felt to be distinctive by the Navaho themselves’ (Reichard 1945b:159). Related both to the theoretical, phonemic analysis of [h] and [x] and to the development of a practical form of written Navajo was an extended controversy over the ‘correct’ spelling of the name of the language and the people. For decades, missionaries, government officials, and then academics used the letter j in the spelling Navajo, and this is the spelling that occurred in all of Reichard’s publications from the 1928 sociological study of Navajo clans through her 1944 Story of the Navajo Hail Chant. But ‘the Sapir school’ had proposed the spelling Navaho with h as a consequence of their phonemic analysis. In reviewing Reichard’s Hail Chant, Hoijer, although he claimed to 151

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‘know of no official system of transcribing Navaho,’ asked ‘why does Reichard persist in the antiquated… “Navajo” for the more recent and standardized…“Navaho”?’ (Hoijer 1945b: 124). He did refer to a note in the 1934 American Anthropologist (Herzog et al. 1934) as the published source of ‘the orthography used by Sapir and me… devised by Sapir and some of his students’ (Hoijer 1945b:124). The reference he cited, however, made no mention at all of any specifically Navajo orthographic matters, and drew its examples mostly from Nootka. Perhaps Hoijer had in mind the closing assertion of the note, made without example or rationale, flatly stating: ‘A post-vocalic aspiration, often written’, should be written h when it constitutes a true consonant of a given language’ (Herzog et al. 1934:631). In any case, by the very next issue of the International Journal of American Linguistics, Reichard herself was spelling Navajo with h (Reichard 1945b), although she later said, in her reply to Hoijer’s review, ‘I do not think it makes a bit of difference which way it is spelled’ (Reichard 1947b:196). For all the anxiety and animosity this seemingly small matter provoked, it was eventually settled by the Navajo people themselves in favor of the older spelling Reichard had persisted for so long in maintaining. Hoijer was not alone in challenging Reichard’s spelling of Navajo and her refusal to make use of the newer orthography. Clyde Kluckhohn raised the issue in a letter he wrote to her in 1943. He seemed to be answering an earlier letter from her: you alone of “scientific” workers among the Navaho adhere to the old orthography—thus adding to the confusion of our professional colleagues, to say nothing of the general public. I assure you that it wasn’t convenient for me to change [from the older orthography] either but it seemed to me that my personal preferences were unimportant compared to standardization—with its gains for communication. The same thing goes for the spelling “Navajo” —now my own “emotional” preference is also for the “j” —but when I discovered that [Washington] Matthews (after 1897), Sapir, Hill, and the overwhelmong [sic] majority of serious and scholarly students of the Navaho used “h” it seemed to me mildly immoral for me to stick to my own personal preference rather than conforming to dominant scientific usage. (CK to GAR 12 November 1943 GARC) Reichard drafted a reply to this letter but apparently did not send it, turning instead to Leland Wyman for advice on how to respond to these and other points Kluckhohn had raised, most dealing with anthropological issues (for discussion, see Lamphere 1993:175–176). But her frustration with this issue was expressed clearly in her draft: Try and win on either spelling—Navajo or Navaho! I concede to the editor or series. I don’t give a damn which is used and it looks as if other people do, so I do what they want if they know what it is. As for the 152

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phonemic system, you can’t win on that either… So why don’t we all just quit and go to the movies! (GAR 17 November 1943 GARC) For Reichard, questions of transcription, phonetics, and phonemic analysis, which dominated Hoijer’s Navajo work—and much other American linguistic work—at this time, were all quite secondary to the study of meaning in the Navajo language. In print, Reichard often allowed Hoijer to control the topic of discussion. She responded to his technical challenges to her Hail Chant book, wrote an article on the distribution of [h] and [x], and then devoted much of the opening material in her Navaho Grammar to the points on which she differed from his analyses. Nevertheless, and despite the appearance of priority that is given by a grammar placing phonetics and phonology in first position of presentation, Reichard was fundamentally a morphologist. All of her major linguistic work was directed toward the establishment of the morphemes of a language—in her terms, the stems, the roots, and the affixes, which for Navajo especially meant the prefixes. Reichard’s approach to morphology differed quite dramatically from that of many of her contemporaries. Whereas they focused on determining morphological elements through recurrences of form and meaning to be found in elicited utterances—the distributional analysis promoted by Zellig Harris— Reichard’s central concern was always with meaning and patterns of meaning. In this, she began by following Boas, for whom the ‘ideas expressed by grammatical processes’ constituted a foremost element in the grammatical essays appearing in his Handbook series (see Voegelin 1952). Although contributors of the last half dozen grammars published in Parts Three and Four were less than enthusiastic about this priority, ‘The faithful one is Gladys Reichard who gives us our final example of the separate essay on “ideas” (1938)’ (Voegelin 1952: 451). Reichard never abandoned her interest in meaning. She introduced her long, posthumously published comparison of Salish languages with the statement: ‘The point of view taken in this paper is that phonetic—phonemic matters are significant only if they are related to morphology, and that their relationship cannot be determined unless meaning is discovered in its relation to form, usage, and vocabulary’ (Reichard 1958–60, Part 1:295). Reichard saw her work on patterns as an elaboration of a concept earlier mentioned by Sapir (Reichard 1951:7n. 14). However, whereas his studies of meaning and its expression in European languages were funded by Alice Vanderbilt Morris and IALA and then published by the Linguistic Society of America (see Sapir 1930b, Sapir & Swadesh 1932; also Sapir 1944), Reichard’s most important studies of meaning and its expression in Navajo were published outside the linguistic mainstream and for a time were either ignored or attacked. Hoijer found her Navaho Grammar virtually incomprehensible: ‘In stressing meaning as a guide to her analysis, and neglecting basic structural facts, Reichard has failed to isolate the essential structure of the Navaho verb’ (Hoijer 1953:82). But a more recent assessment called the jointly authored 153

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Agentive and Causative Elements ‘significant’ and stressed the ‘very great importance in Navajo studies’ of Reichard’s Grammar as ‘the only serious systematic attempt in print [as of 1973] at describing the derivational prefix system of the verb for Navajo (or, for that matter, of any other Athapaskan language)’ (Krauss 1973:926). Just what Reichard meant by ‘pattern’ was never made clear in her work, but it seems that she was searching for some kind of underlying regularity in the morphological make-up of words. The example cited above, where she presented the Wiyot word ga’witiL and derived it from gawa-witiL, a ‘more complete form,’ showed an early instance of this type of analysis, more similar to modern morphophonemics than to the standard distributionally based phonology and morphology of her own day. She certainly seemed to be striving for generalizations, even beyond forms attested in a corpus, when she said of patterns, in general and in Navajo: one of the lessons pattern has to teach is that once it becomes established, in language as in other cultural phenomena, it is often carried far beyond what may seem to be “reasonable” limits. If therefore this happens in a language, we may properly extend the analysis as far as the language allows. I may be accused of having expected too much of the rules I have found, on contraction, for example. I feel justified by the results for which I think there is proof. (Reichard 1951:7) And so, her grammar was replete with abstract forms in which a string of meaningful components underwent deletion (or ‘contraction’) processes to yield words without any realization of some of their underlying elements. For example, Reichard (1951:200) analyzed the Navajo prefix di- ‘future’ as always ‘interpreted as an inceptive progressive if that is not a contradiction.’ Thus a verb meaning ‘I will…’ is derived from di- ‘future’ -yi- ‘progressive’ -c‘first person singular subject.’ But contraction and processes of vowel lengthening and lowering result in the actually occurring prefix de·c-. For the second person, ‘you will…’ the underlying structure was parallel: di- ‘future’ -yi- ‘progressive’ -n-‘second person singular subject,’ and the realized prefix turned up as dí·-, again with compensatory vowel lengthening, but this time also high tone, and no trace of the n at all. Reichard’s paradigms provided for regularity of structure and a full representation of meaning. Had she formalized her analysis, in a number of cases it might have been clear that she was employing zero morphs, in the terminology of the time. Since she never organized her phonological processes into a set of general rules or statements, however, her analysis can appear to be ad hoc and chaotic. Nevertheless, her treatment of Navajo verb prefixes is acknowledged as surpassing that of the later 1967 Sapir and Hoijer Phonology and Morphology of the Navajo Language (Krauss 1973:926; see also Kari 1976:8). 154

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Time has vindicated Gladys Reichard’s linguistics in more than one respect. The narrow focus on a distributionally based phonemics, at one time considered the crowning glory of pre-1950s American structural linguistics, did not survive into the second half of the century. Language is indeed not ‘merely phonemics,’ as Reichard so clearly recognized. It is also the case that idealization toward a single, unvarying form of a language, perhaps unconsciously underlying resistance to the acknowledgment of the variation in language that Reichard stressed, has been strongly challenged by the entire post-1950 movement now known as sociolinguistics. Abstract representations postulated to underlie surface forms have been common coin in American linguistics for forty years, in both syntax and phonology, and Reichard’s concept of pattern, of ‘properly extend[ing] the analysis as far as the language allows,’ would not be out of place in a contemporary discussion of how best to capture generalizations about linguistic structure. And current studies of Native American languages are concerned with the goals and needs of their speakers—as was Reichard’s Hogan School—as well as with description, classification, reconstruction, or ‘demonstration of the method’ of the latest linguistic theory. Finally, in linguistics, as well as in ethnology and anthropology more generally, the native speaker is no longer merely an object of study or a subject of research but—like the students in the Hogan School, like Adolph Bitanny and others with whom Reichard worked —an active participant who makes important contributions based on the knowledge, experience, and insight available only to members of the culture of which the language is an integral part.

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Reichard’s Wiyot studies are generally considered to have been superseded by the later and far more comprehensive work of Karl Teeter (1964; Teeter & Nichols 1993), but current specialists in Salish and Athabaskan languages acknowledge the sustained value of her grammars of Coeur d’Alene and Navajo. That value rests not only on her presentation of the grammatical structure of those languages but also on matters of more general interest drawn from Reichard’s insights into linguistic variation, her focus on meaning, her pursuit of underlying patterns in the formation of words, and her collaborative work with native speakers of the languages she studied, all of which prefigured concerns of the second half of the twentieth century. Why, then, was her work— especially for Navajo—so long disparaged and why does she remain obscure among the wider communities of linguists and linguistic historiographers? Reviews printed at the time her Navajo studies were published cite purported inadequacies in transcription, the ‘pre-phonemic’ nature of her analyses, and the conservative, Boasian cast to her grammars (e.g., Hoijer 1953, Olmsted 1953), but none of that seems sufficient to account for an invisibility that persists even when valuable work is brought to current attention. To understand Reichard’s professional career, it is necessary to also consider territoriality, professional ambitions, and personal relationships as factors affecting her work, its reception, and her reputation. Territoriality in particular was a major source for antagonisms that arose very early in her career and conspired to suppress her accomplishments during her lifetime, persisting in their effects even now, more than forty years after her death. This dialectic between social and personal factors on the one hand and scientific argument on the other as appropriate explanations for the success and survival of linguistic work has recently been engaged in a number of studies on interpretive and generative semantics in generative grammar from the late 1960s and early 1970s, e.g., Randy Allen Harris, The Linguistics Wars (1993); Geoffrey Huck and John Goldsmith, Ideology and Linguistic Theory (1995); and Frederick Newmeyer, Generative Linguistics (1996). Newmeyer persists in what he calls a ‘romantic’ view of science, one that holds that ‘scientists can be counted on to make their theoretical choices on 156

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rational grounds’ and that turning points come about as products ‘of reasoned debate involving articulately counterposed positions, supported on both sides by the best available evidence’ (1996:137). He concludes here, as he did in his earlier work (Newmeyer 1986 [1980]), that ‘generative semantics was falsified because its core principles were refuted’ (Newmeyer 1996:137). Huck and Goldsmith (1995), on the other hand, suggest that the demise of generative semantics was due to such factors as rhetoric, ideology, geographic separation of leaders, and the nature of the academic institutions at which different linguists were located. The case of Gladys Reichard is not dissimilar. While it is said by some of her contemporaries and by some historians that her work fails on theoretical and even on descriptive grounds, a more thorough investigation reveals a crucial tension between the scientific and the human, between the professional and the personal. Early in Reichard’s career, Boas directed her research. As ‘the grand old man’ of anthropology, he controlled the major funding sources and, through that control, he assigned research topics, and languages, to his students and colleagues. Stephen Anderson saw ‘an extreme degree of “territoriality” among Americanists’ (Anderson 1985:200), which he attributed to Boas’s legacy: When Boas had assigned a given language to one of his students, it became virtually impossible for anyone else to find support for studying it (or even in some cases to penetrate the native community) for an essentially indefinite length of time—even when the student in question was not in fact producing any results from the research intended, (p. 199) This territoriality continued (see, e.g., Voegelin 1952), and some anthropologists and linguists working on American languages would say it still continues, serving as both a protection and an obstacle for those studying native languages. Nowhere is that clearer than in the career of Gladys Reichard. Neither Kroeber nor Sapir had worked on Wiyot to any significant extent, though Kroeber had done some data collecting years before Reichard’s visit. It was not ‘their’ language. Assigning it to Reichard as a dissertation project should not have created problems, and it probably would not have done so if she had been content to merely collect texts, transcribe forms, and prepare a strictly synchronic analysis. But when Reichard began to raise questions about the data Kroeber had collected and especially about Sapir’s use of that data in his comparative Ritwan-Algonkin proposal, she was crossing over into intellectual territory that Sapir claimed for himself. Her own paper on the historical relationship of Wiyot to the Algonquian languages was never published after Sapir had seen a copy. Her dissertation avoided such issues, and the resulting synchronic study of Wiyot remained ‘hers’ until Sapir’s students Mary Haas and Murray Emeneau determined in the 1950s that the language should be described according to ‘phonemic theory.’ Their student Karl Teeter undertook the assignment (see Haas 1964), and Wiyot became ‘his’. 157

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With the change in ownership, as well as in theory, Reichard’s Wiyot grammar virtually disappeared from history. For Coeur d’Alene, the situation was entirely different. No living fieldworker had any claim at all on this territory when Boas obtained funding that made Reichard’s work possible. There did exist a comparative vocabulary with some Coeur d’Alene words by James A.Teit (1864–1922) and ‘a large unfinished manuscript’ on various Salish languages, including Coeur d’Alene, by Herman K.Haeberlin (1891–1918), a German-born anthropologist who until his early death had been closely associated with Boas, but it was through Reichard that ‘Coeur d’Alene was the first [of the Interior Salish languages] to receive detailed attention in recent times’ (Thompson 1973:1003). In the summers of 1927 and 1929, Reichard worked peacefully on her own in northern Idaho, corresponding with Boas from time to time, but with no other assistance or interference. The work was set aside for several years while she wrote up a study of Melanesian design pursued under a Guggenheim Fellowship she had held in 1926–1927 (Reichard 1932; see Leacock 1988:304) and then the initial years of Navajo fieldwork occupied her time. But when she returned to the Coeur d’Alene language, her concentration was intense. Lawrence Nicodemus, a native Coeur d’Alene speaker with whom she had worked previously, came to Columbia University in 1935 and 1936, allowing Reichard to continue her linguistic study in New York (Reichard 1938:521). She devoted herself ‘almost exclusively and certainly slavishly’ to the grammar in Spring 1935. writing to Parsons: ‘It is worse than a jigsaw because there is no end to it, even tho [GAR’s spelling] at times it seems to be going nicely’ (GAR to ECP 14 March 1935). That summer, she ‘worked without stopping for eight weeks on the Coeur d’Alene grammar’ (GAR to ECP 26 August 1935). Then in the summer of 1936. she returned briefly to Idaho to finish a Coeur d’Alene dictionary (never published) and to obtain answers to a few remaining questions on the grammar (GAR to ECP 1 August 1936). Her usual long semi-annual summer letter to Parsons was greatly curtailed that year since, as she wrote, ‘you are not interested in details of CdA and that is all I have to talk of (ibid.). This Coeur d’Alene work was Reichard at her very best— confident, thoughtful, independent, focused, and undistracted by friend or foe. M.Terry Thompson (personal communication, 26 June 1996) described Reichard’s Coeur d’Alene work as still ‘well respected’ and, territorially, the scholarly study of the language ‘is still hers,’ not in the exclusive sense of former times, but rather in that her grammar has not been replaced or superseded by other work, as was the case with Wiyot. Of course, others have worked with Coeur d’Alene over the years since Reichard’s study. And there have been some criticisms, mostly concerning transcription. So, publication of her long comparative Salish series (Reichard 1958–1960), for example, was delayed until after her death because she had ‘failed to reach an agreement [with the editor of the International Journal of American Linguistics] on the modernization of [her] orthography’ (Part IV, p. 61). But as Clarence Sloat noted not long afterwards, 158

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although ‘It seems that almost everyone who works with Reichard’s Salishan material revises her transcription of it…the retranscriptions…are in some ways as unfortunate as the transcriptions they replace’ (Sloat 1968:8). These orthographic disputes, unlike those for her later work on Navajo, were never considered of such significance as to discredit Reichard’s Salish work, which was still so valued in 1980 that the distinguished Salish linguist Laurence C. Thompson dedicated an issue that he edited on Salish languages for the International Journal of American Linguistics ‘to Gladys A.Reichard in recognition of her contribution to the study of American Indian Languages and Cultures’ (IJAL 46:1 [1980]). Even more recently, Steven Egesdal (1996:124) situated Reichard’s Coeur d’Alene grammar among ‘those fine works’ providing ‘a sound treatment of an Interior Salish language’ and belonging ‘on the bookshelf’ with the Thompsons’ own The Thompson Language (Thompson & Thompson 1992). Acknowledgments of specific points in Reichard’s Coeur d’Alene grammar have continued. Ewa Czaykowska-Higgins and M.Dale Kinkade pointed to Reichard as ‘the first to recognize pharyngeals as occurring in Salish languages, although she called them “faucals”’ (1998:9) and also acknowledged her work on the glottalization of resonants in words (p. 14). Reichard was the first scholar they cited to note the ‘lack of a rigorous distinction between nouns and verbs in Salish’ (pp. 35–36), and her Coeur d’Alene stem list (Reichard 1939c) has been recognized as a source of extensive data (p. 63), an important contribution to Salish lexicography. Ivy Doak made regular use of Reichard’s Coeur d’Alene materials for her dissertation (Doak 1997) and acknowledged: ‘As I’ve learned more about the syntax of Coeur d’Alene, I find that when I look back at Reichard’s grammar I understand that some of her observations, which at first reading(s) seemed obscure, are remarkably keen insights’ (personal communication 23 February 1998). Reichard’s accounts of the phonology, the lexicon, and the syntax of Coeur d’Alene all continue to attract the attention and praise of knowledgeable linguists. The work, now 60 years old, is still consulted. While Salish specialists are unanimous in their commendation of Reichard’s Coeur d’Alene studies, modern Navajo experts are more divided in their assessments of her linguistic contributions. Robert W.Young is most reserved, maintaining that ‘her interpretations of Navajo religion affected her descriptions and analysis of Navajo grammar’ (personal communication 10 September 1997). The grammar and dictionary he co-authored with William Morgan (Young & Morgan 1980) contained no reference to Reichard’s Navaho Grammar or to any of her other works on the language (see the lists of works consulted in the Acknowledgements, p. ii, and the Introduction, p. vi). While Young found her account of some word classes to be ‘generally acceptable,’ he described her ‘analysis and treatment of the verb system’ as ‘deeply flawed— in no way comparable to the work of her contemporaries Sapir and Hoijer’ (personal communication 10 September 1997). Kenneth L.Hale also had reservations about Reichard’s studies of the Navajo verb, a ‘feeling that she “over-analyzed”’ it, and he expressed some concern about typos and possibly 159

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doubtful transcription. Still, Hale finds the Navaho Grammar a ‘very, very interesting’ work that ‘inspires many promising lines of inquiry’ (personal communication 2 September 1997). In contrast to Young’s assessment, Gary Witherspoon dedicated his Language and Art in the Navajo Universe (1977) to Gladys Reichard, calling her ‘one of the great ethnographers of the twentieth century’ whose ‘intensive and comprehensive studies of Navajo language and culture represent some of the most complete and most perceptive ethnographic writing ever done’ (p. xiii). On the other hand, Herbert Landar found Reichard’s Navaho Grammar ‘fascinating’ but ‘doctrinaire and far from illuminating.’ He considered the work of Harry Hoijer and Young and Morgan to be ‘much more rewarding’ (personal communication 8 September 1997). The differences in reception and reputation for Reichard and her work on Coeur d’Alene on the one hand and Navajo on the other are so extreme that we almost seem to be dealing with two different linguists. But we are not. Reichard’s linguistic work across these languages is in many ways consistent. There is, however, a significant difference in territoriality. Where it was not an issue, in Coeur d’Alene, Reichard’s work was and continues to be useful and valued; she is a respected linguist. Where territoriality played a major role, as it did in Navajo, her work has been ignored, rejected, even vilified, and her reputation as a linguist nearly fatally poisoned. Historian William H.Lyon wrote of how, in her Navajo work, Reichard ‘had plumbed the fields of expertise of Sapir, Haile, Hoijer, [Leland] Wyman, and of [Clyde] Kluckhohn’ (Lyon 1989:155), as if she had invaded their territory. Indeed, this is a rather widespread perception. Young and Morgan also placed Reichard chronologically after Sapir in a list of scholars to the Navajo Country during and after the 1920s (1980:iv). In fact, of all the men mentioned by Lyon, only Berard Haile, who had arrived on the scene in 1900, clearly preceded her in work on and with Navajo language and culture. When Sapir made his first and only trip to Navajo territory for a few weeks in the summer of 1929, it was well recognized that it was he who was impinging on a domain that Reichard had already entered as early as 1923. At the time of Sapir’s visit to the Navajo Reservation Ruth Benedict wrote to Margaret Mead that Sapir would ‘do Navaho language—It’s all taking the region out of the Papa Franz [Boas]-Gladys combination…’ (Mead 1959:95). Sapir’s trip and Benedict’s characterization arose in the context of the first summer training program of the Laboratory of Anthropology. Sapir directed the linguistics division that year, using Navajo as the language for analysis. With him as he set his mark upon this territory was Harry Hoijer, one of his graduate students from the University of Chicago, whose own fieldwork centered on Apache. In a letter to Parsons the following winter, Reichard reported on the territorial claims of Sapir, saying that he was ‘sore’ at a student from Columbia ‘for using the training he [Sapir] gave him last summer for Athapascan’ and concluding ‘Sapir wants Apache for himself. Etiquette and other rules work only one way!’ (GAR to ECP 24 February [1930]). She 160

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apparently misunderstood the situation. Sapir never worked on Apache. It was not for himself that he wanted the language; it was for Hoijer. The language Sapir did want was Navajo, not only for himself but also for Father Berard Haile. In one of his many letters to Parsons seeking funding for Haile, Sapir’s effusive praise for Haile’s Navajo studies left no room whatsoever for others to work on the language or the culture. It seems to me that no work which is now being done that straddles the fields of linguistics and ethnology can compare for a moment in completeness, accuracy and interest with what he is doing among the Navaho… The totality of these documents [that Haile was collecting on Navajo legends and rituals] will some day be looked upon as comprising as unique a contribution to primitive literature and religion as say the Homeric poems or the Rig Veda. (ES to ECP 7 April 1932 ECPP) When Sapir wrote this letter, he knew full well that Reichard was about to leave for her third consecutive summer on the Navajo Reservation, studying the language and weaving, work that certainly ‘straddled the fields of linguistics and ethnology.’ He had even given her some assistance in her language study. After Goddard died, he sent her a letter on the language (GAR to ECP 12 October 1928), knowing that she would be editing texts Goddard had collected (Goddard 1933). Then in 1931, on her way to the Southwest, Reichard spent three weeks at the University of Chicago where ‘Sapir, Harry Hoijer, and [George] Herzog helped me more than I can say’ (GAR to ECP 13 July 1931). Reichard was grateful for Sapir’s assistance, but his letters and teaching did not take the place of a grammar of Navajo, which he never published. Despite his territorial claims, she found it necessary to forge ahead on her own. Her studies of the Navajo language began to appear in print in 1940 (Reichard & Bitanny), the year after Sapir died, and culminated with her Navaho Grammar in 1951. Years later, in his ‘History of American Indian Linguistics,’ Harry Hoijer credited his mentor Sapir with ‘extensive field studies…of Navajo’ (Hoijer 1973: 669), although those few weeks in the summer of 1929 comprised the only time Sapir ever spent in the Southwest (Darnell 1990:246). Citing Sapir’s ‘expertise’ in eight other languages along with ‘less detailed studies…of…Wiyot’ and seven other languages (Hoijer 1973:669), Hoijer did not mention Reichard. Her published grammars of Wiyot and Coeur d’Alene and her twenty five years of fieldwork, many articles, and grammar of Navajo might as well never have existed. A widely credited authority on the subject, Harry Hoijer literally wrote Gladys Reichard out of the history of the study of Native American languages. This stunning omission was the culmination of years of territorial pressure, beginning in the mid 1920s with the difficulties between Reichard and Sapir over Wiyot, continuing with Sapir’s reported efforts throughout the 1930s to deny her a place in Navajo studies (Lyon 1989), 161

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and developing further in the mutual challenges of Reichard and Hoijer over Navajo in the 1940s and early 1950s. In both Navajo language and Navajo culture, Reichard’s academic lineage came through Pliny Earle Goddard, whom she accompanied on field trips to the Navajo Reservation in 1923, 1924, and 1925. Goddard was by then a longestablished Navajo scholar, engaged in Navajo studies since 1904 when he first visited the reservation (Kroeber 1967:271), and it was he who in 1910 reviewed for the American Anthropologist the Franciscan Fathers’ Ethnologic Dictionary of Navajo, a not uncritical but nevertheless positive assessment of the value of this work by academically unaffiliated scholars (Goddard 1910). Relations between the missionaries and the academics in the Southwest were not always comfortable, but Father Berard Haile had been an exception. An author of the Franciscan Fathers’ Navajo language works, including the Ethnologic Dictionary, he seemed to welcome first Goddard, later Reichard, and eventually Sapir, introducing them into the Navajo communities and arranging interpreters and informants for them. From their earliest meetings, Reichard found Haile helpful and approved of his ‘dignified and trustworthy’ treatment of the Navajos (GAR to FB 1 August 1924 FBC). She acknowledged his assistance in her first book on Navajo culture (Reichard 1928:vii), and, according to notes in his papers, when he read the book, Haile found much to approve and compliment (Lyon 1989:148, 161n. 30). Indeed, this contribution by Reichard has continued to be recognized, by Witherspoon, for example, who said of her book: ‘Major studies of Navajo social life began with the work of Gladys Reichard’ (Witherspoon 1975:ix). But when Sapir entered this particular picture, according to Lyon, he ‘encouraged him [Haile] to be critical of the book’ (Lyon 1989:161n. 30). Haile, at the time just forming a relationship with Sapir, was persuaded by the professor from the University of Chicago, and he later published a critical review of Reichard’s study in the American Anthropologist (Haile 1932). An even more hostile attack came two years later when Sapir and Haile attempted to disrupt her work with the Hogan School (see above and Lyon 1989:152). Indeed, Lyon’s account of Sapir’s several efforts to undermine Reichard’s work and reputation is chilling, and once Hoijer took up the attack, we have a textbook example of how to write someone out of a field. Some historiography concerning Sapir and Reichard has held her entirely at fault for all of the difficulties between them. Sapir is always the hero. Michael Krauss, for example, drew on a note in a letter that Ruth Benedict wrote to Margaret Mead in the late 1920s, commenting on Sapir’s ‘charm and assurance’ and then noting that ‘Nobody but Gladys could resist him’ (Mead 1959:95; the same passage was cited by Lyon 1989:159n. 9). Tensions between Benedict and Reichard put this remark in some perspective, as discussed below, but note here that Krauss presented Sapir as the benevolent teacher, Reichard as the ungrateful student: 162

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It is by no means clear how Reichard’s hostility could have been Sapir’s fault. It appears that Sapir was supportive of Reichard’s involvement with Navajo from the beginning, and that he was very generous to her with his time and knowledge of Navajo. This may be seen…in a letter …from Sapir to Reichard, of 30 September 1934…six pages masterfully outlining the inflection of the verb…(Krauss 1986:165– 166n. 7) Ironically, Krauss chose a letter written at the end of the very summer of Reichard’s Hogan School, when there is some evidence that Haile and Sapir had tried to disrupt her work. Note, that Krauss, too, seemed to assume that Sapir was present ‘from the beginning’ of Reichard’s Navajo studies, rather than the other way around.

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Recognizing the issue of territoriality for Wiyot and Navajo, it is nevertheless difficult to imagine why Sapir responded to Reichard with such animosity. It seems to have been a cumulative reaction, building in intensity over time. When their relationship began during Reichard’s Wiyot fieldwork, Sapir was working hard to find a new post, unhappy with his position as chief of the Anthropological Division of the Victoria Memorial Museum in Ottawa, Canada. He wrote frequently to Boas on the matter, seeking a position at Columbia (e.g., 2 October 1924 FBC). It could not have been helpful to him and his cause to have Boas’s senior linguistics student criticizing his work. Reichard’s paper on Wiyot and Algonquian was, then, more than just a scientific disagreement; it was a potential danger to Sapir’s academic future. Lyon suggested that the Navajo book review matter a few years later was ‘an anti-Boas move’ on Sapir’s part (1989:161n. 30), and certainly it is clear even from the earlier correspondence between Sapir and Kroeber that both men sought ways to free themselves from their former teacher. Those who were reluctant to challenge Boas directly apparently sometimes chose to do so through Reichard, who remained intellectually faithful to Boasian principles long after others—Sapir and Kroeber, Benedict and Mead—had abandoned them. Kroeber’s 1924 assessment of Reichard was expressed almost entirely in terms of her relationship to Boas. There were other potential targets for whom Reichard may have served as surrogate. Sapir had very strained relationships with Pliny Earle Goddard, dating back at least to 1913, perhaps even earlier (see Krauss 1986; also Golla 1986:18– 19), mostly on issues in Athabaskan linguistics. These strains surface in Sapir’s correspondence with Kroeber at exactly the time when Reichard entered the picture both as an investigator of Wiyot and as Goddard’s companion in Navajo fieldwork (Golla 1984:400–402) and in life (Deacon 1997:259–260). The relationship between the senior scholar and the graduate student was widely known; they made no effort to conceal it. Parsons and Kroeber, who themselves enjoyed a close and affectionate friendship (Deacon 1997:157–163), were certainly tolerant and even supportive. When the Southwest Society funded their Navajo field trip, Kroeber asked Parsons: ‘And how much was it science and how much wish to give two people their fling, that led you to add 164

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Gladys to Goddard’s trip?’ (ALK to ECP 18 October 1923 ECPP). Goddard himself referred to Parsons’s ‘nice spirit’ in funding the trip (PEG to ECP 13 August 1923 ECPP), a comment that may have looked back upon early years of their own friendship which, in his letters to her, appears to have been much closer than a mere professional association (e.g., three undated notes, one marked ‘[1917]’ by Reichard when she organized Parsons’s papers, another, based on internal evidence, written in June 1919; PEG to ECP ECPP). There were both personal and professional difficulties for Reichard as the result of her relationship with Goddard. Lamphere pointed to ‘tensions with both Boas and Goddard’s wife’ (1993:163), though Deacon found Boas more tolerant than upset (1997:259–260). Virginia Gildersleeve, dean of Barnard College from 1911 to 1947, apparently was not accepting of such a relationship (Lamphere 1993: 165). Indeed, Reichard waited many years for promotion to full professor, not achieving the rank until 1951 (Smith 1956:914), four years after Gildersleeve’s retirement. But the delay could have been because Reichard was a woman, regardless of her relationship with Goddard. Gildersleeve was not particularly supportive of women faculty at Barnard, as the following passage demonstrates: We could, as a rule, secure for an assistantship a better quality of woman than of man. Thus if we filled our higher posts only by promotions from below, we tended to acquire a faculty predominantly feminine. Was this a good thing? I was inclined to think it was not… It seemed to me…that it was our first obligation to provide the best professors we could secure for our students regardless of sex, but that we should also try to preserve a balance between the sexes. We seemed sure to have plenty of women in any event, as the unusually competent ones in the lower grades were promoted to professorial rank. (Gildersleeve 1954:78–79) As with Boas, Goddard was an important senior figure in the field, curator of ethnology at the American Museum of Natural History and lecturer in anthropology at Columbia University (where Sapir hoped to obtain an appointment), co-founder and co-editor with Boas of the International Journal of American Linguistics from 1917 until his death in 1928 (for a summary of Goddard’s career, see Kroeber 1929). And again, it would have been far easier for Sapir to disparage the doctoral student Reichard rather than Goddard, especially when she challenged his historical work on Algonquian, just as Goddard had challenged his historical work on Athabaskan languages. The timing is striking and the connection to Goddard could be a further reason why Sapir developed such an antipathy for Reichard and her work at an early point in her career. Desley Deacon’s research (1997) suggested that sexuality played an important role in Sapir’s relationships with women (e.g., Benedict, Mead, and Parsons), and it may be relevant to his attitudes toward Reichard that she was able to ‘resist him,’ as Benedict observed, while at the same time choosing Goddard as a partner. 165

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Reichard may also have been tainted because of her close relationship with Elsie Clews Parsons, whom Sapir seems not to have respected. Not only did he dismiss Parsons’s intellectual work, as in his 1922 review of American Indian Life discussed earlier, but he was reported to have targeted her for sexual adventures by one of his male graduate students (Deacon 1997:260). The personal disrespect was private, the public ridicule of her scholarship was subtle. Outright hostility to the powerful Parsons would be foolish, especially when Sapir was seeking her financial support for his students, his colleagues, and for his own publishing projects in virtually every letter he wrote to her from 18 February 1929 to 24 July 1936 (ECPP). Nor did he denigrate Reichard by name to Parsons herself. In fact, the complexity, possibly the duplicity, of his relationships with these women came to light in a 1929 letter to Parsons when he seemed to praise Reichard as a woman ‘who really means business scientifically’ (ES to ECP 27 March 1929 ECPP) at the very time he was urging Haile to find fault with her Navajo work (Lyon 1989). Even today, Sapir’s attacks on Reichard are largely unknown. They were all behind the scenes. Since he himself was publishing virtually nothing on Navajo, he had no cause for public comments on her work. Those came after Sapir’s death, raised by his former student and literary executor Harry Hoijer, who, as we have seen, severely criticized Reichard’s phonetic and phonemic work (Hoijer 1945b) and later her entire Navaho Grammar (Hoijer 1953). Reichard herself invited Hoijer’s negative reactions to her work, for she complained in print of Sapir’s failure to publish a Navajo grammar while at the same time he lay claim to the language for himself and his own students, including Hoijer (e.g. Reichard 1947b:196; 1951:1–2). She opened her Navaho Grammar with an extended discussion of, and challenge to, ‘The Sapir School of Athabaskan’ and then she incorporated into her presentation—with a number of alterations—Hoijer’s own treatments of Navaho phonology (1951:4–11, 13–45). That he would respond is to be expected. That as Review Editor of the International Journal of American Linguistics at the time he would use his position to criticize her (Hoijer 1953) is a questionable use of editorial power, at least by today’s standards. Certainly the poisoning of Reichard’s reputation spread through the American linguistic community. Throughout her life, her work was ignored by the Linguistic Society of America, whose journal Language reviewed none of her grammars, although it did print reviews of similar work, e.g., of Hoijer’s publication of the Navaho Texts of Sapir (Halpern 1943). A member of the Society from 1929 through 1931 when she allowed her membership to lapse, as did many in the difficult years of the Great Depression (see Falk 1994), and again from 1943 through 1946, there is no evidence from the records of Bernard Bloch during his editorship, which began in 1940 and extended until long after Reichard’s death, that she ever submitted an article to Language. That she probably did not do so earlier may be assumed from the nearly 100 percent acceptance rate in those early years; nothing by her appeared in the journal. She may have been deterred by the fact that Sapir was a frequent co-editor 166

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under chief editor George Melville Bolling in 1925 and then again from 1929 until his death in 1939. Strikingly, it was only after Sapir’s death that Reichard presented a paper at an LSA meeting, in December 1944, and it is particularly interesting that the paper was titled ‘Phonetic Change and Genetic Relationship’ (LSA Bulletin 18.18 [1945]). This is the only instance in which she is known to have addressed such issues after the aborted attempt to engage in the Wiyot-Algonquian debate in the 1920s. The tension between Reichard and Hoijer had its roots in the difficulties between Reichard and Sapir, but Reichard and Hoijer’s public debates were very much oriented to their own differences over theory and description. Hoijer was an active proponent of phonemic theory and argued for linguistic analysis that focused on the distribution of sounds, their assignment to phonemes, and their ‘correct’ representation in phonemic transcription. Indeed, one of his primary linguistic publications on Navajo during Reichard’s lifetime was the small volume—just fifty nine pages—Navaho Phonology (1945a). Reichard’s interests were much broader, a linguistics that included, as she herself put it, ‘Not etymology, semantics, phonetics, phonemics, or morphology alone, but all in their fascinating intricate association’ (Reichard 1951:11). Her concerns were for variation, how words and pronunciations varied across region, age, and tribal status, and for general explanations. So, in her Navaho Grammar, she rejected an account of active verbs proposed by Hoijer (1946) and argued instead for her own on the grounds that ‘Here yet another [explanation] is presented, one which seems to account for more that has been unsatisfactory in the others, and to establish greater predictability with fewer exceptions’ (1951:129). Her account was based firmly on the semantics of the verb and its prefixes: the active verb…has many principal parts and prefixes. The numerous forms of the active verb indicate different aspects of time, motion, action, and distance covered by a moving object. Motion takes place in space; variations of the active verb indicate spatial considerations, and this is the real difference between static and active verbs. Besides, there are verbal ideas concerned with activity that does not necessarily involve a notion of covering space; these are active verbs, but are treated as if space were rationalized. (Reichard 1951:129) Following a half dozen articles on such matters as Navajo verb stems and linguistic diversity in the language, she finally published the extensive, 393page Grammar in 1951. For each major Navajo study that Reichard published, Hoijer wrote a critical review or rejoinder. When Hoijer and Reichard criticized one another’s work, they were indeed engaged in scientific argument, but they were talking about different topics, and so each one’s evidence and conclusions went past the other, precisely as Huck and Goldsmith described in the interpretive/generative semantics situation. They wrote: 167

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Real issues were in fact raised in these exchanges, but were obscured as each side proved unwilling to engage with the other on exactly the other’s terms. Positions shifted; assumptions were missed or ignored; agreement could not even be reached about what the data to be explained were… Not being able to understand the rational basis for the arguments used against them, they were naturally tempted to locate the source of the dispute in personality traits of their antagonists. (Huck & Goldsmith 1995:77) And so it was, too, for Reichard and Hoijer. Reichard came to be viewed by Hoijer and his peers in the late 1940s and early 1950s as obstinate, oldfashioned, unwilling and even unable to understand the newer developments of the field. She, on the other hand, considered Hoijer and those whom she termed ‘the Sapir school’ as narrow and dogmatic, obsessed with phonemics, and blind to linguistic variation. But it was Hoijer who wrote the ‘History of American Indian Linguistics’ (1973). His is the view that prevailed. Until recently, when her anthropological work was reexamined and reassessed by such important scholars as Louise Lamphere (1993), Reichard and her work barely survived on the periphery of scholarship. But she did survive. Even in her early years, Reichard struggled for acceptance. The most sustaining force was her friendship with Parsons. When Goddard died in Summer 1928, Parsons provided funds for Reichard to purchase his Navajo books (Lamphere 1993:165). Reichard never forgot this. Years later, after Parsons died, she wrote about the incident to Parsons’s eldest son John: ‘I don’t suppose you know that long ago Elsie got me a whole lot of books I needed from a library which was being disposed of and for which I had a sentimental attachment’ (GAR to JP 6 February 1942 ECPP). This caring and sensitive gift changed their relationship, a change reflected at the time in their correspondence which shifted from formal titles to first names. This friendship was more important to Reichard than the occasional funds Parsons provided directly and through her Southwest Society. Parsons was the ideal correspondent with whom Reichard could discuss professional biases against women, the awkwardness of being one of the few women at an academic meeting, and the satisfaction in another woman’s faculty appointment (GAR to ECP 25 August 1929, 30 September 1930, 17 March 1931). At least twice each year, Reichard wrote long letters to Parsons (GAR to ECP 26 August 1935) and looked forward to the times when she would return to New York City: ‘I have no one to gossip with these days. I hope you are planning to come back soon’ (GAR to ECP 14 March 1935). There was support as well as companionship when the established woman scholar joined the weekly lunches of anthropologists from Columbia, Barnard, and the American Museum of Natural History. Except for Parsons, the senior participants were all men from Reichard’s student years until the 1930s (see Goldfrank 1978:17), when she and Ruth Benedict achieved places of their own. 168

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The bond between Reichard and Parsons was strengthened by their Southwest fieldwork. They never traveled or worked together. Parsons’s interests lay with the Pueblo peoples, Reichard’s with their traditional enemies, the Navajo. But the land and the living conditions were much the same and cultural comparisons made for interesting exchanges. Reichard wrote from the field each summer, describing to Parsons the Navajo ceremonies she had observed, the tribal council meetings she attended, and incidents in the lives of her Navajo ‘family.’ She also kept up a running log of her progress in mastering the Navajo language, a project that Parsons evidently supported even though she herself had little interest in language. The importance of that support is revealed in a letter Reichard sent from Gallup, New Mexico during her third summer stay (GAR to ECP, 9 July 1932): Dear Elsie;I am taking a few days away from humans to organize my knowledge, get my mind restored, pay bills and write letters… I just want to tell you how much I appreciate your keeping on believing in my job and the way I am doing it. I say this because you and Papa Franz are about the only ones who do. Even I was somewhat doubtful until the end of last year. But now I may get tired but I don’t believe I can get discouraged in the same way. I have been working at Navajo primarily less than two weeks and have learned more than in the two summers before… I talk now gayly [GAR’s spelling] and let the devil take mistakes! And usually even strangers understand me. What’s more I say many things not absolutely necessary to life and death. It is a grand language and I will learn it, Sapir to the contrary notwithstanding… Yours with love Gladys The two friends were clearly compatible intellectually. Since Parsons was older, by nearly twenty years, and a well-established scholar when Reichard was just beginning her own career, the former’s views influenced the latter more than the other way around. But Reichard was independent and she went in her own directions, a characteristic that was surely appealing to Parsons, who rarely befriended other women. Reichard’s work on Coeur d’Alene owed nothing to Parsons. Her dedicated study of the Navajo language was in complete contrast to Parsons’s own lack of interest in the languages of the Southwest. Reichard’s extended periods in residence among the Navajo people also differed from the fieldwork patterns of both Parsons and Boas, whose trips were usually no more than a month in duration (see, e.g., Goldfrank 1978:57). But there were many parallels in the most fundamental intellectual principles held by these two women. For Parsons, ongoing cultures were what mattered; she did not engage in salvage work and seemed bored by archaeology. Once past her assigned 169

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dissertation topic on a clearly endangered language, Reichard, too, engaged in the study of active cultures and living languages, first with Coeur d’Alene and then, for the greater part of her professional life, with Navajo. Her very definition of language was ‘a living, cultural phenomenon’ (Reichard 1951:4). Both women entered into the lives of the people whom they studied. Reichard had her Navajo family, to whom she returned summer after summer, sharing their homestead. Parsons was ‘never just an observer… What we see is always an interaction’ (Deacon 1997:347). The desire to convey ‘the inner life of the people’ they studied (Deacon 1997: 239) led both to seek understanding of how people thought and what they believed, as well as how they behaved. In their more technical and descriptive accounts, they focused on religion, Parsons in Pueblo Indian Religion (1939), Reichard in Navaho Religion (1950). But each also brought this ‘inner life’ to the public, most notably Parsons in American Indian Life (1922) and Reichard in her weaving books (1934, 1939a). Of course they were not unique in popularizing anthropology. Boas, too, ‘devoted much time and energy to popularizing his work on race’ after his retirement in 1936 (Deacon 1997:357). Ruth Benedict’s Patterns of Culture (1934) and Margaret Mead’s Coming of Age in Samoa (1928) had also reached a wide reading public. Of the common ground shared by Reichard and Parsons, the two areas most central to Reichard’s linguistic work were comprehensiveness and variation. Reichard’s work on variation was described above. For Parsons, in Pueblo Indian Religion: ‘In the back of my own mind, salting the labor of description, has lain the theme of cultural change, the problems of variability’ (1939:xiv); one of the most extensive chapters in the book is titled ‘Variation and Borrowing’ (pp. 939–1084). Both women were insistent on the importance of comprehensiveness, on describing the whole—the whole culture for Parsons, the whole language for Reichard. In the Preface to Pueblo Indian Religion Parsons wrote: ‘To describe even a part of a culture is a dangerous enterprise, so interwoven is one part with another that the fabric tears when we begin to separate, leaving meaningless shreds in our hands’ (1939:x). Reichard’s study of Navajo religion (Reichard 1950) has been aptly described as an analysis based on the ‘totality of symbolic interconnections made by the Navajo’ (Leacock 1988:305), and she took the same position on language: ‘Not etymology, semantics, phonetics, phonemics, or morphology alone, but all in their fascinating intricate association’ (Reichard 1951:11). And for Reichard, ‘Meaning seems to be the key that can open these doors’ (ibid.). This is the core of her approach to linguistics, her definition of what a linguistic study and the resulting grammar must attempt. When Parsons died suddenly in December 1941, Reichard became her literary executor. Her first responsibility was to deliver Parsons’s presidential address before the annual convention of the American Anthropological Association (see Deacon 1997:381–382 for a summary). Reichard wrote to Parsons’s middle son Herbert that the speech was well received and then reported on the status of various books that Elsie Parsons had been working on 170

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at the time of her death, some that she was subsidizing, others her own writing (GAR to HP 12 January 1942 ECPP). At the request of the Parsons children, Reichard undertook the editing of Parsons’s Folk-Lore of the Antilles, French and English (Parsons 1943) and saw to the publication of Peguche (Parsons 1945), a study of Ecuadorean Indians. She also tried to find a publisher for Parsons’s manuscript on Isleta paintings, which eventually appeared in 1962 edited by Esther Schiff Goldfrank (see Goldfrank 1978:211–215). Not one of these books by Parsons that Reichard guided into print fell within Reichard’s own areas of interest. With never a complaint to the family, she worked diligently on the literary estate, reporting on a regular basis, weekly at first, less often as problems were resolved and affairs settled. Her final tribute to Elsie Clews Parsons was the memorial article she prepared for a special issue of the Journal of American Folklore (Reichard 1943), and her last major act as literary executor was to recommend to the family that Parsons’s papers be deposited with the American Philosophical Society, where they have become one of the most valuable of all national resources on the history of American anthropology. Her executor’s duties occupied a good deal of Reichard’s time in the early 1940s and may have been responsible for delaying the publication of some of her own research. But they also enabled her to sustain her relationship with her friend’s work. When John Parsons allowed her to select books from his mother’s personal library, Reichard responded: ‘I find them almost priceless because they contain Elsie’s notes’ (GAR to JP 5 March 1942 ECPP). The influences and support she had drawn throughout her long friendship with Parsons continued to affect her life until her own death in 1955, but there is no doubt that she was increasingly alone. During the mid 1940s, Reichard sought intellectual companionship among the exiled European linguists who clustered around Columbia University. The members of this community were themselves alienated from what was essentially the second generation, largely American born, of American structuralists, the students of Sapir and Bloomfield. In 1943 the European linguists founded the Linguistic Circle of New York. Reichard served as secretary-treasurer of the organization from 1945 to 1947 and as a member of the Executive Committee and Editorial Board of the Circle’s journal Word from 1947 until her death in 1955. In 1949, she published two articles in Word, one on Navajo verb stems, the other titled ‘Language and Synesthesia’ (Reichard et al. 1949), co-authored with Roman Jakobson (1896–1982), one of the Circle’s founders. Synesthesia is a neurological condition in which sensory perceptions cross from one modality to another, for example, sounds are correlated with colors (Cytowic 1989). So, for example, the vowel sound [e] in fate might be thought of as yellow, while the [f] is associated with purple. Jakobson had discussed the matter briefly in his 1941 book Kindersprache, Aphasie und allgemeine Lautgesetze [Child language, aphasia, and phonological universals]. When Reichard encountered a student at Barnard who learned new languages by mentally arranging sound combinations in color patterns, she discussed the 171

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phenomenon with Jakobson, who was at Columbia in the mid to late 1940s. Even today, introductory surveys of linguistics or informal accounts for the general public rarely mention synesthesia or sound symbolism except to dismiss them as interesting but inexplicable curiosities (e.g., Crystal 1987:174– 176; Trask 1995:137–138). In the 1940s, there was even less tolerance in the mainstream of linguistics, where anything to do with the mind was highly suspect. The paper for Word, authored solely by Reichard, although bearing also the names of Jakobson and Reichard’s student, was not Reichard’s only exploration into an area considered dubious science at the time. In 1945 she drew on her Coeur d’Alene studies to produce an article on ‘Composition and Symbolism of Coeur d’Alene Verb Stems’ (Reichard 1945a). Here she explored the possibility that vowel changes in Coeur d’Alene verb stems correlated with shifts in meaning. Organizing the vowels of Coeur d’Alene into two sets, she wrote: The most common of these changes [in meaning] may be explained as follows: If the stem has the vowel (ä, u, ? a,) given in the first column following, it has what I have taken to be its primary meaning and indicates that a thing has quality or is in a given condition automatically or without an outside force or agent. If however, it has the vowel of the second column (i, a, ?) it means the subject has been made or caused to act or to assume a condition by an outside agent. (Reichard 1945a:48– 49) Forty examples of the change from ä to i follow, including [mäy] ‘be evident’ (has a quality) and [miy] ‘be made clear’ (by an outside agent) (p. 49). Presenting her analytical procedures and the tests to which she had subjected her hypothesis, Reichard was aware of the skepticism she would meet from a linguistic community drawn to distribution and away from meaning: ‘These details seem to be apposite in case the following discussion might be considered a figment of the imagination’ (Reichard 1945a:51). More recently, sound symbolism has been termed ‘too important a topic to ignore’ and Reichard’s investigation in Coeur d’Alene identified as a ‘pioneering study’ (Dixon 1997: 64n. 9). There is a telling contrast between Reichard’s study of the sound symbolism of Coeur d’Alene verb stems and Harry Hoijer’s account of Apachean verbs, published the following year in the same journal: Our discussion will be confined…solely to the formal structure of the Apachean paradigms… The future paradigm employs one prefix in position 10 (the future tense prefix) and another in position 11 (the prefix for the progressive mode). All the other paradigms have but one prefix in position 11 (none in positions 5 and 10), and in two of these, the regular imperfective and the customary, this prefix is a zero morpheme. (Hoijer 1946:1) 172

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No wonder that the largely European community of the Linguistic Circle of New York, in sharp contrast to the new American structuralists, was receptive to Reichard’s Navaho Grammar. The French linguist André G.Haudricourt (1910– 1996) writing in Word (1954) praised her rich and exhaustive grammar (‘riche,’ ‘exhaustive’) with its absence of the jargon and forced rigor (‘le jargon prétentieux et la rigueur factice’) that he believed characterized much American work at the time (p. 114). Not entirely uncritical, Haudricourt was troubled especially by Reichard’s discussion of phonology, noting that it could be understood only when read in conjunction with the work by Hoijer that she was challenging. But the Americans persisted with their censure, none more dismissive than a review by a recent Ph.D. who had ‘one summer’s field trip’ of experience with Navajo. In Studies in Linguistics, the independent journal edited, published, and at times typed by George L.Trager as a vehicle for his own and others’ hyperstructuralism, David L.Olmsted deferred to Hoijer’s review for details and issued ‘a few general statements’ on the ‘mass of confusions’ he found in the Navaho Grammar, particularly ‘of phonetic, phonemic, morphophonemic, and tactical levels’ (1953:49–50). No examples supported Olmsted’s charges, but in the context, none were necessary. Trager’s journal was the home of attacks on those who did not adhere strictly to the terms, the methods, and the goals of the most rigid post-Bloomfieldian structuralism. Sharp as such attacks on more traditional scholars were in the 1940s and 1950s, they pale in comparison to those made later as Trager and his colleagues reacted to new developments in generative phonology (e.g., see Austin 1963, Trager 1963). Rejected on many sides, Reichard certainly lacked intellectual companionship. Parsons had died in 1941, Boas in 1942. They had been the main supporters of her work, financially, intellectually, and personally, and she was left very much alone with their passing. In linguistics, she was alienated from Sapir’s students, Hoijer in particular, and in anthropology there were some fundamental differences with Clyde Kluckhohn. In her own peer group, fellow students from the early 1920s, she might have been closest to Ruth Benedict, who was also interested in Southwest studies, but that relationship had been damaged early on in 1923 when Boas recommended Reichard, and not Benedict, for the teaching post at Barnard that Reichard was to hold for her entire career. What should have been a highlight in Reichard’s career was dimmed by what seems to have been resentment, even jealousy, on the part of other women. The published account of this appointment was written by Margaret Mead in her book on Benedict (Mead 1959), which drew heavily from Benedict’s own diary entries. Benedict very much wanted the Barnard post, and it seems that she and her supporters, including Mead and perhaps Sapir, felt that she should have gotten it: In the very tight economy of those days jobs were for those who needed money. The wife of a professor at Cornell Medical College 173

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[Benedict] did not need money. The position at Barnard College, which would have been the appropriate one for her, Boas was planning to give to Gladys Reichard, who was not married and did need a job. (Mead 1959:342) It is Mead’s version that is repeatedly presented without question, e.g., in Caffrey (1989:106), Modell (1983:167), Babcock (1993:111). But we have only the word of Mead, with her long and intimate relationship with Benedict, that Reichard was given this post because she was unmarried and needed the job. Behind the scenes another purported reason for Reichard’s appointment was in the air. Esther Schiff was Boas’s secretary and occasional associate on field trips to the Southwest from 1919 to 1922. At that time, she married Walter Goldfrank and withdrew from the circle around Boas and from anthropological work, returning in January 1936 following her husband’s death (Goldfrank 1978:98). In conversations over the years, Esther Goldfrank maintained that ‘Reichard got the job…simply because she was Goddard’s mistress’ (personal communication from Victor Golla, 29 January 1997). As one would expect, this was not a view that Goldfrank put down in writing. Her memoirs (Goldfrank 1978) contain not even a hint of the Reichard-Goddard relationship. Goldfrank had neither training nor interest in linguistic work and may have been unaware of the qualifications Reichard possessed for the appointment. Further, Goldfrank’s marriage and the responsibilities of raising her husband’s three sons had brought her ‘anthropological studies almost to a complete stop’ (p. 93), so it is not at all clear that she was sufficiently close to Boas at the time to know his reasons. No one seemed to consider the possibility that Reichard was, in fact, more qualified and more suitable for the position than was Benedict and that Boas based his decision on qualifications rather than on personal status or relationship. The only credential in Benedict’s favor when she is compared with Reichard was Benedict’s rapid completion of the Ph.D., in 1923; Reichard’s degree was not awarded until 1925. But a doctorate-in-hand was not required for initial appointment to a teaching post at Barnard, which was essentially a four-year undergraduate school, not a research institution. And in most other ways, Reichard’s qualifications exceeded those of Benedict. Benedict’s experience and contacts with anthropology at Columbia began only in 1921; Reichard had started working with Boas in 1919. Reichard had extensive teaching experience, six years in the schools before she went to college and, more important, the year 1921–1922 as Assistant in Anthropology at Columbia, when she taught for Boas during his absences from the campus; Benedict had taught only in a girls’ school in California, many years earlier (Goldfrank 1978:35). Reichard was a Research Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley (1922–1923) and had conducted extensive fieldwork on the Wiyot language; Benedict’s experience at the time was limited to New York City library studies. She had done no linguistic work, and the Barnard appointment included the introductory course ‘on the science of language’ 174

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previously taught by Boas, sometimes with Reichard’s assistance. Marital and economic status or personal relationships may have been factors in Boas’s decision to recommend Reichard for the post, but it is dismissive and demeaning to Reichard to present them as her chief qualifications. Indeed, a year after Reichard’s appointment, Boas was recommending Benedict for appointment at Columbia (FB to Nicholas Murray Butler, President of Columbia University, 1 November 1924 FBC). One may note that Benedict’s marital status was unchanged at this point, and in fact when Boas wrote a further supporting letter of recommendation to Dean F.J.E.Woodbridge a few weeks later, he cited Benedict’s husband’s credentials in support of her appointment (29 December 1924 FBC). This appointment was as ‘lecturer in anthropology without salary’ (ibid.), and thus not the paid professional post that Reichard held, but it should be noted that for the academic year 1924–1925 Reichard and Boas himself were the only salaried members listed on the budget of the Anthropology Department at Columbia/ Barnard. Pliny Earle Goddard and Melville Herskovits (1895–1963), both lecturers, were recorded as ‘No salary’ on Boas’s budget sheet for that year (in Boas’s papers at the American Philosophical Society). Their Columbia earnings came from the separately budgeted extension division (see, e.g., Goldfrank 1978:5). Benedict taught off and on at Columbia in various peripheral capacities until 1931, when her appointment as assistant professor with salary was finally approved by the administration (Caffrey 1989: 113–115). Reichard’s response to news of the appointment was enthusiastic. She wrote to Elsie Clews Parsons: ‘Ruth Benedict was made Asst. Prof. at Columbia which is a grand scoop for feminism! If there is another woman in Columbia proper I don’t know who she is’ (GAR to ECP 17 March 1931). She also commented about Boas’s reaction to Benedict’s recent separation from her husband: ‘That upset Papa Franz a lot. I certainly can’t see why. It seems to me bad enough to get “het up” over one’s own affairs and those of the family without going into other people’s emotions’ (ibid.). The separation was certainly not the impetus for the appointment. Boas’s attempts to gain a regular position for Benedict had been going on for years. Recognizing his efforts casts further doubt on Mead’s interpretation of the reasons for Reichard’s appointment to Barnard back in 1923. Unfortunately for Reichard, it was that version of the story that stuck, repeated time after time by Benedict’s biographers.

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When histories of women in science are written, the focus is often on the leading research institutions. In a nearly predictable irony, over time, that has meant a greater visibility for Benedict, at Columbia, than for Reichard, who remained at Barnard. As a case in point, Margaret Rossiter gave full coverage to women’s colleges in her earlier volume, covering the years up to 1940, when few women had places in the major universities (Rossiter 1982). Here Reichard’s contributions to anthropology and her work at Barnard were included. But as more and more women became engaged in science, Rossiter’s attention shifted to research institutions, and so Benedict appeared repeatedly in her second volume, for the years 1940–1972, while Reichard, at the non-research institution, is mentioned only once, in passing (Rossiter 1995). The very success Reichard had in achieving a teaching position early in her career in the long run contributed to her invisibility. Benedict appears to have resented Reichard and to have belittled her and her work (Modell 1983:167). The rivalry between them for professional recognition went on for many years, extending into the 1940s when Benedict was removed from the editorship of the Journal of American Folklore and Reichard was installed as interim editor in her place (Caffrey 1989:279–281). Reichard’s reputation was, of course, affected by this relationship, but it had no direct bearing on her work on language. Benedict was not a linguist and never pretended to be. Indeed, only one other woman from the 1920s Columbia group ever conducted any extended linguistic work, Ruth Leah Bunzel. Primarily a cultural anthropologist, Bunzel worked at Zuni Pueblo, New Mexico, beginning in 1924 when she shared a house there with Benedict (see Fawcett & McLuhan 1988 for a biographical sketch). Her work focused on Pueblo pottery, but she also recorded ceremonial texts under a grant from Elsie Clews Parsons and eventually wrote a grammar of the Zuni language based on material she collected on two trips in 1926–1928 (Bunzel 1933: 394). Bunzel joined the Linguistic Society of America, holding membership from 1928 to 1934, during which time she worked on her Zuni grammar, published in the same volume of Boas’s Handbook of American Indian Languages as Reichard’s Coeur d’Alene (Bunzel 1933). Although the two women crossed paths, no real friendship between them emerges in their writings or correspondence. 176

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Reichard usually worked well with other women, but it is interesting that her closest relationships were with women on the periphery of the academy. Even Elsie Clews Parsons, intellectual force that she was, did not hold an academic appointment during her years of friendship with Reichard. Reichard’s sister Lilian helped in producing ‘the extraordinary photographs which gave her more popular books vitality’ (Smith 1956:914). The warmth of Reichard’s relationships with the Navajo women with whom she worked on weaving and on language comes through clearly in her writings. And in the 1930s, she analyzed Navajo sandpaintings with the wealthy Bostonian Mary Wheelwright and especially with Franc Newcomb, who was married to a Southwest trader. Lamphere describes Reichard, Newcomb, and Wheelwright as ‘a female network’ and ‘the three women who contributed most to the anthropological study of Navajo religion and mythology’ (1993:172). Lyon calls the relationship between Reichard and Newcomb ‘very warm’ although that friendship ended sadly, with Newcomb believing that Reichard had mistreated her over the publication of the book Navajo Medicine Man: Sandpaintings and Legends of Miguelito (Lyon 1989). There were also later difficulties over Wheelwright’s work, particularly about Navajo myths which she apparently recorded, not from a native Navajo speaker, but from Franc Newcomb’s husband Arthur, a white man with minimal knowledge of the language (see correspondence on the matter, Leland Wyman to GAR Spring 1947 GARC). Reichard’s willingness to work and publish with those outside the academy, especially with women but also with Navajo men, at times jeopardized her reputation. Hoijer sneered at her work with Adolph Bitanny (Reichard & Bitanny 1940), and Lamphere reports that Reichard, Wheelwright, and Newcomb were dismissed ‘as collectors of sandpaintings and myth texts but not serious analysts’ (Lamphere 1993:178). This may be one of the reasons why the joint authorship of the earlier sandpainting book (Newcomb & Reichard 1937) was not repeated for the later one (Reichard 1939b). Reichard’s eventual objections to Wheelwright’s work arose over Wheelwright’s unprofessional recording and publishing of Navajo material. Wyman had urged her ‘to let the reader know [in a review] that Miss W’s stuff is of extremely doubtful authenticity’ in order to protect her own reputation as a credible scholar (LW to GAR n.d. GARC). Within the academy, Reichard’s relationships with the men of American anthropology and linguistics were often strained, but she had a special relationship with Boas, living with his family during part of her graduate studies. Virtually every account of that time mentions how the students, both women and men, referred to Boas as ‘Papa Franz,’ and Reichard did so, as well, with the first letter preserved among Boas’s papers addressed to ‘Mama+Papa Franz’ dated 19 November 1922 (GAR to FB FBC), which she wrote while at Berkeley. While the term reveals a closeness, it also suggests a paternalism that imposed intellectual and personal limitations on Reichard and the other women students. It was this that Kroeber objected to in Reichard, and that Margaret 177

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Mead and Ruth Benedict struggled against. And yet, Reichard could never have become a successful linguist without this attachment, for—in the absence of academic course work—learning to ‘do’ linguistics meant having ready access to a senior scholar who would provide guidance and criticisms of work in progress. Too much should not be made of Reichard’s filial relationship to Boas. As noted above, by the time she was working on Coeur d’Alene her letters about her work were reports rather than requests for guidance. Other letters are those exchanged between adult friends, not parent and child, even before then. And there is nothing of filial submission when she tells ‘Papa Franz,’ ‘Thanks for your interest in the Index of illustrations. Your suggestion is utterly out of the question …there is no use in making a list of museum nos.+I think it a total waste of time + print’ (GAR to FB 2 July 1933 FBC). Nevertheless, to others, Reichard remained a student, a disciple of Boas. Recall the characterization of her Coeur d’Alene grammar as work by a student. And at the very end of Reichard’s career, Virginia Gildersleeve, in memoirs as dean of Barnard College, wrote: ‘Almost alone among colleges for women we emphasize the comparatively new science of anthropology. Gladys Reichard is carrying on the great tradition of Franz Boas, that startling and dynamic scholar who established anthropology at Barnard early in its history’ (Gildersleeve 1954:96). A lifetime of work, both ethnographic and linguistic, a dozen books, a score of articles, and at her own institution Reichard still did not have recognition in her own right. She was viewed as merely ‘carrying on the great tradition’ of a great man. The difficulties discussed earlier between Reichard and Sapir, and later Hoijer, need not be repeated here. They were deep and persistent, with few instances of friendly collegiality on linguistic matters. On the anthropological side, however, Reichard’s relations with Clyde Kluckhohn and Leland Wyman were more complex. Letters preserved among her papers at the Museum of Northern Arizona demonstrate that the two male anthropologists took her work seriously and corresponded with her at length, even though they disagreed with both occasional details of her analysis of Navajo myth and religion (discussed in Lamphere 1993:174–176) and with more pervasive characteristics of her scholarship. Wyman wrote to her at one point after she had apparently complained about a review: ‘I shall probably always jump on mistakes in trivia in my reviews. You say, and I quote from your letter, “Certainly I admit to being careless & sloppy”, and I say “you ought to be ashamed to admit it and take every precaution not to be so in the future” (LW to GAR n.d. [probably Spring 1947] GARC). After explaining Kluckhohn’s impatience with inaccuracy, Wyman closed by writing: ‘Hells bells, I don’t know why I should take all this time to try to promote peace, except that I am terribly fond of both of you, and I get tired of being the innocent bystander so-to-speak’ (ibid.). Kluckhohn challenged her on another fundamental issue: ‘your views and mine as to the basic cannons of scientific logic were so far apart that agreement was not to 178

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be hoped for’ (CK to GAR 12 November 1943 GARC). Yet in the same letter he twice expressed appreciation for her cooperation and time and he repeatedly conveyed his feelings of friendship towards her. The few letters from Kluckhohn and Wyman that survive among Reichard’s papers all display this combination of warm personal regard and academic criticism. Unlike the nearly complete hostility with Sapir and Hoijer’s ultimate erasure of her work from his history of American Indian linguistics (1973), there is clear evidence that these anthropologists took Reichard and her research seriously even when they did not agree with her conclusions or found her work exasperating on some counts and unprofessional on others. Her appreciation and acknowledgment of their collegiality is expressed in the Preface to Navaho Religion (1950:xvii). In her obituary for Elsie Clews Parsons, Reichard was clear about her own independent spirit: ‘Many conventions had broken down so that a woman need not fight to be allowed to think; women in anthropology at least did not even question their willingness to do fieldwork or to express their conclusions about it’ (Reichard 1943). Despite this cheerful assessment of life in anthropology for women, Reichard herself often worked alone, in isolation from other linguists and anthropologists. Her appointment to the faculty of Barnard College gave her a great advantage over other women anthropologists of her times, many of whom never achieved an academic position, but it also prompted jealousy and resentment. Barnard was the women’s undergraduate college of Columbia University and Reichard had few graduate students to carry on her work. Lamphere named only seven women anthropologists who took one or more courses with Reichard or who served as her teaching assistant in the more than thirty years she was a faculty member at Barnard: Katharine Bartlett, Frederica De Laguna, Alice Kehoe, Kate Peck Kent, Eleanor Leacock, Marian Smith, and Nathalie Woodbury (1993:178, 181n. 27); none is known for extensive linguistic work. Nor did Reichard enjoy the collegial company of immediate colleagues with similar research interests in Navajo and linguistics. Thus—after the deaths of Boas and Parsons—there were few to defend her abilities and contribute to her academic reputation. Even the reward of promotion that comes at a research institution after a scholar has attained national stature with the publication of major books and articles was very slow at Barnard. Reichard had been on its faculty for nearly thirty years and had published over a dozen books before she was finally promoted to full professor in 1951. As much if not more than to her position at Barnard, the professional isolation that was a part of Reichard’s adult life was due to her choice of synchronic linguistics as one of her main areas for specialization. Especially early on, in the 1920s and 1930s, there were as yet few scholars, men or women, whose focus was so much on linguistics and particularly on the synchronic description of American languages. Even for Sapir, much of the field research remained in notebooks, awaiting posthumous editing and publication. Only Leonard Bloomfield came close to Reichard during these years in actually 179

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publishing extended studies of several different native American languages, and Bloomfield’s books on such languages during his lifetime were collections of stories and texts (Bloomfield 1928a, 1930b, 1934). The more analytical grammars appeared posthumously due to the efforts of Charles F.Hockett (Bloomfield 1958, 1962). Indeed, it was this next generation—influenced and sometimes taught by Bloomfield and Sapir— that formed the core community of American linguists in the 1940s and 1950s. Reichard entered linguistic study as a student of Boas, and she, like many in the academic world, remained committed to the general principles and objectives of the approach in which she was trained. Bloomfield, Kroeber, and a number of others who studied Native American languages in the 1920s and 1930s enjoyed a further advantage that Reichard did not have. Their academic posts and the locales of the languages they studied were in greater proximity. Thus, Kroeber was in California and worked first on California languages, later in the Southwest with Parsons, and then in Mexico (Deacon 1997:205–206, 326–327). Bloomfield grew up in the Great Lakes area and until he moved to Yale following Sapir’s death, all of his academic appointments were there, at Ohio State University 1921–1927 and then at the University of Chicago 1927–1940. His most extensive Native American language studies were carried out with Menomini and Ojibwa, both spoken in that region, along with studies on Cree in Canada that had been funded by Sapir in 1925 (see above). And Harry Hoijer worked on Apache and on Navajo from his base at the University of California, Los Angeles. Reichard, however, was always situated in New York City while the sites of the languages that she studied—Wiyot, Coeur d’Alene, and Navajo—were all in the distant American West. At a time when most travel was by train, bus, or automobile, such distances could be an obstacle. Timing, as well as location, worked against Reichard, and timing is not an insignificant factor in the establishment and maintenance of a scholar’s reputation. In these early years of the study of Navajo, as with other Native American languages, there were many complexities to be analyzed, many decisions to be made. The study that came into print first reached the widest audience and, initially by default, became the authoritative work. In the study of Navajo religion, for example, Reichard and Clyde Kluckhohn came into direct conflict over details and interpretation (see Lamphere 1993:174–178). Within anthropology, Kluckhohn was a very powerful figure, holding a faculty position at Harvard University from 1935, as well as curating posts at the Peabody Museum. His specialization was Navajo ethnology, and when he produced his major overview of Navajo culture and religion in 1946, with Dorothea Leighton (Kluckhohn & Leighton 1946), its long shadow obscured Reichard’s later Navaho Religion (1950), which she cited as an ‘unpublished work’ as early as 1944 (Reichard 1944:vii). Similarly, Kluckhohn and Leland Wyman published an important work on Navajo chants in 1940; until 1944 Reichard was unable to publish the most important chant she had collected in 1938. The delay was caused in part by 180

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limited resources; ultimately, she herself typed and then paid the costs for the privately published Story of the Navajo Hail Chant (Reichard 1944). Reichard herself was much annoyed at publication delays in others’ work, especially for linguistic studies of Navajo: There was a long period (1930–7) of my work on the Navaho religion during which I relied on Sapir and Hoijer for the linguistic material, expecting its publication yearly… Not until 1937 when it seemed that my need of a grammar and dictionary was overwhelming and that theirs was not forthcoming did I start seriously to work independently on the language. (Reichard 1947b:196) But she repeatedly waited to publish her own Navajo materials until after others had put into print their own research. This was the case not only for the religion and chant studies, but also for her Navajo linguistic work, which—excepting only the semantic study co-authored with Bitanny—did not begin to appear until Hoijer started publishing Sapir’s texts (Hoijer 1942) and his own Navaho Phonology (1945a). The time lag between Reichard’s research and its publication was particularly pronounced in the 1940s and 1950s. Earlier work, especially on Navajo social life and weaving, had appeared much more promptly. The dividing line occurred at about the time of the deaths of Parsons and Boas. The loss of their encouragement and support may have contributed to these later delays. Failure to publish promptly contributed to perceptions that seriously affected Reichard’s scholarly reputation. First, because she was so often publishing work she had done years earlier, without updates or revisions, her work was never on ‘the cutting edge’ that is so highly valued in science. Second, she was building a reputation for rigidity, especially in her repeated entanglements with issues involving orthography, which, indeed, was undergoing change at a rather rapid pace during her professional lifetime. And third, these delays, combined with her usual modest— and scientifically sound—statements about tentative analyses and the continuing need to test claims, contributed to a sense of uncertainty, even disorder, in her work. Reichard’s own perception of what was happening was conveyed in her comments about Hoijer’s Navajo studies: the tenets laid down in Hoijer’s work seem dogmatic and therefore final. Navaho is a living, growing representative of a great linguistic family, a language which, because of its diversity and changing form, may lead us to the solution of many Athapaskan problems. It should therefore be open for discussion and the findings, when different from the dogma, should be freely admitted so that new rules may be formulated and new insights exploited. (Reichard 1947b:196) In these remarks, Reichard reveals that she remained committed to the ‘critiques of premature classification and faulty observation’ that had 181

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characterized the immediately preceding generation in Boas’s circle (Deacon 1997:105), and, on the one hand, her protests against dogmatism were well founded. Linguistic studies of Navajo were in their infancy, and much remained to learn of this language spoken at the time by 60,000 people, more than half of whom were monolingual. It was indeed a living language, as it still is. On the other hand, however, cries of dogmatism are a common response against intellectual leaders by those whose work is less accepted, especially when the latter are also the older, more conservative scholars. Reichard sometimes equated dogmatism with theory. That view served to reinforce her longstanding inclination toward the straightforward ‘theory-neutral’ presentation of data, which in her mind also served to preserve important evidence of variation in language, as well as phonetic detail that might be valuable for the comparative work that some others of the time were interested in pursuing. Reichard remained a descriptivist when others were pursuing theory. Since, and as long as, their theory was dominant, her work was disparaged during

Figure 23.1 Gladys Amanda Reichard at the Museum of Northern Arizona, August 1950. Courtesy of Museum of Northern Arizona Photo Archives, Negative No. 12887; reproduced with permission. 182

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her later years and neglected after her death. Many of the most important aspects of Reichard’s conceptions of language and linguistics were contrary to the emerging and then prevailing approach of American structuralism, or postBloomfieldian linguistics, which historians consider as mainstream for the final two decades of her working life, from the mid 1930s through the mid 1950s. This American structuralism was behavioristic, concerned greatly with methodology and procedure, focused on the form of language, especially on phonology, and devoted to the establishment of a scientific discipline that was autonomous in general and independent of the more humanistic fields in particular (see, for example, Hymes & Fought 1981, Murray 1991). Gladys Reichard considered herself a linguist as well as an anthropologist and at various times she held membership in the Linguistic Society of America and both membership and office in the Linguistic Circle of New York. She forged her own conception of language as ‘a living, cultural phenomenon’ (Reichard 1951: 4), a reflection of the inner life of its speakers. Her study of language was the study of human beings, their perceptions and beliefs about their language, the linguistic variations that distinguished them from one another, and the connections between their language and their cultural and religious lives. Meaning was her key to linguistic analysis and comprehensiveness was the goal of her grammars. Sometimes she forced the key and never could she fully meet her goal, but she devoted her life to trying and the resulting body of work remains truly remarkable.

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Part IV

E.ADELAIDE HAHN

24

A LIFE WITHOUT BOUNDARIES

Everything in Adelaide Hahn’s life was connected to everything else. Her home was her school; her school became her career. In an academic world dominated by men, she did what they did. Colleagues were friends; friends became colleagues. She wrote small verses to entertain students and scholars; she described and explained the poetry of Vergil. She published learned studies of the classics; she wrote about their connections to modern life in magazines and the newspapers. She was at once a classicist, a philologist, and a linguist. She remained a New Yorker from her birth on the first day of April in the year 1893 until she died on the eighth of July in 1967 at the age of 74, but Adelaide Hahn drew no boundaries.1 Born a block from the East River in the Yorkville section of Manhattan, Hahn later recalled with great clarity and delight the life of her early childhood in a red Queen Anne house on East 87th Street: all the boats plying on the East River were my familiar friends, from the three lowly Astoria ferry boats (the Haarlem, Bouwery Bay, and Steinway) to the lovely Fall River liners, headed by the queenly Priscilla…. [M]any of the benches in the East River parks [now Carl Schurz Park] were regularly occupied by rows of old men always chattering—very mysteriously as it seemed to me, for, though my background was German, too, I did not speak or understand the language—in German… [W]here the Mayor now has his home [Gracie Mansion]…in those days, I grieve to say, was used as a comfort station and as a storehouse for tools for the men who worked in the parks. Well do I remember that the kindly foreman, lame but vigorous Mr. O’Keefe, brought oil out of it to oil my tricycle, probably more for the sake of my pretty Irish nurse, Mary, than for my sake. I fear it was not ethical of me to accept city-owned oil for my tricycle, but my conscience was not very tender at the age of five or thereabouts. (Herald Tribune 19 June 1954)

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Adelaide Hahn was an only child, named for her mother’s sister Addie. She lived in comfort, the ‘sole concern’ of a mother whose own teaching career in the city public school system ended with marriage to Otto Hahn. About this man almost nothing is known, except that he had emigrated from Austria and at the time he died, he was no longer living with his wife and daughter (Florence J.Bloch to George S.Lane 29 November 1967 HCA). When Adelaide Hahn herself died, the death notices reported her only as the daughter of Eleonore Funk Hahn (1857– 1944). Hahn mentioned her father only once in known documents concerning her life, an anecdote more about her mother than about him: ‘Till I was in my teens, I was her sole concern; and once when she did go to a New Year’s Eve party with my father, the family seamstress was called in to spend the night in order that she might help the two maids take care of me’ (Hunter College Alumnae News 49:7.2[1944]). Adelaide Hahn never left home. The Yorkville house served as school, where her mother taught her at home until the year before she was ready to enter high school. Mrs. Hahn’s ‘great concern was to teach [her daughter] to think,’ and under her guidance Adelaide ‘wrote compositions and memorized poems… analyzed sentences and solved problems’ (p. 3). These memories of her earliest education, written down in 1944 after her mother’s death, naturally reflect exactly the kind of academic work Hahn would pursue for the rest of her life. Eleonore Hahn had graduated from Hunter College (then called the Normal College of the City of New York) in 1875, and she maintained a lifelong allegiance to the school. A tuition-free public institution, at the time the Normal College was not a college at all, but the only public high school for women in the city.2 Its graduates received a certificate and a license to teach. So, as Adelaide approached high school, Mrs. Hahn turned her daughter’s education over to her own institution of secondary schooling. When— ‘to get me used to class-room ways’ —Adelaide was sent to Hunter Model School for one year, and then on to Hunter College High School, her mother ‘always promised that if my report-card did not show all A’s she would give me a nice present to comfort me’ (Alumnae News 49:7.3[1944]). There were few presents. Adelaide Hahn graduated at the head of both her high school and her college class (HCA). It was assumed that she would do her best and she was given ‘what to-day would be called “security”,’ including the security to work on her own, to take intellectual risks, to fail if that is what happened, and to persevere in any case. Once Adelaide had reached her senior year in high school, Mrs. Hahn resumed participation in a wider world, becoming active in women’s civic, educational, and philanthropic clubs, continuing the only outside interest she had allowed herself while her daughter was young—devotion to the Woman Suffrage Party, where she was a district leader. In 1913 she became editor of the Hunter College Alumnae News, a post she held for the next thirty years. Adelaide herself later edited the magazine, ‘out of sentiment,’ she said (EAH to Bernard Bloch 25 July 1949 Bernard Bloch Papers),3 but of course her own 188

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love of Hunter College was always strong. It was a part of her life, as it had been a part of her mother’s. In 1911, Adelaide Hahn entered Hunter College, by then a well-established baccalaureate degree-granting institution. Despite an initial inclination toward mathematics, and to the slight disappointment of her mother, she declared a specialization in classics, with a major in Latin, a minor in Greek, and an extra major in French. At the start of her junior year, she became the Literary Editor and one of five founders of the college weekly, the Bulletin. Her mother had enjoyed creating original rhymes, and Adelaide too wrote and published small poems at the college, especially for official occasions. The annual celebration of the founding of the college in 1870 occasioned a ‘College Birthday Poem’ in 1914, another in 1915, and the lyrics to ‘Hunter,’ a birthday song published in 1915, the year in which Adelaide Hahn received the AB degree. Hahn’s college activities had included language clubs, student government, editorships, and amateur theatrical performances (The 1915 Wistarion [Hunter College yearbook], p. 64), and she graduated with prizes and medals in French, Latin, and Greek and an honorable mention in English literature (HCA). The ‘knock’ in her yearbook entry (see Figure 24.1) was a short verse about her greatest weaknesses (p. 192): E stands for Editor, a clever one, too; A for the rank of the work she can do; H stands for Highest in High School and College. E.Adelaide Hahn has a “corner” in knowledge. Yet there is one thing this genius can’t do. Thread a needle, tie a string? Her Waterloo! With a classmate also named Adelaide, (The 1915 Wistarion, p. 169), Hahn’s college friends referred to her as ‘E.Adelaide,’ and the name persisted for the half century she remained at Hunter. After graduation, she held a number of short-term teaching assignments, a few in local high schools, probably as a substitute language teacher, others teaching French and Latin with the high school, evening, extension, and summer divisions of Hunter, beginning what would become a permanent affiliation with that faculty. She did graduate studies at Columbia University, earned a fellowship permitting full-time studies in 1916–1917, and completed the M.A. in Classics in 1917. Returning to Hunter College, she served as instructor of French until 1921 when she was ‘regularly appointed’ instructor in Latin and Greek. That year she and her mother moved from Yorkville to an apartment at 640 Riverside Drive, overlooking the Hudson River, where each remained for the rest of her life. On 1 September 1925, Hunter College promoted Adelaide Hahn to the rank of assistant professor. In 1929 she successfully defended her doctoral 189

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E.Adelaide Hahn Classical-French Course. Clubs:—Classical, English, French, German, Suffrage, Child Study. Offices:—President Groups 22, 32; Lower Senior Secretary; School Council February ’14 to June ’15; School Council Vice-President ’14– ’15; Secretary Cercle Français ’14– ’15; Classical Club President ’14– ’15; Suffrage Club Secretary ’12– ’14; Chairman Composition Chapter English Club ’14–’15; Echo Staff ’11–’15; Bulletin Literary Editor ’13–’14; Editor-in-Chief ’14–’15; Pedlar’s Pack Editor ’14–’15; Cast: La Jeune Savante, Le Leu de l’Amour et du Hasard, Symposium, L’Avare. [No room here for a knock. See page 192.] Figure 24.1 E.Adelaide Hahn, Class of 1915. The 1915 Wistarion (Hunter College yearbook), p. 64. Courtesy of Archives and Special Collections of Hunter College, City University of New York.

dissertation on ‘Coordination of non-coordinate elements in Vergil’ (see Figure 24.2). Printed the next year (Hahn 1930), it bore the following dedication: TO MY MOTHER ELEONORE FUNK HAHN First, Best, Dearest of Teachers First, Best, Dearest of Friends Adelaide Hahn had already published a number of short articles (discussed below with all of her scholarly work). Now her credentials were complete and her career was fully launched. In 1936 she was promoted to professor and appointed department executive for the Department of Classics. Two years later her colleagues elected her ‘Chairman of Department;’ they continued to reelect her to the position until she retired under Hunter College rules at age 70 (HCA). Hahn wrote of her mother: ‘ardent feminist though she always was[, she] did not believe that a woman could or should combine a career outside the home with the responsibilities of motherhood’ (Hunter College Alumnae News 49:7.2[1944]). Whether Adelaide Hahn herself shared this belief is not known. She did not marry and she had no children. She did have a long and illustrious career and a very full life. 190

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Figure 24.2 Vita prepared by E.Adelaide Hahn and printed at the end of her doctoral dissertation (Hahn 1930).

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25

FRIENDS AND COLLEAGUES

Adelaide Hahn’s best friend was her mother. The two women shared many traits, as mother and daughter often do. One was courage. Mrs. Hahn had, as they said in earlier days, the courage of her convictions. Although public displays were ‘distasteful to her,’ she risked attack from young ‘hoodlums’ when conducting suffrage street rallies. And this woman whose ‘curious distrust of her own powers’ made her a reluctant public speaker nevertheless appeared before boards and committees considering the causes to which she was devoted. In the months before she died, for example, she spoke at the New York Board of Estimate with ‘an ardent plea against curtailment of the budget for the municipal colleges’ and then went to Washington, D.C., to testify before a Senate Committee on the subject of removing the tax on margarine, ‘actuated by her never-failing desire to help the under-privileged, for whom, as she often said, the choice was not between margarine and butter, but between margarine and no spread at all’ (Alumnae News 49:7.3). A feature article on Adelaide Hahn in a college paper described her, too, as ‘a woman of convictions who says what she means and means what she says…a fighter who supports her position on every issue articulately and fearlessly’ (Faculty and Staff News 1:10. no page number [May 1962]). The Hunter Alumni News noted that she ‘had the courage to face down anyone in arguing support of what she considered right and proper’ (2:1. no page number [October 1967]). Both women not only joined organizations but were active participants, attending conferences and serving as officers. The following passage, which Adelaide Hahn wrote about her mother, applied as well to her: ‘She hardly ever missed a convention… When she went…she attended every session; other[s]… got tired and took “time out”, but she was always on hand from beginning to end, one of the first to come and the last to go’ (Alumnae News 49:7.4[1944]). They were committed to excellence in all that they did. Sleep was unimportant if there was proof to be read for the Alumnae News or for a professional journal. Public speeches and lectures deserved and received careful preparation. Even on vacation, intellectual excellence mattered, and from 1937 through 1943 they vacationed together at Chautauqua, a summer educational community in western New York state: 192

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We made our first visit to this unique resort in 1937, when she [Eleonore Hahn] was invited there as a speaker; we immediately became confirmed Chautauquans, returning there every summer. It was on the occasion of our first visit there that we both entered what a Buffalo [N.Y.] paper termed “the most colorful” spelling-match held there in years. She was the audience’s favorite from the first, because she spelled so clearly and unfalteringly that all the thousands in the enormous Amphitheater heard her with ease. When all the forty-eight original contestants had been eliminated except us two, and the audience learned a mother and daughter were trying to spell each other down, and especially when with her usual gay spirits she ceremoniously shook hands with me before we entered our final ordeal, the huge assembly went wild with delight, which I am sure was increased when I finally missed. I can still hear the shocked and pained tone with which she cried, “Why, Adelaide,” the moment I made my mistake. Everybody, including myself, was glad she was the victor; some people thought I let her win, but of course I didn’t; that would have spoiled all the fun for both of us. She believed in doing her best always, and she brought me up to do the same. (Alumnae News 49:7.4– 5[1944]) Eleonore Funk Hahn died at age 87 on 25 July 1944 after an illness of four weeks. Her daughter sought comfort in her work, hoping ‘to get back to my long-neglected research on a big scale as soon as possible’ but recognizing that ‘for the moment I’m not fresh enough mentally—or physically… Yet I do want to work hard, and preferably to do it away from home’ (EAH to BB 29 July 1944). Going to Chautauqua for the remainder of the season was inconceivable without her mother, and she had missed the summer meeting of the Linguistic Society of America at which she had given a paper each year since the summer meetings began in 1938 (see Figure 26.1 on pages 208–210). Hahn turned immediately to friends in the linguistics program at Yale University, volunteering to do routine secretarial work for them so that she could work and have their ‘congenial companionship’ (ibid.). Upon learning that stencil-cutting on the typewriter was ‘the main, if not the only, job needed[,]… precisely the one that I am least qualified for,’ she wrote to Bernard Bloch promising ‘If I went as slowly as necessary, that would diminish my value; but none the less I might be better than nobody’ (ibid.). As editor of Language Bloch was all too familiar with Hahn’s poor typing skills, but he did give her proof to read for the journal (Lane 1967:960), a task requiring close concentration and one at which she was very good. Still, Hahn found it difficult to move immediately back to her own work. She missed filing a major report for her department, the next year writing ‘In 1944, for personal reasons, I failed to prepare my usual annual report. I apologize for this remissness on my part…’ (Report of the Chairman of the 193

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Classics Department for 1943–5 HCA). The following year saw a break in her normal pattern of one major scholarly publication per year. It was at this point that Adelaide Hahn took up the editorship of the Hunter College Alumnae News, succeeding her mother in this service to their alma mater. She held the post until June 1958 when she had to relinquish it to assume the presidency of the Alumni Association of Hunter College (Hunter College Alumni News, June 1958, p. 13). This ‘labor of love’ was carried on in the company of women who were friends as well as co-workers. Florence J.Bloch was the assistant editor, as well as part-time typist for the Department of Classics for much of Hahn’s remaining tenure there (Florence Bloch was not related to Bernard Bloch; the identical last names were a coincidence). Augusta T.Wollheim, a 1928 Hunter College graduate, was advertising editor during Hahn’s editorship and then succeeded her. ‘Gus’ wrote the descriptions of Hahn’s retirement festivities for the Hunter Alumni Quarterly and the Faculty and Staff News (June 1963, pp. 16– 17; 2:5. no page numbers[May 1963]). A few years later, she assisted in administering Hahn’s estate, receiving the bequest of a special necklace (Ruth Lewinson, Counsellor at Law, to Mrs. Albert Wollheim, 26 June 1967, 26 October 1967 HCA). It is not possible to draw a sharp line between teachers, colleagues, friends, students, and sister alumnae in Hahn’s life. In the women’s world of Hunter College, those who began as one could become the other. Luise Haessler, for example, was Adelaide Hahn’s teacher and then her colleague. When Haessler reached her eightieth birthday in 1946, a celebration was planned by the German Department which she had chaired before her retirement at Brooklyn College, to which she had moved from Hunter following the former’s founding in 1930. Haessler had been a Foundation Member of the Linguistic Society of America (see Part I above), and as president in 1946, Hahn was invited to speak at the birthday festivities. The situation was just a bit awkward, but nothing Hahn couldn’t handle. ‘Because I like to speak, I haven’t informed them that Miss Haessler is no longer a member of the LSA—dropped for nonpay [men]t of dues, I believe—and so I’m being distinguished on false pretenses. But I salve my conscience—if any—by the thought that at least I was once her student & later her colleague, & I really…like her’ (EAH to BB 22 June 1946). Alice E.Kober (c. 1907–1950) had traveled the reverse path. A Hunter College student in the 1920s, she had taken classes from Adelaide Hahn. Following her graduation in 1928, she taught alongside Hahn in the Department of Classics at Hunter for two years before moving on to the new Brooklyn College in 1930. Hahn and Kober were teacher and student, then colleagues, but never quite friends. Still, Hahn supported Kober as a scholar, recommending to Bernard Bloch that the Yale University Linguistic Club invite Kober to speak on her work on Minoan (EAH to BB 1 May 1947), and selecting her to present that research as the Hunter Department of Classics annual Earle Lecturer in 1948 (EAH obituary notice of Kober, Alumnae News volume and number unknown, p. 6 [?1950] HCA). 194

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When Alice Kober died, Bernard Bloch asked Hahn not only whether she would write an obituary for Language but also whether she believed Kober’s work as a linguist was sufficiently important to warrant such a notice (BB to EAH 8 June 1950). At one time, he had rejected two submissions from Kober, one a study proposed for the Language monograph series, the other a manuscript on Minoan morphology (Bernard Bloch’s record cards for Kober, 30 December 1940, 13 August 1942). Hahn told Bloch: ‘I really feel quite sad about her. I don’t know whether she would ever have got anywhere in her research; she didn’t seem quite to have the spark that makes brilliant discoveries. Yet perhaps her industry, accuracy, and sense formed [?] a good substitute’ (EAH to BB 9 June 1950). She wrote the obituary (Hahn 1950a) and gave all the credit she could. Her kindness then extended to Kober’s mother and to Alice Kober’s memory. Mrs. Kober offered Hahn ‘some of Alice’s things’ and Hahn responded that ‘Hunter will be glad to have her classical books as a memorial to her—which I think would be nicer than my accepting them personally’ (EAH to BB 3 July 1950). She asked Bloch to send Mrs. Kober a personal letter ‘telling her how good a job Alice had done’ on a review published in Language just before her death (Kober 1950), her only publication in that journal. Bloch did so. Hahn then ordered reprints of the obituary—some for Mrs. Kober and two others: one for the chairman of her department and one for [the] President [of Brooklyn College]… Neither of them appreciated her importance in the field of scholarship; it was only tardily and grudgingly that they promoted her to the Associate Professorship. So I’d like the satisfaction of trying to show them that she was highly thought of…(EAH to BB 24July 1950) It is important to note that Hahn did not support people unless she knew and valued their work. Twice she turned down Bloch’s requests for obituaries (BB to EAH 9 March 1953; EAH to BB 2 June 1962). And she was well known to be direct on matters of promotion and tenure when scholarship did not meet her standards. John J.Meng, president of Hunter College in 1963 when she retired, included these lines in a verse he read at her seventieth birthday party (EAH to BB 31 August 1963): You’ve trained more presidents than all Your colleagues can with ease recall. You’ve raised us up and laid us low, But seldom with a nasty blow. And when it comes to personnel Adelaide can give us hell. Tenure for a perfect dope? Adelaide brings forth the rope! Promotion on some flimsy grounds? Adelaide with wrath abounds! 195

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Hard on presidents she may have been on occasion, but she was fond of George N.Shuster almost from the moment he took on the post of dean and acting president of Hunter College in 1939. To others, though perhaps not directly to Shuster himself, she referred to him as ‘my sweet lamb’ (e.g., EAH to BB 14 January 1954). When her long, technical article on ‘The indefiniterelative-interrogative stem sem-, sm-, smo-’ appeared in Language in 1942, she was ‘eager for the offprints,’ writing to Bloch (17 June 1942): I do want to give one to Pres. Shuster before the summer, in order to regale him as soon as may be with the dedicatory inscription that I have composed to go with it: “To you, our President revered, I give this copy; but be cheered (And put it down, pray, to my credit) I’ll never ask you if you’ve read it.” They had a pleasant relationship, despite their separation by fields (his was English literature) and the administrative hierarchy that could have been a barrier between them, she the chair of the Department of Classics, he the president of the College. Her annual reports went on for pages, often a dozen or two, and were surely more detailed than he wished. But when copies were returned to her it was ‘with genuine expressions of appreciation, which was characteristic of him [Shuster]. But his comments to Prof. Hahn…were more appreciative than in general (and [her] reports were lengthy and single-spaced)’ (personal communication from Eli Arthur Schwartz, Alumni Association of Hunter College, 20 February 1998). The strength and trust in this relationship were critical for the well-being of the Classics Department, which was experiencing the national decline of interest in the classics, discussed below. Adelaide Hahn used humor to promote the subjects taught in her department, sometimes writing skits and plays, always performing in them, and convincing her colleagues to do so, as well. In Spring 1955, the play ‘Very Tragical Mirth’ was scheduled. This was a shadow play, the story of Aeneas and Dido, ‘a burlesque on Books I, II, and IV of the Aeneid’ that Hahn had written and published for the use of other Latin teachers in Latin Notes (1:5.3–4[1924]). The new production featured several faculty members, including Hahn’s friend Thelma DeGraff in three male roles—Aeolus, Bitias, and Ilioneus—because she was ‘reasonably short of hair but not of body.’ Hahn herself would play Venus, qualifying ‘not through features but through [long] hair’ (EAH to Fellow Thespians 25 April 1955 HCA). In addition, ‘To my great joy, we are to have a notable guest star, no less a luminary than President Shuster himself, in the role of the two gods, Jupiter and Neptune (Jupiter doesn’t appear in the original version of the scenario, but I can’t bear to lose this opportunity for type casting, so I’ve written him in)’ (ibid.). Not many professors or department chairs, then 196

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or now, could convince a college president to perform in a comic play where the background music is ‘A Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight’ and the last scene ends with the words ‘knowing what a raging woman can do, our hero weeps, as usual’ (Latin Notes 1:5.4[1924]). Shuster came back to New York from retirement in order to attend her seventieth birthday celebration (Hunter Alumni Quarterly June 1963, p. 16), seated at the head table, of course, with Professor Hahn, President Meng, the current dean, and Professor Emerita Pearl C.Wilson (seating list HCA). As he began his address, ‘“Ladies and Gentlemen,” a soft query came from one EAH, “And me?”’ (Hunter Alumni Quarterly June 1963, p. 17). This comment was characteristic of Adelaide Hahn in her friendships and in many collegial relationships and interactions. She provided clever, kind, witty humor to the academic communities of which she was a part, often poking gentle fun at herself in the process (see Figure 25.1). In the summer of 1960, Hahn discovered that she had breast cancer. At a time when many people avoided the word, she told her friends, writing to Bernard Bloch in detail about how the lump in her breast was discovered and then, without euphemisms: ‘I went into St. Luke’s on July 20, had the operation on July 22, came home on Aug. 3, and sailed [for Greece] on Aug. 6 as planned. The lump was malignant—in other words cancer (why do we all dodge that word?)—so he removed the breast…’ (EAH to BB 11 November 1960). Hahn did not normally write about such personal matters, although when she did so, she was forthright. The revelation of her cancer to Bloch came shortly after the death of Julia Bloch, his wife, and Adelaide Hahn was surely thinking of her own mortality. Bloch had acknowledged Hahn’s letter of condolence, and now she wrote him a long letter, suggesting that while friends could do little to help during the time a loved one is dying, they were important afterwards: ‘I had only about a week’s warning of Mother’s imminent death… I called up my dear friend Thelma DeGraff when I knew what was going to happen, told her about it, and said I didn’t want any letters or phone calls or anything else—I would need my friends when it was all over and I would let them know. Friends do help, but after all each individual is terribly isolated’ (ibid.). This was one of the few times in her correspondence that she revealed her vulnerability. Hahn called on her women friends when the cancer was discovered and appreciated their support as she sought to return to her normally active life: ‘My dear friend Pearl Wilson called Dr. West up on the day of the operation to find out what he had had to do to me and how I was, and said to him, “She thinks she’s going to Greece. Is there any chance of it?” He replied, “Well, to any one else I would have said no, but Miss Hahn is dynamic”’ (ibid.). Three weeks after the removal of her breast, Adelaide Hahn was lecturing on the Greek lyric poets for the ‘Floating Mediterranean Seminar’ aboard the Queen Frederica; two days later she gave a second lecture, on the Greek language (personnel record for 1960 HCA). Thelma B.DeGraff (b. 1900) and Pearl C.Wilson (b. 1882) were colleagues of Hahn at Hunter, both specialists in Greek, both—like Hahn herself—having 197

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Figure 25.1 Professor E.Adelaide Hahn with President John J.Meng (left) and President Emeritus George N.Shuster (right) of Hunter College at a dinner honoring Hahn on the occasion of her seventieth birthday, 1 April 1963, Warwick Hotel, New York City. Faculty and Staff News Vol. 2, No. 5, [p. 6] May 1963. Courtesy of Archives and Special Collections of Hunter College, City University of New York.

earned their doctorates from Columbia University while teaching nearly full time, Wilson in 1917, DeGraff in 1931.1 Wilson had joined the Department of Classics in 1925, the year in which Hahn was appointed assistant professor. She was not a publishing scholar, but she was a serious professional, with membership in the American Philological Association and the Classical Association of the Atlantic States. Hahn relied on her to read galley proof for the chapter on Homer in her book Subjunctive and Optative: Their Origin as Futures (Hahn 1953b:viii). Retired in 1953, Pearl Wilson had a place of honor at the head table when Adelaide Hahn retired ten years later—both professor emerita and dear friend. When Thelma DeGraff succeeded Hahn as chair of the Department of Classics, Hahn wrote to President Meng: ‘Dear John… I am glad you are happy to request Board approval of Professor DeGraff s election as Department Chairman. I am very happy about it myself. She is a person of fine intelligence and of complete integrity, and I think these are the two most important qualities’ (EAH to JJM 17 June 1963 HCA; see also EAH to BB 31 August 1963). DeGraffs career had begun in 1923 as a part-time member of the Latin faculty of Hunter College High School; she taught classics in the evening division and in 1949 was appointed assistant professor at Hunter College. DeGraff, too, was a member of the American Philological Association and the 198

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Classical Association of the Atlantic States, serving on the Executive Committee of the latter from 1942 through 1945. Her membership dues for the Linguistic Society of America were an annual Christmas gift from her friend, Adelaide Hahn (EAH to BB 23 April 1962). It was Thelma DeGraff who wrote Hahn’s obituary in The Classical World (DeGraff 1967). Hahn loved her college and her friends. She did not want to retire when she reached age 70. College rules required it, but she was not quite willing to acknowledge the inevitable, and so there was no official ‘retirement dinner’ as the 1962–1963 academic year ended. Rather, on the first of April, her birthday, ‘one hundred of her friends gathered at the Warwick Hotel’ for a dinner in her honor planned by Florence Bloch, Pearl Wilson, and Augusta Wollheim (invitation to Bernard Bloch 6 February 1963 BBP). Of the other guests, more than a third—thirty four—were women holding the title of Dr., dean, or professor. One more tribute came when President Meng spoke about Hahn at the Spring commencement ceremony, ‘an unprecedented act and a complete surprise’ (EAH to BB 31 August 1963). Hunter gave Adelaide Hahn one more appointment, as lecturer for a graduate course for Fall semester 1963, and then President Meng named her as a delegate of the College to the International Congress of Orientalists in New Delhi. Her last entry in the College personnel records is a report to him of her activities at the conference, written from aboard ship on her way from India to Egypt, Sicily, and Naples. She could not resist one more bit of instruction on ancient languages: ‘a very interesting feature was the chanting of the Vedas by three specialists… The Vedas are probably the oldest examples of Indo-European literature, although, as they were at first transmitted only orally, the Hittite materials antedate them as written documents’ (EAH to JJM 22 January 1964 HCA). She also described ‘riding on an elaborately adorned and painted elephant’ and climbing 120 steps to see the Shiva carvings at the caves at Elephanta: ‘One can be carried up in a chair by four men for four rupees, and down for two rupees more, but I preferred to depend on my own two feet’ (ibid.). At the annual College birthday luncheon in 1965, she was the spokesperson for her Golden Anniversary class, the class of 1915, and she continued as an active member of the Alumni Association Board of Directors until her death (Hunter Alumni Quarterly Fall 1967). She had truly been a member of a family at Hunter College, and the Hunter Alumni News contained not a formal obituary but a tribute to a sister ‘whom everyone [at Hunter] called “E.Adelaide,” even if they had never seen or met her. She was the Scholar Par Excellence. She was the font of all classical knowledge. She was a glory of Hunter’ (vol. II, no. 1, October 1967, no page number). The Monday after her death, flags on both campuses of Hunter College were flown at half-staff. Adelaide Hahn had another circle of colleagues and friends, all of them men, a counterpart to her women friends at Hunter. These were leaders of the Linguistic Society of America and members of the faculty in the linguistics program at Yale University, among whom there were no other women. Her association with them actually began at Columbia University when she was 199

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a master’s degree student enrolled in a course in the comparative grammar of Greek and Latin taught by Edgar Howard Sturtevant (1875–1952) (Hahn 1952a:427). In this way, and perhaps through other course work as well, Hahn was introduced to historical linguistics. When the Linguistic Society of America held its first meeting in New York in December 1924, a meeting organized by Sturtevant, among others, she was there (Language 1.8[1925]). She became a Foundation Member and for the rest of her life was in regular attendance at the society’s meetings. (Her activities with the LSA are discussed in the following chapter.) In 1931, the fourth session of the summer Linguistic Institute organized by the Linguistic Society of America was held at the College of the City of New York. Hahn enrolled for a course in Hittite offered by Sturtevant, now a member of the Yale University faculty, a course in Sanskrit taught by Franklin Edgerton (1885–1963), also of Yale, and a course in Comparative Grammar of Greek and Latin, conducted by George Melville Bolling (1871–1963), editor of the LSA journal Language and a faculty member at Ohio State University (LSA Bulletin 8.9, 12, 14[1931]). The Institute was a continuation of her acquaintance with Sturtevant and the start of new friendships. Hahn recalled it as ‘a wonderful Institute, made memorable for me in that it saw the beginning of my friendship with Franklin and with his great friend…George Bolling…. In that particular Institute, we were all, faculty and students alike, buzzing about one particular problem, the definition of a word; and I took great and unholy joy in sicking Franklin and George on to each other by repeating in each one’s class the conflicting views expressed by the other’ (Hahn 1965a:4). Hahn had enduring friendships with all three, but the relationship was closest with Edgerton and Sturtevant. Their location at Yale, in New Haven, Connecticut, just an hour or so away from New York by train, made possible frequent contact, especially once the Yale Linguistic Club in the 1930s began holding the regular monthly lectures that Hahn attended faithfully for many years and at which she often gave a paper on her current research. A fourth friend, also on the Yale faculty beginning in 1943, was Bernard Bloch, whom she came to know well, especially in his role as editor of Language from 1940 through 1965. They had met earlier, for Bloch, too, had been in attendance at the 1931 Linguistic Institute where participants came together not only in the various classes, but at communal luncheon tables and public lectures (see, e.g., Joos 1967:6). It is through their correspondence, preserved among Bloch’s papers at the Yale University Archives, that we learn much about Hahn’s own career; her own papers were not preserved. References and citations from the Hahn-Bloch correspondence occur throughout here; exchanges dealing specifically with Hahn’s publications in Language are discussed in the chapter on the LSA below. These were all professional friendships among people who enjoyed one another’s company but whose core bond was intellectual. The friends read one another’s articles, discussed one another’s papers at conferences, read page 200

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Figure 25.2 E.Adelaide Hahn with Robert Austerlitz (left) and Hugh Stimson (center) at Yale University, mid 1960s. Courtesy of Sarah Gray Thomason.

proof for one another’s books, and sometimes wrote articles challenging each other’s work. After a ‘heated argument’ with Sturtevant over the manuscript for the second edition of his book The Pronunciation of Greek and Latin (Sturtevant 1940[1920]), for example, Hahn wrote her paper reinterpreting a passage by Quintilian that seemed to claim the Greek letter ‘phi’ had been transliterated as Latin ‘f’ (Hahn 1941), which, Hahn wrote to Bloch, ‘seems linguistically out of the question’ (EAH to BB 8 July 1940). Hahn also read proof for the second edition of Sturtevant’s Comparative Grammar of the Hittite Language and was even listed as co-author, in the expectation that she would write a second volume on Hittite syntax (Sturtevant & Hahn 1951). Galley proof of her book Subjunctive and Optative: Their Origin as Futures (Hahn 1953b) was read by Bolling, and Sturtevant had read the manuscript. He died soon thereafter and she dedicated the book to his memory: ‘…Edgar H. Sturtevant—great scholar, great teacher, great friend’ (Hahn 1953b:v). Hahn and Edgerton enjoyed reading classic Greek and Latin literature together, passing free time in such study during several Linguistic Institutes at the University of Michigan (Hahn 1965a:6). There were also more light hearted moments, as when Hahn drew both Edgerton and Sturtevant in to her love of acting during one summer session: I remember well the histrionic ability unexpectedly displayed by both [Franklin Edgerton] and Edgar Sturtevant at a party…when some of 201

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us acted out proverbial expressions to be guessed by the rest, and under my imperious direction Franklin and Edgar solemnly flapped their arms and assumed awestricken expressions as a pair of angels “fearing to tread.” (Hahn 1965a:6) It was Edgerton who often drove to and from Ann Arbor when the Institutes were held there, and Hahn, who did not drive, was grateful for the rides. And it was he who first suggested to her that she might go to Yale after her mother’s death, and then looked after her when she did: ‘Franklin engaged a comfortable room for me at the Hotel Taft; and during the summer both Leonard Bloomfield (who was also alone, because of the hospitalization of his wife) and I enjoyed many proofs of his bountiful hospitality, in particular numerous Sunday dinners at his beautiful home in Hamden’ (p. 7). Following Edgerton’s retirement from Yale in 1952, he moved to Laramie, Wyoming, but his friendship with Hahn continued. He and his wife Eleanor would call on her whenever they were in New York and she would visit them on her way to meetings in the western part of the country (p. 8). When he died in 1963, she was asked to write some personal reminiscences for the Journal of the American Oriental Society, an organization to which they both belonged, and from that we have an unusually personal public account. Her final reference to him was as ‘my valued and beloved friend’ (p. 8). Her relationship with Sturtevant, once her teacher, was more complicated, for her respect for him was very great and yet she had taken up work in Hittite that sometimes challenged his own. There are few better examples of the connection between personal friendship and scholarly work. However, there is much that we do not know about their friendship. Although some gossip at the time assumed a sexual affair between Hahn and Sturtevant, there is nothing in the surviving letters of either that would corroborate this. Hahn’s longtime colleague Florence Bloch describes their friendship as ‘very, very close, a very strong bond’ but recalls only a single occasion on which Hahn so much as alluded to the possibility that the relationship might have been other than platonic (personal communication 13 November 1998). Hahn wrote no account of Sturtevant corresponding to her personal reminiscences of Edgerton. When she and Bloch agreed that she would write the Sturtevant obituary (Hahn 1952a), he specifically asked her to concentrate on Sturtevant’s work as a scholar and a ‘moving spirit’ in the Linguistic Society of America; ‘personalities, of course, should be played down’ (BB to EAH 5 July 1952). Later writers sometimes referred to Hahn as Sturtevant’s ‘student’ or ‘disciple’ (e.g., Lane 1967:958; Hall 1975:117). Although technically that may have been correct for the early years of their acquaintance, it misrepresents the intellectual relationship, which was a balance between her respect for his work and her own independence as a scholar. When Sturtevant wrote to her that one of her articles (Hahn 1942) ‘upset many notions that I was virtually certain of, and, for the moment, I am simply dizzy,’ she was somewhat ambivalent, 202

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writing to Bloch: ‘Edgar’s comments thrilled and yet saddened me a bit’ (EAH to BB 17 June 1942). Years later she was rather annoyed when Sturtevant did not accept her corrections for the second edition of the Comparative Grammar of the Hittite Language that carried both their names (EAH to BB n.d. [Fall 1951]; 10 April 1964), a joint project in the planning since the mid 1930s (Sturtevant to Pearl Wilson 29 June 1944 HCA). He found her work interesting and challenging. Comments similar to those above regarding her 1942 article appeared in the letter he wrote to Pearl Wilson about a forthcoming paper by Hahn in the Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association (Hahn 1943). Sturtevant described Hahn’s work as ‘a remarkably incisive account…quite definitive…she had completely upset some statements on this topic which I have published’ (EHS to PW 29 June 1944 HCA). Hahn was proud of her success in persuading Sturtevant to accept a lectureship at Hunter College following his retirement from Yale in 1943. For seven semesters, between 1944 and 1948, Sturtevant commuted once a week from New Haven to New York to conduct a graduate course in Hittite or linguistics (Hahn 1952a:421). In the first year of this arrangement, he taught Introduction to Linguistic Science to forty three students and Languages of the World to twenty six; in her report to the president for 1943–1945 Hahn called his presence ‘the greatest achievement of the Department during this period’ (HCA). The success of his courses encouraged her to build the graduate degree program in linguistics described below. While she defended his work from what she considered unjust attack after his death (e.g., in a review, Hahn 1955), Hahn was not uncritical of it. She assisted the family in sorting and distributing his books and papers, at their request choosing those volumes she wished to have for herself (EAH to BB 23 August 1952; EAH to Grace Sturtevant 23 August 1952 BBP). In the process a paper Sturtevant had written was discovered, and when Bloch asked her opinion, she responded: ‘He examined passages in which they [certain adverbs in Hittite] occurred, and decided (largely by means of translation, which is no use) what each passage meant and therefore how the particle was used. I don’t think he was getting anywhere…’ (EAH to BB 7 November 1954). In an era when there were few women in linguistics, Adelaide Hahn enjoyed the friendship and the respect of these men, which complemented the love and pride that came to her throughout her career from the women at Hunter College. But it would misrepresent her experience to ignore the disrespectful attitudes and behaviors of some younger linguists during the last two decades of her life. Gender and generation are, of course, often complicating factors in professional relationships, and this seems to have been especially true in the 1950s in American linguistics. The group referred to variously as American structuralists or post-Bloomfieldian descriptivists—almost entirely male—had replaced historical scholars at the center of the discipline. They and their students were sometimes less than tolerant of older approaches, and of older linguists, and Adelaide Hahn was a member of that older generation, both 203

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intellectually and chronologically. In fact, during the later 1950s and the 1960s, she was one of the few representatives of that cohort still active in the field. This, and her gender, made her a target. With her friends, she enjoyed relationships that, because they were based on respect, permitted good-natured teasing about such matters as her New York accent and her preference for wearing hats on what were then more formal occasions such as lectures, conference sessions, and receptions—the occasions on which men wore suits, long-sleeved shirts with cuff links, and ties. Bloch, for example, fondly acknowledged to her ‘my caddish sneers at your hats’ (BB to EAH 27 July 1949). And she herself would join in, in typical fashion poking a bit of fun at herself, writing to Bloch that she was going to Ann Arbor for the 1950 Linguistic Institute ‘And I have some new hats, for your special benefit’ (EAH to BB 9 June 1950). Hearing some of this from her friends, however, others picked up on the gentle humor, turning it into sneers and snickers and making Hahn the butt of jokes by some of the faculty and students at the Linguistic Institutes and at the linguistics talks she continued to attend at Yale. Her only mention of such behavior in the correspondence with Bloch came after a hoax of some kind was played on her at Yale in February 1946. It made her angry; practical jokes were unkind, she said (EAH to BB 3 March 1946). Had they known Hahn and her work, the jokes and the sneers might not have happened, but younger people did not really know her at all. Linguistics had changed over the decades. When Bloch first took over Language he and Hahn discussed the kinds of articles he planned to publish, and she readily agreed with a comment he made that ‘any phase of linguistics should be, and could be, interesting to any linguist’ (EAH to BB 6 July 1941). But by the late 1940s and certainly in the 1950s many people were no longer reading work outside their own theoretical approach or their own area of specialization. And unlike more recent times when faculty and graduate students are on a more collegial basis, in Hahn’s day there had been a distance, one that she maintained throughout her life. In her own experience, a person earned collegiality and friendship with established scholars by acquiring knowledge and producing scholarship of one’s own. Other people’s students did not especially interest her. In her opinion, they were not yet sufficiently prepared intellectually for the kind of scholarship that demanded extensive knowledge of languages and texts, and she made little effort to converse with them at meetings or more social gatherings. The attitude was reflected early on in a review she wrote for Classical Weekly that concluded: ‘It is questionable whether masters’ theses are worth writing, or, being written, are worth printing’ (Hahn 1937:258). There was ‘nothing here of pomposity and self-importance,’ as Henry Hoenigswald said of George Bolling’s similar unwillingness to deal with ‘a beginner’s or relative outsider’s natural ignorance’ (Hoenigswald 1964:330). Both Hahn and Bolling welcomed new contributions, as, for example, Hahn did with her former student Alice Kober. But the contributions came first; collegial status was earned. 204

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Hahn was not insensitive to the needs of young scholars. In 1951, it was she who persuaded the LSA to allow student membership rates for part-time students (discussed in the following chapter), and in 1954 when she first learned that Hunter College was providing financial assistance for attendance at meetings of learned societies, she wrote to President Shuster: I never knew anything of the sort was possible at Hunter. I go to four meetings of learned societies each year, no matter where they are, and present a paper at each. I have been doing so for many years, practically without exception… In the early days these trips involved a certain degree of financial sacrifice; but I did not think of it as a sacrifice because I wanted them so much. It would be very pleasant to receive some financial assistance now. However, I do not urge this if it would be at the expense of eager and worthy young scholars who need it more than I. (EAH to GNS 8 October 1954 HCA) The subject of familiarity raises the matter of first names. As noted earlier, ‘About a decade after she had started teaching at Hunter undergraduates began talking with awe of a member of the Classics Department, whom everyone called “E.Adelaide,”’ though the students did not address their teacher in this way (Hunter Alumni News 2:1. no page number [October 1967]). She always signed her name ‘E.Adelaide Hahn’ or ‘E.A.H.’ —for her verses, letters to the editor, announcements in alumnae publications, department memos, scholarly work (Hunter Alumni Quarterly Fall 1967, p. 5). The ‘E’ apparently stood for ‘Emma,’ at least according to the listing in Who’s Who of American Women (1958, p. 524). Hahn herself never used this name. Her friends, women and men, called her ‘Adelaide.’ As with the jokes, however, people who were not her close friends sometimes assumed the same familiarity, even in print, even on the same pages in the same works where they referred to her male contemporaries by more formal last name (Hall 1975:93; Joos [1986]:6). It was, of course, not so much the familiarity as the inequality that mattered. The obituary written by George S.Lane (1902–1981) for Language is a special case (Lane 1967). Lane was a near-contemporary and a friend of Hahn, and so he was part of the close group with whom she exchanged quips and teasing. But he was also part of an academic world where ‘women in science were not acclaimed for their achievements but rather were singled out for their oddities’ (Rossiter 1995:368). His obituary dwelt far more upon Hahn’s personal characteristics than upon her scholarship. Lane referred frequently to ‘Adelaide’ and that also seems lacking in respect, especially when read in the context of all of the obituaries published in the same journal in the years prior to 1967: for Alfred Louis Kroeber (Language 37.1– 28[1961]), John Rupert Firth (37.191–200[1961]), Franklin Edgerton (40.111– 123[1964]), George Bolling (40.329–336[1964]), Alf Sommerfelt (42.612– 205

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614[1966]), Louis Hjelmslev (42.615–619[1966]) Joshua Whatmough (42.620– 631 [1966]). These men had been contemporaries of Adelaide Hahn. They were all referred to by last name throughout the obituaries, excepting only an occasional use of first name in accounts of childhood and full name in opening and closing lines. But the times were changing and the obituary for Hahn was at the apex of an important shift in naming. From obligatory last name only, naming became variable, dependent perhaps on the relationship of the writer to the deceased (although that requires formal study). The previous issue of the same volume of Language was dedicated to Bernard Bloch, and the lead item was his obituary, written by Martin Joos (Joos 1967). Throughout, Joos referred to ‘Bernard.’ Since 1967 obituaries have varied on this matter: for Harry Hoijer (Language 53.169–173[1977]) and Stanley Newman (63.346–360[1987]); last names were used; for Albert Henry Marckwardt (52.667–681 [1976]) we find ‘Al;’ for Fred Walter Householder (73.560–570[1997]) there is ‘Fred;’ but for Mary R.Haas (73.826–837[1997]), the references are to ‘Haas.’ Perhaps the move toward first names and lesser formality was due in part to Adelaide Hahn’s long and familiar presence among the members of the Linguistic Society of America.

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ADELAIDE HAHN AND THE LINGUISTIC SOCIETY OF AMERICA The Linguistic Society of America was an integral part of Adelaide Hahn’s life, personally and professionally. Here some of her most important friendships were formed and here she supported the developing discipline of linguistics and presented much of her research on ancient and classical languages, especially Hittite and Latin. Throughout the history of the LSA during her lifetime, Hahn attended almost every meeting, both the annual sessions held each December starting with the founding of the society in 1924 and the summer sessions that began on a regular basis in 1938. (For a record of her LSA meeting participation, see Figure 26.1.) At the very first meeting she was one of those discussing the papers presented, the only woman to speak (Language 1.13[1925]), and although she was not recorded as speaking at the second annual meeting, it is likely that she was one of those noted as ‘others’ among the discussants.1 That was the last annual LSA meeting not to record Hahn’s participation in presentations and discussions until later in her life, when her few absences were due to the death of her mother and then to her own illnesses. From 1931 onward she also became a regular participant in the Linguistic Institutes that the LSA had begun in the summer of 1928 under the direction of Edgar Sturtevant. Here she could sit in on classes and lectures, have lunch with colleagues, and enjoy an even more rigorously intellectual summer than those vacations she took with her mother to the Chautauqua. She was among the first to pledge support to the Institute’s Endowment Fund (LSA Bulletin 6.6[1930]), but the Institutes were suspended for lack of funding during the early years of the Great Depression. When they resumed, at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Adelaide Hahn was present to offer a special lecture, usually on Hittite, nearly every year (HCA). Twice she was a full member of the faculty, the first time at the University of Michigan in 1947, the second at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1951 as the [Hermann and Klara H.] Collitz Professor of comparative Indo-European linguistics (see Part I of this book for discussion of the controversial naming of this professorship). Adelaide Hahn was the first woman elected to serve on the LSA Executive Committee, for the year 1930; she was elected again for 1934. In 1940 she was 207

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Organization meeting 1924 New York City. Lg 1.8, 13. Registered; did not present a paper; one of six people to discuss the opening address by Hermann Collitz. 2nd annual meeting 1925 Chicago, IL and Ithaca, NY. Lg 2.64. Registered at Ithaca but did not present a paper. 3rd annual meeting 1926 Cambridge, MA. Lg 3.41. The ab urbe condita type of expression in Greek and English. 4th annual meeting 1927 Cincinnati, OH. Lg 4.62. On confusion of terms for mind and body in Vergil. 5th annual meeting 1928 New York City. Lg 5.64. A study of zeugma in Vergil. 6th annual meeting 1929 Cleveland, OH. Lg 6.103. A linguistic fallacy (as observed in Vergil), that the relation of a to b is identical with that of b to a. 7th annual meeting 1930 Washington, DC. Lg 7.76. Confusion of geographical and ethnological terms. 8th annual meeting 1931 Richmond, VA. Lg 8.74. Confusion of the name and the object that it represents. 9th annual meeting 1932 New Haven, CT. Lg 9.114. Does Hittite indicate a development of the relative from the indefinite? 10th an nual meeting 1933 Washington. Lg 10.70, 82. (a) Light from Hittite on Latin indefinites, (b) The development of Hittite indefinites. 11th annual meeting 1934 Philadelphia, PA. Lg 11.54. Parataxis in Hittite. 12th annual meeting 1935 New York City. Bul 9.18, 20. (a) The origin of the conjunctions Greek ö(ö t ?), Latin quod, Hittite kwit (b) Paper ‘offered by the Philological Association…presented by title only’: The dum proviso clause. 13th annual meeting 1936 Chicago, IL. Bul 10.18. Hittite man. 14th annual meeting 1937 Chicago, IL and Philadelphia, PA. Bul 11.20, 21. (a) At Chicago: The development of the non-restrictive relative clause in Hittite. (b) At Philadelphia: Paper ‘presented on behalf of the Philological Association’: Hittite kwiskwis. 1 st summer meeting 1938 Ann Arbor, MI. Bul 12.5. The position of the subordinate clause in Hittite. 15th annual meeting 1938 New York City. Bul 12.21. The development of voice in non-finite verb-forms. 2nd summer meeting 1939 Ann Arbor, MI. Bul 13.7. The sequence of tenses in Hittite. 16th annual meeting 1939 Philadelphia, PA. Bul 13.30. The meaning and use of the conjunctions in the Hittite law-code. 3rd summer meeting 1940 Ann Arbor, MI. Bul 14.13. Quintilian on Greek letters lacking in Latin and Latin letters lacking in Greek (12.10.27–29). 17th annual meeting 1940 Providence, RI. Bul 14.32. Latin dum in main clauses. 4th summer meeting 1941 Chapel Hill and Durham, NC. Bul 15.6. Are English pronouns losing all case distinctions? 18th annual meeting January 1942 Indianapolis, IN. Bul 15.25. A new Indo-Hittite indefiniteinterrogative-relative stem.

Figure 26.1 E.Adelaide Hahn: participation at meetings of the Linguistic Society of America, 1924–1967. Source appears following the location of the meeting; Lg is Language; Bul is LSA Bulletin. 208

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5th summer meeting 1942 Chapel Hill and Durham, NC. Bul 16.5. The shift of a Hittite conjunction from the temporal to the conditional sphere. Annual meeting scheduled for December 1942 canceled. 6th summer meeting 1943 Madison, WI. Bul 17.4. The Hittite use of the present tense to refer to the past. Annual meeting scheduled for December 1943 canceled. 7th summer meeting 1944 Madison, WI. Bul 18.4. No record of attendance; paper presented ‘by title only’: The use of verbal nouns and adjectives in Latin and Hittite. 19th annual meeting 1944 New York City. Bul 18.19. Read the paper that had been ‘presented by title only’ at 7th summer meeting. Summer meeting 1945 not held, but Hahn presented a paper at a luncheon conference at the Linguistic Institute, 26 July 1945, Ann Arbor, MI. Bul 19.16, 17. Were the moods tenses? Regional meeting 1945 New York City. Bul 19.4. Changes in Hittite. 8th summer meeting 1946 Ann Arbor, MI. Bul 20.4. Was there originally a specific reflexive pronoun? 21st annual meeting 1946 Chicago, IL. Bul 20.16. The development of parataxis into hypotaxis (Presidential Address). 9th summer meeting 1947 Ann Arbor, MI. Bul 21.4. Latin verb forms in -bam and -bo. 22nd annual meeting 1947 New Haven, CT. Bul 21.18. The type calefacio. 10th summer meeting 1948 Ann Arbor, MI. Bul 22.4. The use of the Hittite verb. 23rd annual meeting 1948 New York City. Bul 22.16. Syntax of non-finite forms of the Hittite verb. 11th summer meeting 1949 Ann Arbor, MI. Bul 23.4. The moods in Indo-European. 24th annual meeting 1949 Philadelphia, PA. Bul 23.21. Why an injunctive? 12th summer meeting 1950 Ann Arbor, MI. Bul 24.4. The vocative in Hittite. 25th annual meeting 1950Chicago, IL. Bul 24.17. Hittite personal pronouns. 13th summer meeting 1951 Berkeley, CA. Bul 25.8. Present subjunctive from past indicative. 26th annual meeting 1951 New York City. Bul 25.17. Plautus’ use of fuam vs. siem: Its bearing on the origin of the -a- subjunctive. 14th summer meeting 1952 Bloomington, IN. Bul 26.5. The Latin subjunctive in subordinate clauses. 27th annual meeting 1952 Cambridge, MA. Bul 26.18. Tense in Hittite. 15th summer meeting 1953 Bloomington, IN. Bul 27.5. The words for ‘one’ and ‘first’ in Hittite. 28th annual meeting 1953 New York City. Bul 27.16. Partitive apposition in Hittite. 16th summer meeting 1954 Chicago, IL. Bul 28.4. Akkadian -ya=Hittite -mis. 29th annual meeting 1954 Detroit, MI. Bul 28.6. No record of attendance. 17th summer meeting 1955 Washington. Bul 29.4. A confirmation of Brugmann by Hittite. 30th annual meeting 1955 Chicago, IL. Bul 29.22. Hittite construction in expressions of naming. 18th summer meeting 1956 Ann Arbor, MI. Bul 30.3. Neuter n-stems in Old Persian. 31st annual meeting 1956 Philadelphia, PA. Bul 30.19. Words for ‘chin’ and ‘knee’. 19th summer meeting 1957 Ann Arbor, MI. Bul 31.3. No record of attendance. 32nd annual meeting 1957 Chicago, IL. Bul 31.20. ‘Naming’ constructions in Germanic.

Figure 26.1 Continued 209

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20th summer meeting 1958 Ann Arbor, MI. Bul 32.9. The ‘Greek accusative’ in Latin. 33rd annual meeting 1958 New York City. Bul 32.27. ‘Frozen’ genitives. 21st summer meeting 1959 Ann Arbor, MI. Bul 33.6. The distinction between emphatic and nonemphatic personal pronouns in Hittite. 34th annual meeting 1959 Chicago, IL Bul 33.22. The meaning of Hittite mer-. 22nd summer meeting 1960 Austin, TX. Bul 34.9. Prevented by illness from attending. 35th annual meeting 1960 Hartford, CT. Bul 34.26. Hittite sarhh- equals Indo-European ser-. 23rd summer meeting 1961 Austin, TX. Bul 35.10. On the danger of not checking references. 36th annual meeting 1961 Chicago, IL. Bul 35.24. Naming constructions in the New Testament. 24th summer meeting 1962 Seattle, WA. Bul 36.7. The case of the antecedent of the relative. 37th annual meeting 1962 New York City. Bul 36.25. Verbal nouns and their constructions. 25th summer meeting 1963 Seattle, WA. Bul 37.8. A note on the reflexive pronoun. 38th annual meeting 1963 Chicago, IL. Bul 37.22. The syntax of the Hittite verb. 26th summer meeting 1964 Bloomington, IN. Bul 38.9. The supposed generalizing reflexive in Indo-European. 39th annual meeting 1964 New York City. Bul 38.35. Prevented by illness from attending. Paper ‘read by title only in the absence of the author’: Attraction in naming-constructions. 27th summer meeting 1965 Ann Arbor, MI. Bul 39.9. Read the paper that had been presented ‘by title only’ at the 39th annual meeting. 40th annual meeting 1965 Chicago, IL. Bul 39.27. The Latin gerund and gerundive. 28th summer meeting 1966 Los Angeles, CA. Bul 40.8. Queen Puduhepa’s namingconstructions. 41st annual meeting 1966 New York City. Bul 40.28. The accusative of specification in Gothic. 29th summer meeting 1967 Ann Arbor, MI. Bul 41.6. ‘the President announced with sorrow the death of three valued members of the Society, Professors [Uriel] Weinreich, [Adelaide] Hahn, and [Morris] Swadesh.’

Figure 26.1 Continued

chosen vice president, but in those years this did not mean automatic succession to the presidency, as it does now. Other major committee work for the society included three terms on the Nominating Committee, in 1929, 1932, and 1957– 1959. Except for Helen Tanzer’s work at the Organization Meeting (mentioned in the Introduction), the Nominating Committee of the Society otherwise consisted year after year entirely of men, a pattern not disturbed until Carlota Smith began her service just one year prior to the Society’s 1974 golden anniversary. Another service Hahn performed still benefits student members of the Society. When the constitution was amended in 1951, she argued against the requirement of full-time status for reduced fee student membership. She wrote to Bloch: I’m a little troubled about the requirement full-time. You don’t get 210

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them at Yale; but at Columbia and even at Hunter, there are highly worthy graduate students who study part-time and work part-time, perhaps as teaching fellows or in other low-paid jobs. These deserve the benefit of student membership, I think; they are not likely to be so affluent, though they’re working, as to justify our refusing them this slight aid… Could you say something like this? —Any undergraduate or graduate student regularly enrolled as a candidate for a degree? (EAH to BB 20 August 1951) Perhaps she was thinking back to the days of her own graduate studies, when she taught every year but one. In any case, the constitution as amended in 1951 made no reference to full-time study as a requirement for student status, nor does it today (LSA Bulletin 25.19[1952]; 158.3[December 1997]). A different effort for the 1951 meeting was less effective. In 1943, when the Linguistic Circle of New York was started, Hahn attempted to convince the founders to put their resources into expanding Language rather than beginning a journal of their own (EAH to Wolf Leslau 28 June 1943 BBP). That effort was futile; the Linguistic Circle of New York was founded in part because some of its earliest members felt unwelcome in the Linguistic Society of America and excluded from its journal (see Word 45:1.1–43 [1994] for recollections by several). When she was appointed by the LSA to chair the local Committee on Arrangements for the December 1951 LSA meeting in New York, she urged Archibald Hill (1902–1992), LSA secretary-treasurer, to have the committee include three prominent members of the Circle in order to develop closer relations between the two organizations (EAH to AH [?] October 1951 BBP). The appointments were made (LSA Bulletin 25.16[1952]), but relations were not noticeably enhanced. Of the three Circle members, two did not even register for the meeting, only one made so much as a single comment in the discussions following the twenty eight papers presented (pp. 16–18). Adelaide Hahn was elected president of the Linguistic Society of America for the year 1946, the first woman so chosen and the only woman to hold that post until the election of Mary Haas almost two decades later. The election process was somewhat unusual due to travel restrictions imposed by the U.S. government because of wartime conditions. Arrangements were made by the Executive Committee for a mail ballot election of officers for 1946. No additional nominations of officers were received and ‘the Executive Committee ratified the vote by ballot of the membership of the Society’ (LSA Bulletin 19.10[1946]). A similar process appears to have been followed in the preceding war years. Perhaps not surprisingly, however, it seems that some members, at the time and later, suspected irregularities, a disparagement kept alive in more recent years by the misleading account in Martin Joos’s unofficial, privately printed, and often undocumented Notes on the Development of the Linguistic Society of America 1924–1950 (Joos [1986]), where he suggested that the Executive Committee had acted essentially by fiat (p. 2). But neither Hahn nor those of her 211

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contemporaries in LSA leadership positions at the time accepted her election as anything other than legitimate, and for years thereafter she participated in Executive Committee meetings by a provision in the LSA constitution that granted this privilege to former presidents. There was one sense in which Hahn’s election could be considered irregular, and that is the number of years that passed before she was chosen to the office. Like most previous presidents, she was a Foundation Member, and she had been more active in the affairs of the society than several chosen before her.2 In fact, for 1945 the Society had elected Yuen Ren Chao (1892–1982), who had become a member in 1939, just five years before his election. It could be argued that by the usual quantitative, and perhaps qualitative, criteria, her record of publication at the time of her election did not match the achievements in scholarship and research of her predecessors, most of whom were older and significantly more advanced in their careers. In 1945, the year of her election, Hahn had published a dozen scholarly articles (four of them in Language); her only book was the doctoral dissertation (Hahn 1930). Of course, one could note in response that at that point Chao’s sole publication in the LSA journal was a book review (Language 17.60–67[1941]). Such comparisons are difficult to make. Hahn was proud to be the first woman president of the LSA. Indeed, whenever she was the first woman in any official capacity, she made careful notes for the personnel records of Hunter College and in her annual reports as department chair. Within and in association with Hunter and the world of professional women in New York City, of course she had many leadership positions, more than a quarter century chair of the Department of Classics, more than a dozen terms ‘chairman’ of the Business and Professional Women’s Group of Phi Beta Kappa Alumnae, annual speaker before the Federation of Women’s Clubs. But for the professional societies that were so predominately male, for a woman to hold office, in some cases simply to become a female member, was noteworthy. Adelaide Hahn carefully noted for the record: when she was elected to the New York Oriental Club in May 1940, ‘women were not admitted until this year;’ when elected vice president of the American Oriental Society, ‘the first woman to hold any office in this body in the course of its 110 years of existence;’ when selected as Collitz Professor for the LSA in 1951, ‘the fourth person and the first woman to occupy this chair;’ when chosen to speak for the United States at the final meeting of the Eighth International Congress of Linguists in Norway in 1957, ‘the other four [speakers] were all men’ (HCA). For Hahn the importance of these appointments lay in the recognition that women were fully capable of scholarly work. Such recognition was routine at Hunter, of course, but not always in the wider world. She responded with amusement and some disdain to a remark from a European colleague who, after an address that she made at the Congress in Norway, ‘said it was wonderful to see a woman speaking so bravely before so many men!’ The man was, she wrote to Bloch, ‘stupid…and somewhat senile into the bargain’ (EAH to BB 29 March 1958). 212

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Adelaide Hahn was a careful, thorough, and very impressive scholar. Her leadership positions in these organizations were earned through that scholarship. Throughout her career, every claim, every idea, every example was carefully researched and referenced. It was not uncommon for an article of a dozen pages to contain fifty or more footnotes (e.g., Hahn 1933, 13 pages, 101 notes; Hahn 1936, 13 pages, 86 notes; Hahn 1953a, 13 pages, 51 notes; Hahn 1957a, 12 pages, 58 notes; Hahn 1965b, 11 pages, 64 notes). Her books and her reviews were documented just as thoroughly. For example, there were 394 notes in Subjunctive and Optative (Hahn 1953b), a slim volume of 157 pages and—in the style of the time—236 numbered paragraphs. A long review of Syntaxe latine, 35 pages in Language, contained 158 notes (Hahn 1954b). Editors might criticize the appearance of her manuscripts and even the importance of her topics, others sometimes challenged the appropriateness of her methods or the soundness of her conclusions, but rarely if ever did a colleague find fault with her scholarship. In one instance where an objection was raised, the point was so minor that it barely warranted mention. The issue was a footnote in Hahn 1942 (p. 90n. 36). She had noted that Giuliano Bonfante (b. 1904) in an earlier work had not taken into account the lack of aspiration in a particular form in a single text. Bonfante responded that his wording when taken in conjunction with a book on the subject by a third author would cover the case at issue. Bernard Bloch on his record card for Bonfante’s submission to Language referred to it as a ‘silly “letter”’ and with a note of disdain titled the submission ‘Psilosis again’ when he published it in the ‘Miscellanea’ section (Language 20.89[1944]).3 With the possible exception of Hahn’s last book, published posthumously (Hahn 1969), none of her work reached print until she had checked her references at least twice, an effort that delayed some publications and resulted in costly changes in proof. Typical of her exchanges with the editor of Language is the following comment: ‘there are a number of inconsistencies [in the text], which distresses me, for I am a perfectionist about the form of my articles, though not, I regretfully admit, about the appearance of my typescripts’ (EAH to BB 21 August 1953). Hahn herself was always willing to pay the cost of excessive author’s corrections, but the consequences of her near obsession with accuracy on the printed page exasperated Bloch. Himself a perfectionist, his patience was more than sufficiently tested by Hahn’s deplorable typing skills, which resulted, as he noted on one occasion, in a ‘hideous and incompetent MS’ (BB record card for Hahn 1949). His criticisms referred to the physical properties of the manuscripts, not to their content, as evidenced on another occasion when he recorded: ‘unbelievably wretched MS, but (in general) competent and sure-footed, if (as I think) trivial’ (BB record card for Hahn 1961b). Bloch was blunt with Hahn regarding the state of her submissions to Language, but they were friends and after several years he took to calling the work she submitted a ‘pediscript.’ He coined the word to suggest that perhaps she was typing with her feet, ‘an inference from the appearance of the pages’ (BB to EAH 22 July 1949). With good humor and self recognition, Hahn accepted the designation and used it in a response (EAH to BB 26 July 1949). 213

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A demanding and meticulous editor, the record cards Bloch kept for each item submitted during his years as editor of the journal contained frequent commentary on the physical condition of manuscripts received. He, and occasionally a member of the Publications Committee that served as an editorial board, often retyped all or portions of submissions. Martin Joos wrote of a postcard Bloch sent to a contributor: ‘It is a typical Bloch postcard, filled solidly with typing and without blemish—no erasure, no alteration’ (Joos 1967:11). Hahn could not accept the same standard for contributors nor was she ready to accept Bloch’s argument that perfect clarity was necessary for the printer (e.g., BB to EAH 10 March 1942, 27 July 1949). When he chided her on the condition of one of her manuscripts (for Hahn 1949), she responded with a challenge: I think the explanation is that you yourself are exquisitely neat and superlatively skillful…and you can’t endure any handiwork that is not so near perfection as your own… I think it would be fun—and a bit of sport as well as of scientific experiment—if just once you’d send the printer a MS that didn’t look as you thought it should (maybe even my pediscript?) to see what he’d do with it. (EAH to BB 26 July 1949) Bloch accepted the challenge immediately and submitted the manuscript for Hahn 1949 to the printer ‘without further prettification than I had already introduced…to see what he makes of it’ (BB to EAH 30 July 1949). Hahn’s delighted response was a bit of verse (EAH to BB 3 August 1949): Your noble deed’s with meaning fraught, To comfort or destroy. How you must shudder at the thought, But how I thrill with joy! After reading the proof three months later, she observed: ‘I really don’t think— and this is not said in any silly spirit of triumph, but merely in [?] thanksgiving— that the admittedly bad state of my pediscript had serious results’ (EAH to BB 23 October 1949). Bloch’s view on the outcome of the experiment does not appear in his files at Yale. His private record cards over the next sixteen years referred to her ‘pediscript’ on two more occasions (for Hahn 1954b and Hahn 1966) and he noted that the former was retyped by his own secretary, but it is interesting that there are no further letters among his papers at Yale in which he asked Hahn to have submissions retyped. She used the term twice more in the later correspondence that has been preserved among Bloch’s papers: ‘Mistakes apart, isn’t this letter beautiful? Maybe my pediscript will this time attain at least the status of an ulnascript’ (EAH to BB 15 July 1961). And in the next to last letter she wrote to Bloch, submitting Hahn 1966: ‘Here is my pediscript. 214

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It would be much prettier if you would let me use corrasable paper. My PSS. for all my other editors look much nicer; indeed they’re almost manual’ (EAH to BB 26 September 1965). Hahn was always strongly committed to publishing her work in Language— ‘for which there is no substitute—classical periodicals and the JAOS [Journal of the American Oriental Society] don’t reach the (putative) readers that I want to reach’ (EAH to BB 31 July 1949). Bloch accepted all twelve of the items Hahn submitted between 1940, when he assumed the editorship, and 1965, when he received her last manuscript (Hahn 1966). Eleven of these were actually published. The twelfth— titled ‘Parataxis and Hypotaxis: Their Relations as Seen in Hittite’— was accepted but returned to her for revision (BB record card for ms. received 14 October 1941). She did not resubmit it. But there was a shift following the ‘experiment’ in 1949, or perhaps, as discussed below, following the publication of a negative review of her book Subjunctive and Optative (Hahn 1953b) by Fred W.Householder a few years later (1954). She provided two obituaries to Bloch (Hahn 1950a, 1952a), and thereafter only a review on which she had been working for several years (Hahn 1954b) and three invited articles for issues dedicated to her colleagues (Hahn 1953a, 1961b, 1966). In the American Philological Association and its journal TAPA (Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association), she remained a frequent participant and contributor, but in the early 1950s her presence in Language and thus in the permanent record of the Linguistic Society of America shifted from the core to the periphery. Still, Hahn had earned her place in the wider linguistic community and she began to participate in international conferences, delivering papers and sometimes serving in an official capacity. In the summer of 1957 she went to Europe for the first time in twenty five years, attending two major conferences. She presented a paper on Hittite personal pronouns at the International Congress of Orientalists in Munich, Germany; following her retirement, she again participated in that Congress, in India in 1964, where, as discussed above, she was an ‘official delegate’ of Hunter College. Also in 1957, as a delegate of both the Linguistic Society of America and the Linguistic Circle of New York, Adelaide Hahn spoke at the International Congress of Linguists in Oslo. Her statement drew on her own long experience, and she pressed for diversity without division, both between Americans and Europeans and within the American linguistic community: while we [the congress participants] present a picture of unity in diversity, we also present a picture of diversity in unity. I was very glad on the opening day to hear our distinguished President state that there is no one American school of linguistics any more than there is one European school. That is as it should be; there should be no nationalism in scholarship. I follow, and I hope we all follow, my beloved Horace in swearing at the dictates of no one master; and personally I as a worker in historical and comparative grammar 215

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naturally feel more at home with specialists in that field, whether they be American or European, than with the descriptivists and structuralists who are playing such an extensive and animate role, though by no means the only role, in United States linguistics—and I assure you, even they are far from constituting a single ‘school’. That too is as it should be. Scholarship advances not by agreement but by disagreement; it is stimulating to disagree intellectually, so long as we remain in harmony spiritually…. So let it not be thought that there is any dichotomy between linguistic science in Europe and in America. We are all linguistic scientists together… (Hahn 1958a:857) At the next International Congress of Linguists, held in Cambridge, Massachusetts in August 1962, she not only presented a paper but served as vice president.

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LANGUAGE AND LINGUISTICS AT HUNTER COLLEGE Among American women who held Ph.Ds in the years that Adelaide Hahn was on the faculty at Hunter College, more had received their undergraduate degrees there than from any other college in the United States (Hunter College Web Page at www.hunter.ccny.edu). This remarkable fact helps to explain why standards of excellence for Hunter’s educational programs were of such paramount importance to Hahn that the college and her colleagues commented on it in print: ‘as an alumna and as a member of the faculty, she guarded zealously the reputation of her Alma Mater’ (Hunter Alumni Quarterly Fall 1967, p. 5); ‘Adelaide was always ready to do battle for Hunter, her Alma Mater whose unsullied reputation had to remain pristine’ (Hunter Alumni News vol. II, no. 1, October 1967, no page number). Hahn was proud to represent Hunter to the outside world, through her offices in learned societies, her publications, and her papers at local meetings, national conferences, and international congresses. Hunter, a public institution, made sure in turn that the public was informed of the achievements of its faculty, regularly providing press releases to the New York Times. The announcement of her promotion to professor and appointment as head of the Department of Classics in 1936 included the statement: ‘Professor Hahn is the only woman ever to hold office in the Linguistic Society of America’ (NYT 26 June 1936, p. 17), a reference to her positions on the LSA Executive Committee in 1930 and 1934. When she was elected LSA president, that information, too, appeared in the New York Times (20 February 1946, p. 27). The public was also kept informed of the importance of subjects of study in which Hunter’s programs excelled. Hahn herself appeared before community and teachers’ groups, speaking about Latin language and poetry and the importance of the classics in general (for further information on these and her other activities, see her annual personnel reports, Hunter College Archives). Representative of these activities are: a radio talk in January 1936 on the place of classics in the Liberal Arts curriculum; participation in a 1940 panel for the Classical Association of the Atlantic States on ways to stimulate the study of Latin; discussant on Latin in the war effort for a 1942 session of the New York University Foreign Language Conference. 217

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In June 1943 Hahn headed the steering committee of a new Council of Languages and Literatures, which she and her Hunter College colleagues created to draw attention to a movement in high schools and colleges to replace humanistic courses with vocational training, considered by some a measure ‘that might help win the war.’ Here again, the intent was to bring the problem before the public, and coverage was given by the New York Times (13 June 1943, p. 47). Hahn was quoted stating the goal of the Council, ‘“to prevent the elimination of classical and modern language studies from high schools and colleges”’ by calling for ‘“a nation-wide campaign of scholarly and professional groups to protest attacks upon the humanities.”’ The Times reported her argument that eliminating the classics and the humanities would be ‘undemocratic’ because it ‘would deprive pupils in the public schools of instruction that they could insist upon [at] private institutions.’ Even within Hunter, it was necessary to make the case for languages and for linguistics to the administration, to other faculty and to students. Hahn spoke frequently at student orientation, at commencements, before the various clubs— the Humanities Club, the Anthropology Club—reporting, for example, on ‘Recent Developments in the Study of Language’ (December 1943), ‘Recent Developments in Linguistics’ (December 1948). Other chairs had sent tutors or secretaries to serve as advisor at registration, but Hahn went in person so that she could encourage and guide students in selecting courses in classical languages and linguistics (EAH to BB 22 September 1946). Her position as department chair gave her a place ‘helping run the institution’ (EAH to BB 12 July 1965), and she took advantage of it by serving on college-wide curriculum committees where she could give visibility to her subjects (e.g., chairing the Hunter College Committee on Curriculum Research 1941–1947, then serving as a member 1947–1950). In the annual report to the president, as chair of the Department of Classics, she repeatedly made the case for the excellence of the program and of the students. For 1948–1949, for example, she commented: It is a source of regret that, as a result of the lack of appreciation of the classics showed by many school administrators, fewer and fewer students study Latin or Greek in high school, which greatly reduces the number who naturally think of majoring in Classics in College… However, there is a distinctly happier side to the picture. The student who… persists in electing a major in Latin or Greek, does so not because she is hoping to make money, or because she is looking for something easy, or because she just does not know what to take; no, she makes her choice on the basis of ability and of interest. Thus, the trite saying that what we lack in quantity is made up for in quality, is an inspiring truth. (HCA) Trained in the traditions of the classics and of language instruction, Hahn herself took a traditional approach to the teaching of Latin, revealed in the letters she wrote periodically on the subject to Classical Weekly, a publication for high 218

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school and college teachers of the classics (e.g., 24 March 1924, 11 March 1935, 24 April 1944). Her letter of 11 March 1935 was conservative even by the standards of the day. She found free composition ‘dangerous’ because students knew too little to write correctly. Copying, writing from dictation, reproducing passages from memory all had strong educational value, in her judgment, and rules and grammar should not be displaced by ‘methods used in the acquisition of the vernacular’ by children. Finally she expressed ‘grave doubts about the applicability to the study of ancient languages of facts concerning the study of modern languages, and vice versa’ (Classical Weekly 28:18.140–141). Hahn’s opinions were admittedly based on her own experiences, but she was rightly skeptical about controlled classroom experimentation on language teaching methods, given ‘that highly variable, immeasurable, and unpredictable factor, the human mind’ (p. 142). Her exposition of the problem was a model critique of the so-called experimental method: To compare class A with class B at the beginning of period x, to treat A and B with meticulous care, employing identical methods save only as involves factor q, to recompare A and B at the end of period x, and to decide that any differences observed are due to the presence or absence of q, is good scientific method…But…the only experiment that could completely satisfy my doubts would be one [in which]…having tested class A during period x with factor q inserted, we could start all over again with that same class A at the beginning of period x, as it was at the beginning of period x, and eliminate q, then at the end of this second period compare the resulting A with the A produced after the first period x, individual with individual, (ibid.) Events leading up to World War II created in the United States widespread recognition that Americans knew too little of other languages, and Mortimer Graves (1893–1982), executive secretary of the American Council of Learned Societies, created a national program for intensive instruction in such foreign languages as Chinese, Japanese, and Russian (see Cowan 1991 for an account of the development of this program). This Intensive Language Program (ILP) came under the direction of J Milton Cowan (1907–1993), LSA secretarytreasurer, and many of America’s professional linguists were brought to the project to create materials and to teach, with the aid of native speakers, the languages that were deemed important to the national interest. By the summer of 1942, with funding from the Rockefeller Foundation, ILP had conducted ‘fifty six courses, in twenty six languages, in eighteen universities, involving some seven hundred students’ (Graves & Cowan 1942:3). The method of instruction was founded on basic language materials created according to the descriptive methods of current linguistics, with ‘control and…presentation of the descriptive features of the instruction…in the hands of the American technical linguist and incessant drill-work…furnished by the native-speaking informant’ (p. 6). 219

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Of the linguists involved in this work, the only woman at first was Mary Haas, who was engaged in the study of Thai under ACLS auspices. In an unpublished manuscript, written in late 1943 (see EAH to BB 12 December 1943), Adelaide Hahn described how she and Hunter College became involved in this program: In a desire to find other potential teachers among promising young women, Professor Sturtevant in the fall of 1942 approached the Chairman of the Classics Department [Hahn] at the largest women’s college of the country, with an eye to the establishment at Hunter of a course in some exotic language taught by the new method and sponsored by the Intensive Language Program. Dr. George N.Shuster, President of Hunter College, proved most sympathetic to the project, which was successfully put into effect at Hunter in the semester beginning February 1943. (HCA) Correspondence reveals that the program had a bumpy beginning. Initially there were indications that the ACLS would sponsor Mary Haas to teach Thai at Hunter (EAH to BB and George Kennedy, 24 October 1942), but a month later Hahn wrote to Bloch: ‘Hunter hasn’t got any For. Lang. Project, and I’m quite desperate about it. It’s nice for Mary that Mich[igan] or Chi[cago] both want her, but not so nice for Hunter’ (EAH to BB 25 November 1942). Haas went to the University of Michigan, and Hahn proposed to Cowan that Henry Hoenigswald (b. 1915) be assigned to Hunter (EAH to JMC 25 November 1942 BBP). Hoenigswald at the time was a lecturer in linguistics at Yale; he would become one of the foremost historical linguists of twentieth century America. In late 1942, there was apparently a plan to assign Hoenigswald to Columbia University to conduct a class in Hindustani (the common spoken form of Hindi and Urdu; see Kachru 1987:471). Hahn argued instead for her ‘girls:’ I think it most likely that we shall get a class for him, and Professor [Robert Herndon] Fife seemed extremely doubtful that Columbia could do as much. After all, they already have so many different languages being taught there—Russian, Chinese, Japanese, etc.—that it seems almost wasteful to start another one; it would certainly appear more efficient to make use of the vast virgin territory presented by Hunter for the purpose (virgin in two ways, though I didn’t mean to pun; for I don’t suppose Fife’s project reaches girls, and certainly they ought to be reached). (EAH to JMC 25 November 1942 BBP) To create interest in the program, Hahn arranged a public meeting at the Hunter College Auditorium in December, inviting Sturtevant to speak on the ILP method and Cowan himself to comment and respond to questions (Report of the Chairman of the Classics Department for 1942–3 HCA). Hoenigswald was assigned to Hunter, and in Spring semester 1943 with the aid of a native 220

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speaker of the language taught Hindustani to a class of seven young women. Devoting half of their schedule to the language, the students made reportedly strong progress, and three were given ACLS scholarships to attend the LSA Linguistic Institute in summer 1943 (Hahn, unpublished account HCA). The success of Hunter’s ILP course was not unusual. Such successes were widely reported, leading to consideration throughout the language teaching community of this new method that stressed spoken language. Of course, it was not necessarily the ‘linguistic’ method that was responsible; student motivation and the intensive concentration on the language were contributing factors. Furthermore, in the Hunter case, Hahn acknowledged that she herself ‘carefully selected’ the students, emphasizing in particular ‘the importance of a good background of language study …It is interesting to note that the three students who soon proved themselves the outstanding members of the class…all had had an unusually large amount of language study to their credit before starting Hindustani’ (unpublished account, pp. 7–8 HCA). Similar selectivity elsewhere in assigning or permitting entry into such courses was another factor in their success. Hoenigswald was called to the University of Pennsylvania the following academic year, and two of the best students went with him to serve as assistants in teaching Hindustani to members of the United States Army (annual report for 1943–45, p. 8 HCA). No one was assigned to replace him, and Hunter’s participation in the ILP ended. Hahn remained skeptical that ‘only through the new method can foreign languages be successfully taught,’ but she was impressed by the testimony of these students who preferred this new method to the more traditional language instruction they had received previously, at Hunter and elsewhere, and she reported to the president that ‘it is a source of gratification to the Chairman that Hunter has been a pioneer among the city colleges in experimenting with the Intensive Language Program’ (Report for 1942–3, p. 10 HCA). That winter Adelaide Hahn attempted to organize a symposium for members of the American Philological Association ‘on the new method of teaching languages, especially the more familiar ones regularly taught at college’— including Latin and Greek, although she still did not think ‘you can do much with Lat. or Greek by a method that puts the emphasis on oral use and drill by a native informant’ (EAH to Friends 30 December 1943 BBP). Despite her doubts, she was committed to bringing the latest findings from linguistics to her colleagues in language teaching and philology. She also wanted to ensure that the women of Hunter College had the most current instruction. With Sturtevant and Shuster, she obtained a $7,200 ACLS grant to develop a graduate program at Hunter, ‘a systematic grouping of courses leading to an A.M. in Linguistics especially designed for teachers of foreign languages…to give an understanding of certain basic aspects of linguistic science, plus familiarity with the new “oral approach” method…’ (Report for 1943–5 HCA). This was one of the earliest M.A. programs in the country in what might today be called applied linguistics. Perhaps recalling her own graduate student days, perhaps aware of the needs of working teachers, 221

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Hahn organized the course offerings in such a way as to permit students to fulfill the degree requirements in the evenings and on weekends (Edith Trager Johnson personal communication 9 January 1999). Also pioneering was Hahn’s creation in 1953 of an undergraduate specialization in linguistics, an interdepartmental major that she later characterized as essentially ‘a Pre-Linguistics Major’ since ‘Its aim is to equip students to do graduate work in linguistics’ (EAH to Colleagues 30 April 1958 BBP). As described in an article in the New York Times, the program required students to become competent in one language and to become acquainted with four others (15 November 1953, p. 122). To administer the program, Hahn headed an interdepartmental committee with representatives from the Departments of Anthropology, English, German, and Romance Languages (EAH to BB 16 June 1953). Students chose from among Greek, Latin, one Romance language, German, and one non-Indo-European language to meet their requirements. They also took two linguistics courses— ‘Language’ in the Department of Anthropology and ‘Comparative Grammar of Greek and Latin,’ taught by Hahn —and chose from other courses on the history of the languages they were studying (program description in EAH to Dear Colleague 30 April 1958 BBP). Again Hahn maintained the highest standards of admission to her program: ‘It is my endeavor to admit to the major only superior students with excellent records in language…’ (ibid.). In 1958, the Hunter College Course of Study Committee threatened to withdraw the program, and Hahn appealed to linguists around the country for support, mailing out sixty communications (the Dear Colleague letter of 30 April 1958), receiving forty one responses (EAH to Dear Colleagues 2 September 1958 BBP). The pre-linguistics major survived at Hunter, with—as one might expect given Hahn’s leadership role—the best students choosing to concentrate in Latin or Greek (EAH to BB 2 May 1958). Adelaide Hahn retired from Hunter College effective 31 August 1963, just as Hunter removed the requirement for a classical language that had existed since the college was founded (Report to the President, Department of Classics for 1963–1964, p. 1 HCA). The following spring, Hahn’s former colleagues in the Department of Classics, maintaining that ‘The undergraduate program in Linguistics has been severely criticized,’ but not identifying the nature or source of the criticism, ‘by unanimous agreement (3/13/64)…dropped its course in this field’ (p. 7). Perhaps the timing was merely coincidental, but it does appear that Adelaide Hahn had single-handedly held together the college classics requirement and the pre-linguistics major. With her departure, both disappeared from the curriculum of Hunter College. Following her retirement, Hahn missed her colleagues and her students. For the spring of 1966, when she would turn 73 years of age, she was tempted by an invitation to serve as a one-semester replacement for a faculty member on leave at another college in New York. But ‘dearly though I love teaching,’ she wrote to Bloch (EAH to BB 12 July 1965), ‘for the first time in my life I’m absolutely free to concentrate on research, and I’m enjoying it to the full.’ 222

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Of the twenty nine men who signed the Call for the founding of the Linguistic Society of America in 1924, at least twenty one were engaged in teaching and research on ancient and classical languages, the historical development of languages, or the comparative linguistics formulated primarily in Europe during the nineteenth century (see the LSA lists of members in Language 1.7, 26– 36[1925]). Only five were identified with the largely synchronic studies of Native American languages that came to be taken as one important characteristic of much of American linguistics in the second quarter of the twentieth century. As Hymes and Fought note in their section on ‘Philology’ in American linguistics, ‘structural linguistics was a subordinate theme in organized linguistics in the 1920s and 1930s’ (1981:51). When the LSA was first organized, of the members on record fully a third (77 of 214) also belonged to the American Philological Association and nearly a third (61) were also members of the American Oriental Society (Language 2.70[1926]). For these and for many others, linguistics and philology in America were closely intertwined, so much so that during the 1920s and 1930s the APA and the LSA often held their winter meetings jointly. The last of these regularly scheduled joint meetings took place in Philadelphia on 30 December 1937. Adelaide Hahn was present, as were LSA secretary-treasurer Roland Kent and Edgar Howard Sturtevant; Hahn and Sturtevant each presented a paper identified as ‘on behalf of the Philological Association’ (LSA Bulletin 11.3–4, 21– 22 [1938]). This joint session, however, was not the full and regular meeting of the LSA. A two-day meeting of the LSA and the Modern Language Association had preceded it in Chicago on 27–28 December. Hahn, Kent, and Sturtevant were also in attendance there, with all three reading papers (LSA Bulletin 11.3–5, 20[1938]). There were no joint meetings between the LSA and the APA for the next decade. In late December 1943, when the U.S. Office of Defense Transportation prohibited travel for meetings of nonessential organizations, Adelaide Hahn took on the task of planning a gathering in New York where papers were presented by members of both organizations, but this was an individual effort, supported by colleagues who presented papers but not by the 223

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societies themselves (LSA Bulletin 17.10–11 [1944]; EAH to Friends 30 December 1943 BBP). Even her colleagues’ support was rather one-sided. She wrote to her friends in linguistics at Yale: ‘I have a very nice program for the APA on Fri. aft. and eve. and Sat. morn. —just a comfortable number, and some of them sound very interesting, though there is one crazy one on vibrations that I’m putting on for the first thing Sat. morning in the hope that people of sense will come late. But where are the linguists?’ (ibid.). Then, after nearly a decade without any formal contact, in 1946, when the LSA met in Chicago, there was an official secondary meeting with the APA in Rochester, New York, referred to by the LSA as a ‘rump session’ (LSA Bulletin 20.11 [1947]). In 1947 there was one more joint venture, structured as the early meetings had been, with two sessions, a dinner, and a symposium (LSA Bulletin 21.17–18[1948]). The 1946 rapprochement occurred during the LSA presidency of E.Adelaide Hahn; the 1947 meeting took place during the APA presidency of Cornelia Catlin Coulter, a specialist in Greek and an LSA member since 1927. No further cooperative meetings were held. The relationship between linguistics and philology in America had changed dramatically between 1924 and 1938. The cooperative gathering in 1947 was little more than a reunion of those who, for the most part, had gone their separate ways. The separation was inevitable. From the Call for the founding of the LSA and from the first piece printed in its new journal Language, it was clear that the LSA had been created in order to establish an American institution and a journal ‘devoted entirely’ to ‘a science of language’ (Language 1.6[1925]; Bloomfield 1925b:1). No existing organization had this single focus. The word ‘science’ was central to the arguments that such a society was needed, that existing organizations—the APA first named among them—were not adequate for the presentation and publication of linguistic research. However, a sharp and immediate break would have been impolitic for many reasons, not least that the new society needed all the support it could muster. So ‘The Call for the Organization Meeting,’ organized by Leonard Bloomfield, George Melville Bolling, and Edgar Howard Sturtevant, noted first of all that such a new society would ‘enable us to meet each other, give us opportunity for the exchange of ideas, and represent the interests of our studies’ (Language 1.6 [1925]). The Call listed ‘the several societies in related fields’ with which the LSA would meet on a regular basis (ibid.). These included the American Oriental Society, the Modern Language Association, the American Anthropological Association, and above all and in first place of mention the American Philological Association (ibid.). A hope was expressed that ‘students of language will…maintain their allegiance to such societies’ (ibid.), but in 1939, the LSA began to meet independently of all these organizations. Bloomfield in his statement ‘Why a Linguistic Society?,’ the lead article of the new LSA journal, was more direct, and more exclusionary, about the relationship between linguistics and philology. In his opening paragraphs he used the word ‘science’ and its derivatives ten times in seventeen lines (1925b:1). He intended a 224

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direct contrast with philology, stating at one point ‘The layman—natural scientist, philologian, or man in the street—does not know that there is a science of language’ (ibid.; emphasis added). As he developed his argument, he related linguistics to ethnology, to psychology, to physics and to the natural sciences in general, but he stressed its distinction from philology: ‘we say, in particular, that linguistics cannot be properly viewed as a subsidiary discipline to the study of literature, or paired with it as “the linguistic side” of philology…’ (p. 4). A footnote here referred to ‘that noblest of sciences, philology, the study of national culture’ (p. 4n. 1) but other uses of ‘science’ in the text make it clear that this was an afterthought, undoubtedly added in deference to those LSA members who were more closely allied to philology than Bloomfield himself was at this stage of his career. The distinction between linguistics and philology was far from clear-cut at the time and remains complex even today. In Great Britain the term sometimes refers to comparative linguistics, especially when applied to extinct languages for which only written texts remain as evidence, sometimes to studies of the history of literary texts; ‘British use was and still is ambiguous…’ (Davies 1998:22n. 8). In Spring 1998, the distinction became a matter for debate on the Linguist Discussion List (e.g., 9.591, 685); most of those discussing the issue were from the United States. But distinguishing between philology and linguistics, identifying them as separate disciplines with distinct goals, distinct data, and distinct methods, is not a twentieth century issue. The discussion was fundamental to studies of language in nineteenth century Germany (see Davies 1998:22n. 8, 139–141, 180n. 7, 196– 200, 272n. 18; also Koerner 1989). Davies discusses the distinction drawn in 1840 by Jacob Grimm (1785–1863): More than e.g. [Franz] Bopp [1791–1867] or even [Rasmus] Rask [1787–1832], Grimm was aware of both the interdependence of, and the tension between, philology (understood as the study of texts) and linguistics…he drew a distinction between a study of language aimed at a better comprehension of the texts and a study of language per se, aimed at finding fundamental laws and regularities under the superficial anomalies. (Davies 1998:139) Somewhat later August Schleicher (1821–1868) distinguished ‘Philologie as a historical discipline and linguistics as a natural science’ (Davies 1998:180n. 7). On the other hand, however, Davies observes that in 1885 the neogrammarian Karl Brugmann (1849–1919) ‘pleaded for the non-separation of the two disciplines’ arguing that no line could be drawn between the type or the nature of the data studied, between older languages and those in current use, since neogrammarian theory held that ‘the same factors operated in language at all stages’ and ‘in principle at least the history of a language is a continuum from prehistory to modern days and any division is purely a matter of convenience’ (p. 272n. 18). 225

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Whatever the positions of nineteenth century European linguists, however, some in the newly founded Linguistic Society were working toward the independence of American linguistics from philology. Bloomfield’s statement was only the beginning. He would continue his efforts in a paper before the 1925 meeting of the LSA articulating ‘A Set of Postulates for the Science of Language’ (Bloomfield 1926); an address before a joint meeting of the Modern Language Association and the LSA, again stressing ‘Linguistics as a Science’ and rejecting teleology, animism, and mentalism (Bloomfield 1930a); and, most influentially, in his textbook Language (Bloomfield 1933). In Language Bloomfield mentioned philology only once, associating it with the study of literature, in contrast to linguistics which he repeatedly identified with the study of ordinary speech: Literature, whether presented in spoken form or, as is now our custom, in writing, consists of beautiful or otherwise notable utterances. The student of literature observes the utterances of certain persons (say, of a Shakspere [LB’s spelling]) and concerns himself with the content and with the unusual features of form. The interest of the philologist is even broader, for he is concerned with the cultural significance and background of what he reads. The linguist, on the other hand, studies the language of all persons alike…he observes all speech-forms impartially. (Bloomfield 1933:21–22) An endnote to this passage states: ‘It is important to distinguish between philology (German Philologie, French philologie) and linguistics (German Sprachwissenschaft, French linguistique), since the two studies have little in common’ (p. 512n. 2.1). Thus dismissed, Bloomfield did not mention philology again in this foundational book. Bloomfield had addressed his colleagues at the LSA meetings and his textbook was meant for students. In those same early years of the LSA, Edgar Sturtevant was also attempting to define the new linguistics, but his was a different venue and a somewhat different audience. As director of the first four Linguistic Institutes sponsored by the LSA in the summers of 1928, 1929, 1930, and 1931, Sturtevant was responsible for constructing the curricula of these programs (Falk 1998a, 1998b). When Reinhold Saleski (1890–1971), an LSA founding member and professor of German at a small college in West Virginia, proposed a Linguistic Institute as ‘a gathering of scholars for interchange of ideas’ (see Falk & Joseph 1994, 1996), Sturtevant took up the idea and shepherded it through the LSA Executive Committee. Appointed director for the first four Institutes, two held at Yale, then two at the College of the City of New York, Sturtevant would later serve as associate director on numerous occasions. But it was the first four Institutes, during his directorship, that were most important in addressing the role of linguistics in relation to philology in the United States. The task required delicacy and was as much political as intellectual. 226

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Those early Institutes represented the historical, even the philological, interests of the majority of LSA leaders and many of the members. Indeed, these were Sturtevant’s own interests, for he was Professor of Linguistics and Comparative Philology at Yale University, his initial appointment in Greek and Latin, his latest interest Hittite. Most courses that he scheduled for the Institutes were devoted to older languages, their historical development, and comparison. And yet, from the beginning, Sturtevant brought to the Institutes, and to his home institution of Yale University, subjects that were not yet a part of the usual linguistics curriculum, subjects that were not historically oriented. He promoted the study of articulatory and experimental phonetics, tried to arrange courses in field methods for the description of Native American languages, scheduled courses and lectures on contemporary American English, and coordinated work between the Institutes and the study of American regional dialects through the Linguistic Atlas of the United States and Canada directed by Hans Kurath (1891–1992). The theme common to all of these new areas was their emphasis on current, spoken language. Sturtevant was cautious about any movement away from historical and toward what he termed ‘non-historical linguistic science’ even as he worked to build the latter into the curriculum of the Institutes. Sensitive to positions taken by his more conservative peers, he was aware of the possible danger to the Institute should it move too rapidly in a new direction. As he wrote to Saleski: ‘we have been rather severely criticized for our excursions into nonhistorical linguistic science’ (13 November 1930, EHS/LSA1), and although this was intended to blunt some excessive efforts on Saleski’s part to bring nonhistorical perspectives to the Institutes (Falk & Joseph 1994, 1996), Sturtevant was genuinely moderate on the issue. For himself, he wrote: ‘personally, I am perfectly willing to admit the possibility of constructing a linguistic science that shall not be historical, but I am not convinced that such a science is yet in existence’ (EHS to RS 13 November 1930 EHS/LSA). What Sturtevant did believe was that ‘Linguistic science is…primarily concerned with spoken language’ (Sturtevant 1917:10). Indeed, the possibility of direct observation of the sounds of language was most compatible with his view that linguistics could be truly scientific: ‘it is the evidence of the senses upon which both the common man and the scientist base all their conclusions’ (Sturtevant 1947:2). So what of the ancient and classical languages that Sturtevant himself studied? He could say that ‘We shall have to discuss writing…but only because writing embodies almost our only records of the speech of the past’ (p. 3n. 3). But then a possible line between philology and linguistics became blurred, for like others before him, he assigned ‘the study of written documents’ to philology (p. 7). Sturtevant drew the distinction on the grounds of literature versus speech. Written documents were useful in casting light on how an extinct language might have been pronounced (thus his book The Pronunciation of Greek and Latin, Sturtevant 1920), but linguists would not study them as literature. ‘The [LSA Linguistic] Institute ought not to give a literary course’ (EHS to RS 13 227

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November 1930 EHS/LSA). This statement pointed as well to a distinction between classicists and linguists, a distinction drawn in the mid nineteenth century when ‘The aims of classicists and comparativists were…different: the former studied the language for the sake of the literary texts; the latter declared that language had to be studied for its own sake and that the primitive languages and non-literary texts were as interesting as the most perfect Greek poem’ (Davies 1998: 153). Sturtevant wanted linguistic science to be strictly autonomous and independent of such fields as literature, archaeology, history, and culture (EHS to Charles C.Fries 12 February 1936 EHS/LSA), areas that were dimensions of philology and of classical studies. Yet he also wanted to include within the LSA all those with ‘linguistic interests.’ ‘Surely linguistic science is all one,’ he wrote, regretful that ‘those who combine linguistic interests with interests in literary history and the culture of a particular nation’ were slow to join the LSA or to participate in the Linguistic Institutes (EHS to Miles Hanley 3 January 1931 EHS/LSA). Although there were linguists who tried to articulate such distinctions between their own interests on the one hand and philology and classics on the other, it was certainly possible for a particular study, or a particular scholar, to draw on the methods, data, and goals of all three. It was not at all uncommon in the later 1920s and the 1930s for members of the LSA to consider their work as falling within both linguistics and philology, as with the 1927 listing of Sturtevant’s own area of specialization in the LSA List of Members (see Language 4.66– 89[1928]): ‘Linguistics and Comparative Philology.’ Others remained identified with the older designation: Leonard Bloomfield, for example, was listed with ‘Germanic Philology’ in 1927, Roland Kent with ‘Comparative Philology.’ Still others avoided the issue, deliberately or not, by simply naming the languages that they studied. This was the way in which many associated with classical languages chose to be identified, including Bolling (Greek) and Hahn (Greek and Latin). The languages themselves became an issue. Protests about the languages dealt with in the pages of Language began in the early 1930s. The first one reported to the membership was a letter of resignation from the Society from a member who wrote: ‘I do not care anything about Vedic Variants, Dravidian, or Hittite.’ This was treated with some amusement and the card was read aloud at a ‘joint dinner of the Societies’ (Language 8.60[1932]). The next year, however, the editor had received enough complaints that he issued a plea for manuscripts that would assure ‘even more representation of the various languages’ (Language 9.111[1933]). In 1934 someone circulated an anonymous paper tabulating the articles in the journal by language: Some 60 articles in all have appeared, which are of special interest to the Ancient and Oriental languages—the Classics, Sanskrit, and the like; while the grand total of Romance articles barely reaches 15, or approximately one-fourth of the Ancient and Oriental total…it seems 228

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that the Ancient and Oriental group grabs a disproportionately large number of the pages of Language for itself… Many pages which should, in just proportion, belong to Romance scholars, are freely handed out to the obviously dominating group, the “Ancients”. (Language 10.67 [1934]) The Committee on Publication, including the editor, responded that the situation was due ‘to the distribution of the material sent in by the members’ (ibid.). Nevertheless, there was trouble brewing over this issue. Philology and linguistics became uneasy colleagues as the 1930s drew to an end. Members of the LSA pressed for changes. Some were younger people who had been students in the 1930s, others had interests in the more modern languages and in descriptive, rather than historical, study. At the conclusion of 1939, the editorship of Language passed from George Bolling, Professor Emeritus of Greek, to Bernard Bloch, then Assistant Professor of English, Brown University, and Assistant Editor of the Linguistic Atlas of the United States and Canada.2 At the same time, Roland Kent, Professor of Comparative Philology at the University of Pennsylvania, stepped down as LSA secretary-treasurer. Effective in 1941, his replacement was J Milton Cowan, then Assistant Professor of German at the University of Iowa; the specialization listed for Cowan in the LSA membership list was ‘experimental linguistics’ (LSA Bulletin 13.40[1940]). The linguistic subjects that Sturtevant had introduced in the early Linguistic Institutes were now the specializations of a new LSA leadership. The ancient and classical language specialists were being replaced by those with interests in modern languages. This was Adelaide Hahn’s professional world. Her training was first in the classics as an undergraduate at Hunter College, then in philology as a graduate student at Columbia University, and ultimately in comparative linguistics through her post-doctoral participation at the Linguistic Institutes and at seminars and Linguistic Club meetings at Yale University. She joined the New York Classical Club in 1915, the Classical Association of the Atlantic States in 1916, the American Philological Association in 1917, the American Classical League at its founding in 1919, and when the Linguistic Society of America was formed in 1924, she attended its first meeting and signed up as a Foundation Member (those who joined in the first three months after the Call). These affiliations, along with her research, publications, and other professional activities, all indicate that she saw classics, philology, and linguistics like colors in a spectrum, appearing to the human eye without sharp dividing lines between them. For most of her career, Hahn published studies on language and literature (especially poetry), always drawing on ancient and classical languages, particularly Latin, Greek, and Hittite. Nevertheless, this work can be divided into four periods, three of which contain extensive classical and philological studies— by whatever definition one chooses—while the fourth was largely linguistic. Early, before the completion of her doctoral dissertation in 1929, she 229

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wrote a number of short notes and articles on classical topics, especially on the poetry of Vergil (70– 19 BC). Over the next decade and a half these notes continued and several longer philological studies appeared in the Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association (TAPA), the published versions of papers that she gave at APA conferences. Then, from the early 1940s through the mid 1950s, she focused on linguistic work and published studies of the Latin, Greek, and Hittite languages in both TAPA and Language. When there were negative reviews from linguists of her 1953 book Subjunctive and Optative: Their Origin as Futures, she turned back to more philological work and for the remainder of her career published her articles almost entirely in philological journals, excepting only contributions to special issues of Language dedicated to her friends and colleagues. Her published work is discussed in the chapters that follow. In all of her professional activities, Adelaide Hahn gave equal weight to what others considered the divergent fields of linguistics and philology. Her friend Thelma DeGraff, who followed her as chair of the Department of Classics at Hunter College, drew upon her own recollections and on Hahn’s annual activities reports to characterize her participation in the various scholarly conferences of the organizations to which Hahn belonged: As a matter of routine she delivered four papers a year, namely: a paper at the A.P.A. Christmas meeting; a paper at the L.S.A. Christmas meeting; a paper at the spring meeting of the [American] Oriental Society; a paper at the summer meeting of the Linguistic Institute. When the L.S.A. and the A.P.A. Christmas meetings were held in different cities, she would travel by rail or plane from one to the other. In addition to these meetings, she would regularly attend the spring meetings of the C.A.A.S. [Classical Association of the Atlantic States] and the local meetings of the N.Y.C.C. [New York Classical Club] and the Linguistic Circle [of New York]… On a designated Monday of the month, she would go to New Haven to attend a session of the Yale Linguistics Club… When there was occasionally a conflict in scheduling and she had to exercise a choice, she did so regretfully; when topographically possible, she might attend two meetings held simultaneously. (DeGraff 1967:41) Hahn’s own records reveal that she kept to this rigorous schedule for most of her professional life (HCA). It meant that she was constantly preparing scholarly papers, one primarily linguistic in nature, the other of a somewhat more philological or literary bent. Administrative and organizational work for the societies to which she belonged was also balanced. She became a life member of both the APA and the LSA. She held no important offices in the APA, just minor committee appointments such as the Local Committee that planned arrangements for an APA meeting in New York in 1944. However, she served as secretary-treasurer of the New York Classical Club from 1926 until 1939, when she was elected 230

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president for the next two years, thereafter presiding over the Club’s Forum and serving on its Executive Committee. In 1952–1953 she was vice president of the American Oriental Society. For the Classical Association of the Atlantic States, she was vice president in 1958–1960 and president 1960–1962.3 Her record of LSA administrative and support work is equally extensive. In addition to many committee appointments, including the Society’s Nominating Committee in 1929, 1932, and 1957–1959, Hahn was a member of the Executive Committee in 1930 and 1934, was elected vice president of the Society for 1940 and president for 1946. She served as a member of the Administrative Committee of the Linguistic Institute for 1950 and 1951. The LSA appointed Adelaide Hahn to the [Hermann and Klara H.] Collitz professorship in comparative linguistics for its 1951 Linguistic Institute at the University of California, Berkeley, an academic honor of high distinction.4 She worked hard to keep lines of participation open between the organizations. In Fall 1946, she wrote to Bernard Bloch suggesting that the 1947 April meeting of the Yale Linguistic Club be rescheduled so as to avoid conflict with the spring session of the American Oriental Society: what of the AOS? Have you thought about that? Precedent would imply an Exec. Comm. meeting on Apr. 7 (which would take at least Franklin [Edgerton] & Edgar [Sturtevant]) & a meeting on Apr. 8. If it’s in or very near [New Haven], OK; otherwise not. Better check… Loads of Ling. Club people belong. (EAH to BB 22 September 1946). The date is important. American linguistics had made a break from philology at the end of the 1930s. World War II redirected linguists’ attention to the study of modern foreign languages relevant to military and diplomatic purposes. With the war over and civilian life reestablished, there was a new opportunity to address the direction in which linguistics would proceed. Adelaide Hahn wanted to return to the association between linguistics and philology. Others did not. She was the chief proponent of a joint session with APA in 1946. For a meeting of the LSA Executive Committee in February that year, she wrote to her ‘Friends …at Yale who attend the LSA Exec. Meeting by constitutional right’ with a list of items she hoped to discuss, including ‘time and place of a Dec. meeting (I hope we can meet with the APA)’ (EAH to Friends 13 February 1946 BBP). But the regular winter meeting was scheduled in Chicago jointly with several anthropological societies; only a ‘rump session’ occurred with the APA. Reflecting back on the discussions that had led to this arrangement, Hahn was pleased with the outcome but not with the widening division between the LSA and the APA. She wrote to Harry Mortimer Hubbell at Yale: Like a number of others, I had been distressed at seeing, or at least sensing, a gradual drifting apart of the two organizations, which were originally in the relationship of mother [the older APA] and daughter 231

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[the younger LSA]. Many classicists had expressed to me regret over this (though I must admit that I had not heard similar regret from many of the linguists, a number of whom unfortunately tend to be rather arrogant). But in the hope of effecting a rapprochement, I tried in 1946. when I was president of the LSA, to bring about a joint meeting of the two societies; and I did, as you know, succeed in arranging one joint session at Rochester, which was, I think, a definite success…it was generally agreed that the APA and the LSA would get together in 1947, and I looked forward happily to this. (EAH to HMH 22 October 1947 BBP) Indeed, both the LSA and the APA were scheduled to meet in December 1947 in New Haven, Connecticut. But the LSA committee on local arrangements (members of the Yale University faculty) scheduled the LSA meetings at the Yale University Hall of Graduate Studies, whereas the APA was to meet in Linsly-Chittenden Hall. As Hahn noted to Hubbell, who chaired the local committee, ‘it will not even be possible to divide one’s time between the programs of the two societies… The distance is too great to permit of going back and forth between the two meetings,’ and she angrily protested ‘this outrageous plan’ and the committee members’ ‘seeming unawareness that some persons are sufficiently interested in both classics and linguistics to wish to hear papers on both subjects’ (ibid.). With entirely uncharacteristic intemperance, Hahn concluded: I trust the linguists will not persist in their unconcern for the convenience and desires of the classicists, and will at least not make so humiliatingly patent their indifference as to the presence or absence of the classicists at their meetings. But if this hope on my part is unduly optimistic, then I believe it will not be inappropriate for the classicists completely to boycott the meeting of the linguists; and in that event I for my part, despite my deep interest in linguistics, will actively array myself with the ranks of the classicists, (ibid.) She herself did not consider her letter excessive: ‘It was not meant to be intemperate, but it was meant to be vigorous, since I believe in opposing vigorously what seems to me an injustice’ (EAH to BB 27 October 1947). The committee reconsidered its choice of building for the linguistics meeting, and when December came, the sessions of both organizations took place in Linsly-Chittenden Hall (LSA Bulletin 21.6[1948]), which was the solution Hahn had advocated. But her outburst damaged her relationship with Bernard Bloch and they seem to have broken off correspondence for more than a year after this incident. It also brought further into the open the widening gap between the linguists and the classicists. 232

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In her letter to Hubbell, Hahn had blamed Bloch by name for the scheduling that separated the LSA and the APA, and she sent a copy to Bloch and to several of his colleagues on the local committee. Bloch responded that he would not oppose a change of building for the linguists, but he also made clear his own views on the relationship between the two fields of study as he provided the basis for the committee’s initial decision: Our chief reasons for scheduling the sessions of the LSA in the Graduate School were that our most successful meetings in the past have been those in which we met by ourselves, undisturbed by rival meetings; and that we thought a separate meeting place would preserve the sense of solidarity and intimacy that has been such a conspicuous feature of our best meetings. (BB to EAH 23 October 1947) For Bloch, and for many of his colleagues in linguistics, the autonomy of the discipline was more important than traditional ties with ‘rival’ classicists and philologists. Indeed, the LSA never again met jointly with any learned society devoted to a different field of study.5 But Adelaide Hahn continued— for the rest of her life—to travel between the APA and the LSA each December, to present papers at both, to publish in the journals of each.

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Although studies of language were to become her primary research interest from the mid 1930s until the mid 1950s, Adelaide Hahn had begun her academic work in the classics. Her successor as chair of the Department of Classics at Hunter College wrote at the time of Hahn’s death in 1967: ‘she never abandoned her literary interests and would on occasion deliver talks to various organizations on such literary themes as Greek lyric poetry or some aspect of Vergil or Horace who were her favorite writers’ (DeGraff 1967:41). Fittingly, these remarks appeared in The Classical World, the monthly successor to The Classical Weekly, the magazine of the Classical Association of the Atlantic States to which Hahn contributed her very first known publication. In this four-page piece the young classicist had attempted to explain an alleged inconsistency in Vergil’s Aeneid. The ghost of Creusa, Aeneas’s wife, offers him a prophecy which he then appears to ignore. Hahn asks: ‘Why this waste of energy and augury? Is it in keeping with Aeneas’s pietas or with his equally customary thoughtfulness and deliberation thus to remain indifferent to a helpful prophecy of a dearly-loved wife? Have we a real inconsistency, which Vergil, given more time would have removed?’ (Hahn 1920:209). Consistent with her later linguistic work, in which she always valued the language of the original writer over any corrections by later editors and analysts, so here too Hahn found that the text was correct as it stood. Aeneas had not ignored Creusa’s prophecy but had followed her lead to Hesperia—to ‘“the Western land”, as it was to a Greek or a Roman…to Aeneas’ (p. 212). There was no need for Vergil to correct an error here; the problem is one only for the modern reader: ‘We with our hybrid English tongue cannot appreciate what certain words [such as Hesperia] must have meant to a Greek or a Roman’ (p. 212). Hahn became a regular contributor to The Classical Weekly, annually submitting from one to four mostly very short items of a few paragraphs until her linguistic studies began to require nearly full attention in the mid 1930s. Even then she returned from time to time with an occasional short and sometimes amusing note. These notes were sometimes scholarly bits, adding an example of some interesting word usage, noting an error in the depiction of the Roman world in a film (Hahn 1921, Hahn 1923a). More often they pointed to possible 234

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parallels between some line from a classical author and a phrase from a modern one, between Horace and Sinclair Lewis (1923b), between Sappho and Willa Cather (1926). In one note she quoted a few lines describing a hot afternoon in James Michener’s Tales of the South Pacific (New York: Macmillan, 1947), a few lines describing a ‘hot, slumberous milieu’ in Vergil’s second Eclogue, and wondered ‘whether the echo was coincidental or intentional’ (1950b). Hahn delighted in demonstrating how a knowledge of the classics could enrich one’s appreciation of contemporary literature, and she sought evidence that admired and successful authors were familiar with the great writers of the distant past. Occasionally she used her parallels overtly as a reminder of the place of the classics in education. Observing a similarity in comments on painting by Winston Churchill and Cicero, she wrote: ‘Churchill may not have had what his compatriots considered a thorough classical education, but it is safe to assume that he was made to read considerably more Latin than the average American high school student of his time (or the average American college student of ours!)’ (Hahn 1950c). The didactic purpose to these notes was often balanced by tongue-in-cheek humor. In a piece titled ‘Mother and Child’ she cited passages from Lucretius noting that ‘in huge herds every individual is different’ and mother cows mourn a particular lost calf, kids and lambs find their own mothers for milk. The parallel was a new movie short showing a lost baby seal who alone ‘roamed helplessly about, in infinite danger of starving to death.’ But in ‘a happy sequel…according to the narrator…this particular baby found his mother’ and all was well. Hahn concluded: ‘We were given to understand that the baby seal shown here was the lost wanderer of the earlier scene, and I hope he was; but of course it would have been easy, in the interest of the happy ending, to deceive a group of spectators consisting of mere humans and not of discerning seals’ (Hahn 1951b). Hahn’s brief semi-scholarly notes appeared also in The Classical Journal and in The Classical Outlook, the American Classical League’s monthly magazine. On occasion she brought her classical parallels before a wider reading public with letters and items for newspapers such as the New York Herald Tribune and, until it ceased publishing, the World. Of these she was proudest of a long letter in the Herald Tribune on 16 January 1949 (Section II, p. 7) describing Julius Caesar’s crossings of the Rhine River over bridges built by his soldiers in record time. To these historical events she compared an account by General Dwight D. Eisenhower of the U.S. Army building bridges over the Rhine in World War II. In her annual report of activities for 1949 she noted that this newspaper piece was ‘commented on in a personal letter to me from General Eisenhower’ (Staff Personnel Record sheet dated 31 March 1950 HCA). Hahn’s more extensive scholarly writing on literature began in the 1920s, a time when she was already teaching at Hunter College but before she had completed her doctoral degree. This work continued to 1946, for some time interspersed with the more linguistically oriented studies discussed in the following chapter. Then, for a full decade, between 1946 and 1956, she 235

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published no literary studies at all until she returned to the field in 1956 with a series of five related articles on distinguishing poetry from prose. Her doctoral dissertation, published in 1930, contained hints of what was to come in her literary work; it also incorporated a few of her earlier writings. So, for example, the concepts of ‘hendiadys,’ ‘hypallage,’ and ‘anacoluthon’ — all describing various aspects of language usage in poetry and prose—were explored in the dissertation with reference to Vergil’s poetry. Each appeared, as well, as the subject of one of Hahn’s articles on the usage of writers of ancient and classical languages (Hahn 1922, 1956, 1965b, respectively). The dissertation was titled Coordination of Non-Coordinate Elements in Vergil. More literary than linguistic, what she was exploring was ‘the combination of entities that, if viewed from the standpoint of strict logic, cannot be considered as absolutely parallel’ (Hahn 1930:1). She suggested that such deviations from logic were markers of poetic language, a topic to which she returned in a series of articles in the 1950s. From her teacher Charles Knapp, she took the notion of ‘blending or fusion’ in language use, also borrowing his term ‘confusion’ (Hahn 1930:1). The last term especially was later criticized strongly when she applied it to the diachronic development of subjunctive and optative forms in Indo-European languages (Hahn 1953b; see the discussion below) and again when she used it in the series on poetic language. Other items in the earlier body of work were connected only rarely and distantly to the themes in her work on language and linguistics. In two substantial articles, for example, she examined Vergil’s work diachronically, exploring how his views on certain topics changed over time. In Hahn (1925) the subject was his ‘habit of siding with the “under-dog”,’ a position that ‘developed as he matured and mellowed’ (p. 185). As evidence, she noted ‘little if any trace of it in the [early poems] Eclogues’ but observed that it ‘can be seen repeatedly throughout the [later] Aeneid’ (p. 185). Similarly, in Hahn (1944a) one of her topics was a ‘preliminary study of the chronology of the Eclogues in connection with…Vergil’s changing attitude toward the pastoral’ (p. 196). Although involving change over time, as did her linguistic studies, this work was entirely literary, as were such articles as Hahn 1931 on Vergil’s use of Latin pius and pietas (the English notions of piety and righteousness) to characterize Aeneas and the divine and human forces on his side, as opposed to the moral violentia (violence and violation) of the humans who opposed him, as well as of the god Juno. Concluding this period of her literary studies, in a brief article (Hahn 1946b) she examined the use of concrete examples by the Roman lyric poet Horace (65–8 BC). Here Hahn noted in an interesting footnote that, when compared to Horace, Vergil made little use of listings of concrete examples (p. 85n. 2). The article anticipated her later studies on poetic language. The series on poetic language was comprised of five papers (Hahn 1956, 1957a, 1957b, 1958b, 1961a). The poet in each case was Vergil and the issue discussed was how for poetic effect he ‘confused’ words and lexical and phrasal categories by conjoining nonequivalent elements. In each article, Hahn began 236

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with a formula representing some kind of mathematical or logical equivalence, then noted that the equivalence was violated or ignored, with ‘departures from logic’ (1957a:54), less frequently in prose and prose-like poetry than in the more formal poetry of Vergil. The first formula she introduced was: a:b=b:a, that is, ‘if a bears a certain relation to b, b will bear the same relation to a’ (formula given in Hahn 1958b: 237n. 40, definition quoted from Hahn 1957a:54). This is ‘rarely true in mathematics, frequently but not always true in logic’ (1957a:54) and ‘frequently ignored by a poet like Vergil’ (1956:147). The formula ‘leads [Vergil] to say… that a living creature leaves life when actually life leaves the creature’ (1957a:54). ‘[A]lmost always true in mathematics, frequently untrue in logic’ is how Hahn described her second formula: ‘if a=b and b=c, then a also=c’ (Hahn 1957a:54). She treated under this heading the ‘confusion between the name of a place and the name of a people,’ as when Vergil wrote that ‘trees are distributed among different countries, for instance India bears ebony, but a people, the Sabaeans, possess frankincense’ or that ‘peoples, the Sabaeans and the Chalybes, export certain objects…that places…and even a mountain…export certain others’ (1957a:57–58). When she picked up this theme again in Hahn (1957b), she explained the problem, as she saw it: ‘because a term denoting a people and a term denoting a place may often be used as parallels or equivalents, they come to be used interchangeably in passages where only one or the other is strictly appropriate’ (1957b:56). Referring to such uses as ‘fallacies’ she extended her analysis to Vergil’s use of personification, where people, countries, and even mountains weep (1957b:56– 57), and of a god and his function: ‘the river-god and the river are sometimes distinguished and sometimes fused, so too are the sea-god and the sea (p. 61). For example, Venus pleads to Neptune addressing him as the god in one passage, as the sea a few lines later (p. 62). Hahn took up her last ‘confusion’ in Hahn (1961a), considering Vergil’s treatment of body and soul and ‘the unconscious, or rather non-conscious, misuse of the axiom “Things that are equal to the same or equal things are equal to each other”’ (p. 193). From the beginning, Hahn’s use of the word ‘confusion’ in reference to Vergil’s phrasing apparently raised questions from the editors and referees who handled these papers. She kept on using the unfortunate term, but each time she had to qualify it, usually in footnotes, to specify that she did not mean it in a derogatory sense (1957a:54n. 4, 1957b: 66n. 40, 1958b:237n. 3, 1961a:193). Never did she explicitly define what she actually did mean by the word. In all of these papers, her goal was to establish ‘that certain types of departure from strict logic may enhance and enrich the variety of style and the appeal to the imagination that characterize the writings of such a poet as Vergil’ (1957b:56). Further, she presented a hierarchy of creative writing that she believed would correlate with the use of these ‘forms of expression…to be expected and desired …in poetry or poetic prose:’ 237

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We shall not find them to a great extent in straightforward prose like that of Caesar…or even in rhetorical prose like that of Cicero… We shall not find them in prosaic poetry like that of Plautus or Terence… We shall find them to some extent in poetic prose…like that of Livy… But above all we shall find them in genuine poetry, particularly that of so supremely sensitive and suggestive a poet as Vergil, to whom and in whom variety and imaginative appeal count so much more than precise logic. (Hahn 1957a:53) Hahn never tested this theory. While she found, cited, and discussed many examples from the poetry of Vergil, she conducted no similar studies of the other authors whom she mentioned and whose work she believed her theory would distinguish from that of Vergil. Doubts had been raised by a referee and by the editor of the very first paper in the series (Hahn 1956), both of whom had ‘questioned…my assumption that Vergil’s departures from the precision of expression normally found in polished prose, such as Cicero’s, necessarily contribute to poetic effect’ (p. 147n. 1a). Acknowledging the legitimacy of such a question, she argued, amazingly, that no conclusive evidence was even possible: ‘I admit that neither here nor there [in Hahn 1957a] do I conclusively prove my point. Indeed it is so subjective that I doubt whether it is susceptible of proof, even if one had the aid of statistics based on the usage of many writers both of poetry and of prose’ (Hahn 1956:147n.1a). She continued to publish these studies for another five years.

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Immersed in the world of ancient and classical languages, Adelaide Hahn was most interested in the linguistic issues pertaining specifically to scholarship within that world. Here the questions were sometimes narrow, the data minute, and the consequences often local and specific. Larger concerns, however, also appear consistently throughout her work. Hahn’s writing was intensely scholarly, revealing and assuming deep familiarity with texts of Greek and Latin and with previous discussions on linguistic topics. When she wrote on Hittite, she usually took as her point of departure the writings of Edgar Sturtevant (e.g., in Hahn 1946c:70), especially his Comparative Grammar of the Hittite Language (1933), and in her Hittite articles she assumed that readers were familiar with that work and others of relevance. Most of Hahn’s articles launched into their subject directly, with few preliminaries, and when the examples had been cited, the analysis presented, and the points made, the endings were often abrupt. In the professional journals, she wrote for experts in her field, not for novices, not for students, rarely even for a general audience of linguists. Hahn began her scholarly life as a classicist, studying Greek and Latin. She never abandoned philological considerations in studies of Greek and Latin texts and she continued throughout her life to produce work on Latin. But much of her scholarly career was focused on Hittite and the light it cast on questions of the historical and pre-historical development of morphology and syntax in the Indo-European languages, including Latin and Greek. The ancient Hittite language was a ‘hot topic’ in the early twentieth century. Clay tablets discovered some ninety miles east of Ankara, Turkey in 1906 provided material that was the subject of a number of publications beginning in the 1920s, continuing as excavations uncovered even more texts in the 1930s (Sturtevant & Hahn 1951:1). Edgar Sturtevant was an important contributor to work on Hittite. His earlier career had focused on Greek and Latin, particularly on the pronunciation of these languages (e.g., Sturtevant 1920), and in 1924, when he joined with George Melville Bolling and Leonard Bloomfield to lead the call to found the Linguistic Society of America, he was a well respected classicist 239

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and historical linguist (for further information on Sturtevant’s career, see Hahn 1952a, Falk 1998a, 1998b). In the later 1920s, already in his fifties, Sturtevant all but abandoned Greek and Latin for the study of Hittite, to which he thereafter devoted his scholarship. His dedication to this new interest was intense, with an active program of publication, and his dominating presence in Language was astonishing. In the fourteen volumes of the journal from 1926 through 1939, for example, he authored a total of twenty eight articles on Hittite, an average of two per volume; indeed it was this publication record that sparked some of the protests discussed earlier (see also Falk 1994:477n. 45). At the same time, he was also publishing on Hittite in the other major linguistic and philological journals—Classical Weekly, TAPA, Journal of the American Oriental Society—and he produced four books on the subject: Hittite Glossary (1931), A Comparative Grammar of the Hittite Language (1933), A Hittite Chrestomathy (Sturtevant & Bechtel 1935), and The Indo-Hittite Laryngeals (1942). Hahn appears to have first studied Hittite at the fourth session of the Linguistic Institute, held at the City College of New York in 1931, which Sturtevant directed for the Linguistic Society of America (on the history of the Linguistic Institutes, see Falk & Joseph 1994, 1996). There he offered a Hittite course and she was one of two people to enroll (LSA Bulletin 8.14[1931]). A year later, she presented her first paper on Hittite at the annual meeting of the Linguistic Society of America in New Haven, Connecticut. The paper, ‘Does Hittite Indicate a Development of the Relative from the Indefinite?’ (Language 9.114[1933]), was printed as ‘Light from Hittite on Latin Indefinites’ in TAPA (Hahn 1933). It was the first of some two dozen articles and books she would publish on Hittite and its relation to Latin and Greek. Many of the details of those works would interest only a specialist. But there were some topics, issues, and examples in Hahn’s publications that reflect major linguistic concerns of her time or that resonate more widely even today. In this discussion, it is important to keep in mind that Hahn was working with extinct languages, languages in which the corpus was closed and for which there were no living native speakers to consult; indeed all of the material came from written texts. Hittite, at the time recently discovered and the language with the smallest body of data, was comprised of texts dating from 2000 to 1200 BC. For Greek and Latin, there were, of course, thousands more documents as well as two millennia of linguistic, philological, philosophical, and literary scholarship. The very richness of these materials made great demands on the scholar. Hahn approached these languages from two directions. First were her studies of a single language in which internal evidence, from the texts of just that language, was subjected to detailed analysis. For these works, she investigated Latin or Hittite. The second direction was comparative, with studies that considered some linguistic phenomenon in several ancient and classical languages. Here Hahn usually began with Hittite, as the language with the oldest records. Her line of argument tended toward finding evidence in Hittite from which conclusions might be drawn regarding the development of a similar phenomenon in other Indo-European languages. 240

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Her first truly scholarly publication (Hahn 1922), a study of the Latin of Vergil, tested a claim made by her teacher Charles Knapp, Professor of Greek and Latin at Columbia University, where Hahn had completed a master’s degree in 1917 and was engaged on the long course of part-time study that would lead to her doctorate in 1929. Her article dealt with a rhetorical device called ‘hendiadys,’ the definition of which was under debate. On one interpretation, two supposedly semantically identical forms are joined by a conjunction, something like the English expression ‘house and home.’ On another reading of the term, two forms joined by a conjunction are used to express what might otherwise occur as, for example, noun and modifier, ‘mass and mountain’ to express ‘massive mountain.’ In his lectures at Columbia Knapp questioned the very existence of ‘hendiadys’ as a specific grammatical construction, but other editors of Vergil’s work invoked the term extensively (Hahn 1922:193). Hahn explored a large number of such expressions in the poetry of Vergil, concluding that ‘whenever Vergil chooses to write as though he had two ideas, he really did have two, and…accordingly, the term hendiadys is a misnomer and the phenomenon which it is supposed to describe is non-existent’ (p. 197). The work here led eventually to her doctoral dissertation, ‘Coordination of Non-coordinate Elements in Vergil’ (published as Hahn 1930). A theme implicit in this early work is one that Hahn would develop and pursue in later studies: the integrity of the authors of texts. Scholars of her day were ready to claim ‘an error of the copyist’ (certainly a possibility, even a likelihood, on many occasions) or ‘an error of the author’ to account for uses that did not fit into the rules they believed comprised the language (see Hahn 1933:39). Hahn was reluctant to explain away inconsistencies between actual usage and scholarly analysis in this manner. She turned instead to the texts themselves. In the case of Vergil’s poetry, her close analysis of meaning led her to conclude that Vergil had, indeed, meant to say what he did say. In other cases, she developed a related theme, namely that there had been changes in the language between the time when some grammatical rule was formulated and the time when an author wrote. For example, scholars had long maintained that Latin quis was a relative, but Cicero and Plautus occasionally used it also as a non-relative indefinite. Hahn examined a variety of texts, and considered the Hittite form kwis, to argue that the indefinite use was earlier, that it was the relative usage of the classical period that was encoded in traditional grammatical rules for Latin, and that when Cicero and Plautus seem to be ‘in error’ they were instead reflecting in their writing the popular speech of the people, among whom both the older indefinite and the newer relative were in use (Hahn 1933). A similar instance of crediting the original source rather than attributing to him an error in the use of his own language can be found in a note concerning the editor of the works of the Roman lyric poet Catullus: in his edition of Catullus [the editor] calls the shift in tense an ‘Inkorrektheit’ induced by metrical necessity; but a poet like Catullus is not such a slave of his meter…as to be driven by its exigencies to 241

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an ‘Inkorrektheit’… In Catullus the use of two different tenses [in the passage under discussion] seems to me simply to involve approaching parallel situations from different viewpoints. (Hahn 1954b:239n.7) The authority of the text, of the language and its users, as opposed to that of a modern editor, a grammarian, or a linguist, is stressed repeatedly in Hahn’s writings, right to the end of her life. In 1965, in one of her last publications, she took on a book by Roland G.Kent, signer of the call for the founding of the Linguistic Society of America, secretary-treasurer of the organization for a decade and a half, and 1941 president: I wish to pay a sincere and grateful tribute to the clarity, conciseness, and completeness of Kent’s Old Persian [Kent 1950]… But I cannot help feeling that the work is to some degree marred by a certain rigidity and inflexibility in dealing with aspects of language which are not precisely what a logician, especially a logician steeped in classical Latin, might expect. Since Kent was unquestionably a linguist as well as a logician, this unwillingness to accept what a language does as what a language ought to do seems to me rather surprising. (Hahn 1965b:48) At issue here was another traditional grammatical term, ‘anacoluthon.’ In late twentieth century linguistics, the term can be applied to a false start, ‘breaking off a sentence before completing it, in order to say something else’ (Trask 1997:14). But Kent’s definition was: ‘the use of a grammatical element in a form which does not find its justification in the remainder of the sentence’ (Hahn 1965b: 48, citing Kent 1950:99). Clearly, defined in this way, the term established the authority on a language as the analyst who may ‘term as anacoluthon any construction that does not conform to the author’s [i.e., the analyst’s] conception of the correct way to frame a sentence’ (Hahn 1965b:48). Characteristically, Hahn closely examined the Old Persian texts at issue, looking for ‘the constant and characteristic use’ of constructions (p. 49), considered the historical evidence from Hittite, Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin, and completed her analysis without recourse to ‘anacoluthon.’ She concluded: ‘There are countless other passages that can be revealed as perfectly logical if we recognize in them a construction that was certainly the norm in primitive Indo-European, and that was inherited therefrom in many derived languages but has been unfortunately misunderstood [by scholars] in nearly all of them’ (p. 58). For those of her contemporaries pursuing the new structuralism, working with speakers of living languages, focused on phonology, this issue was almost entirely irrelevant. But for Hahn, attempting to bring objectivity and something of the new science of linguistics to the realm of classical scholarship, it was central. She repeatedly stressed her message of crediting the users of the language with knowledge of the language, even when their usage ‘violated’ centuries-old rules of grammar framed by revered authorities, ‘a reminder that our “rules” are 242

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crutches which we have fashioned to support our own halting steps through the field of Latin, whereas the Roman strode freely without them’ (1954b:239). Working with extinct languages, without current usage or current users to serve as a check on the linguist’s descriptions, posed special problems to which Hahn displayed particular sensitivity. Two of these concerned the related dangers of contamination by translations and the imposition of familiar grammatical systems upon less familiar languages. These are not problems unique to the study of ancient and classical languages, of course. Any study that involves meaning in a language not fluently known by the analyst is especially subject to confounding by translations of words and texts into the analyst’s own language. Hahn’s contemporaries, studying Native American and other modern languages, were no more immune to these problems than were her classicist colleagues, but the focus on phonology that so dominated American structural linguistics during much of her lifetime pushed meaning to the side and so there was less discussion in the mainstream linguistic literature of the difficulties created by translation. However, there was a similarity between Hahn’s approach to the analysis of the Hittite conjunction man (Hahn 1944b), for example, and the distributional analyses of her contemporaries working on modern languages (see Voegelin & Harris 1952). Although she paid close attention to meanings, and to possible meanings, she avoided dependence on translation by basing her conclusion on the position of man in phrases and in relation to other specific morphemes, both within individual texts and across two versions of a text written in different centuries: we may make three generalizations…(1) the man clauses in the [historically] later version [of the text] introduce material which has no counterpart in the earlier version; (2) they follow takku clauses; (3) the takku clauses embody material which has been retained from the earlier version… We may conclude that in documents of the Old Empire man, while retaining its use as a temporal conjunction, gradually became a conditional conjunction as well, first in future conditions and then elsewhere; by the time of the second version [of the text], it is the normal conditional conjunction, and takku is obsolescent. (Hahn 1944b:106– 107) Using distributional evidence reduced, if it did not eliminate, dependence on translation, just as for the American structuralists distribution reduced dependence on meaning. As for avoiding the imposition of an alien grammatical system upon a language, the American structuralists were more than aware of the problems this created. Boas, Sapir, and Bloomfield were all insistent on describing languages in their own terms, and a few later linguists went so far as to abandon entirely the traditional labels for parts of speech (e.g., Fries’s ‘Class 1’ and ‘Class 243

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2’ for words more usually classified as English nouns and verbs; Fries 1952:65– 86). With ancient and classical languages, especially with Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin, traditional grammatical frameworks had been formulated precisely for these very languages (or, more accurately, for specific varieties of these languages). Using them, imposing them, in any other analysis thus was a real danger, especially in the comparative study of Hittite. So it was not without cause that Hahn opened an article on voice (e.g., active, passive) with the following caution: The linguistic category of voice is by no means universal or even widespread. It is well-established in Indo-European, and those accustomed only to working with this branch of languages, unless they are thoroughly well-trained in linguistic method, are likely to seek for it and fancy they find it in languages in which it really does not exist; but such a procedure is methodologically indefensible. The only safe guide, here as elsewhere, is to look for a formal difference; if this is wholly nonexistent, we must conclude that any functional difference is also nonexistent. (Hahn 1943:269–270) As an example of diversity, she briefly discussed ergativity among Kartvelian languages of the Caucasus, though not with that terminology, noting that: the distinction between transitive and intransitive, which of course exists but does not seem extremely important in the Indo-European group, is of cardinal significance…the noun representing the agent with an intransitive verb is in the ‘casus patiens’ (corresponding to an IndoEuropean nominative) but with a transitive verb it is in the ‘casus agens’ (corresponding to an Indo-European instrumental), while the recipient of the action is denoted by a noun in the ‘casus patiens’. (Hahn 1943:270) This 1943 article drawing on Hittite, Latin, and English, published not in the linguistics journal Language but in TAPA, the journal of the American Philological Association, is perhaps the very best exemplar of Hahn’s linguistic work. It was here that she discussed a number of major themes, gave insight into her own methods of analysis, and revealed clearly what she was trying to accomplish as a linguist working with ancient and classical languages. Here she raised the problem of translation, presenting evidence that Hittite non-finite verb forms did not display voice, although their translations sometimes make it seem that they do. She concluded: ‘I believe that no Hittite non-finite verb forms, whether adjectival or nominal, possess voice, and that our endeavors to find such a distinction in them is simply a forcing of our own speech-habits upon an alien tongue’ (Hahn 1943:272). For Latin, she pointed to the form dissociabilis used by Horace, noting that some editors interpret it ‘as “estranging” (‘active’) and some as “incompatible” (‘passive’), whereas really 244

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it may convey simply the general notion of separation’ (p. 275n. 26). In other words, ‘it may be only our English translation that forces an active or passive meaning’ (ibid.). Hahn then proposed a test that might help to overcome such hazards: A finite verb is tested for voice so far as meaning goes by an examination of its relation with its subject. If the subject indicates the agent, the verb is active; if it indicates the recipient, the verb is passive. A non-finite verb form must similarly be tested by its relation to some substantive which, were the verb form converted to a finite verb, would serve as its subject; it is active if the substantive represents the agent, passive if the substantive represents the recipient… (pp. 275–276) Historically, the grammatical framework devised for Greek in pre-Christian times was adapted and adopted for Latin by the Roman and then the Byzantine grammarians (see, for example, Robins 1997). For Hahn, this remained a problem into the middle of the twentieth century. In one of the longest reviews ever published in Language (Hahn 1954b), she noted near the beginning the authors’ ‘ringing declaration of independence’ in treating Latin in its own right: ‘Latin syntax is not approached from the viewpoint of Greek syntax’ (p. 241). But the problem of imposing the grammar of one language upon another was not limited to classical frameworks, and she observed that in this book: ‘Many phenomena are explained by the statement that in respect to them Latin is like French or different from French’ (p. 242). Of even greater concern, however, is the larger problem: ‘Perhaps it is almost impossible to approach a foreign language wholly without prejudice induced by one’s vernacular’ (ibid.). The interaction of translation and the imposition of the grammar of one language upon another is further illustrated in the following passage from this review: More serious than this implicit acceptance of the norm in terms of French usage is the giving of rules and explanations for Latin in terms of French translations. Why cite aquam bibo in connection with the partitive genitive…? Latin no more distinguishes aquam amo and aquam bibo than does English I like water and I drink water; it is only the Romance languages that make separate categories of the general noun (French j’aime l’eau) and the partitive (French je bois de l’eau). (p. 243) In addition to tests based on syntactic structures, case relations, and formal similarities, Hahn had another way of dealing with some of the problems she saw in the traditional analyses of language in her day. It was crucial that the analyst be intimately familiar with the language, and in the case of languages no longer extant, with the texts of those languages. Her extensive footnotes were demonstrations of her own knowledge of Latin, Greek, and Hittite. She expected the same from others, even those working within a different 245

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framework: ‘I am not in sympathy with those modern linguists who believe one can describe a language without knowing it!’ (Hahn 1965b, p. 49n. 4). Hahn considered herself a specialist in syntax; generative syntacticians and theorists at the time were also emphasizing the importance of the linguist’s knowledge of the language being studied (Chomsky 1965). In an earlier analysis of non-finite verb forms in English, in 1943, Hahn discussed some sentences that are surprisingly familiar to more recent students of syntax: ‘they are ready for slaughter’ may mean either ‘they are ready to slaughter’ or ‘they are ready to be slaughtered’ according to the situation or context. Just so the verbal noun which is part of a verb is also fundamentally voiceless: its meaning is active in ‘the apples are ready to fall’ (because the apples fall), passive in ‘the apples are ready to gather’ (because the apples are gathered), ambiguous in ‘the apples are ready to roll’ (because the apples either roll or are rolled)… ‘The apples are ready to roll’ is ambiguous simply because the verb roll may be either intransitive or transitive. (Hahn 1943:302, 306) What later twentieth century linguist would not be reminded of examples from generative linguistics in the 1960s and 1970s: ‘John is eager to please’ and ‘John is easy to please,’ or ‘The chicken is ready to eat’? In this article, and in many others, Hahn’s ultimate goal was to determine ‘the genesis of the construction,’ ‘the origin’ of a form, ‘its spread to other cases,’ ‘the shift’ in meaning and use, the course of ‘development’ of some phenomenon over the history of a language or family of languages (pp. 283–284). Most of her linguistic work, and some of the more philological and literary studies from her earlier days, was diachronic, whether in an account of the changing meaning of the Hittite form man from ‘when’ to ‘if’ (Hahn 1944b) or a comparative study of dative constructions in Hittite and Sanskrit (Hahn 1953a). Among her historical studies of the Latin language is her analysis of the morphological source of sixty one causative verbs in Latin (Hahn 1947); Hahn 1948 is a continuation of that study. She argued that the historical source of certain compound Latin forms was ‘a paratactic combination of a second person imperative and the verb,’ facio in the earlier study, licit in the latter (Hahn 1948: 308). As Harris and Campbell note concerning theories of syntactic change, ‘a belief repeated with great frequency has been that hypotaxis (subordination) developed from parataxis (juxtaposition, coordination)’ (1995:25). Here Hahn applied that theory to lexical development. She had also addressed ‘The Development of Parataxis into Hypotaxis’ as her 1946 Presidential Address to the Linguistic Society of America (LSA Bulletin 20.16[1947]). A typical method for her diachronic studies was to examine texts in detail to detect changes in progress. As she noted in one of her works on relative and indefinite forms: ‘That the relative is also a secondary development from the 246

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indefinite…seems to me highly probable. And I believe that in Hittite we can catch it just at the stage of completing this development’ (Hahn 1946c:70). Her examination here took the form of charting the distribution within clauses of 390 examples of Hittite relatives (pp. 73–74). For many linguists within the American structuralism of the 1930s, 40s, and early 50s, distribution was an antidote to others’ recourse to notions of mind, a rejection of ‘mentalism’ in favor of more observable data and more rigorous methods considered essential for a science of linguistics (see Hymes & Fought 1981:161–165). Hahn occasionally addressed this issue. In her review of Syntaxe latine, for example, she noted that the ‘scientific objectivity’ of the work made it ‘vastly superior’ to a study of Greek whose author had a ‘tendency to find philosophical and psychological implications in the facts of syntax’ (Hahn 1954b:238). Still, Syntaxe latine also suffered from a ‘teleological taint that usually accompanies the psychological approach in linguistic explanations,’ for the authors suggest ‘that changes in language are conscious and deliberate’ (p. 238n. 2). In a paper that can properly be categorized as linguistic historiography, Hahn took on ‘psychological’ interpretations of the grammatical category of mood in the work of the great Greek syntactician Apollonius Dyscolus (c. 110–175 AD): Nearly all modern discussions of the Greek and Latin moods or their Indo-European prototypes begin with a quotation or an adaptation or a translation of Apollonius’ phrase [psychikê diathesis], and regularly construe it as implying a distinction involving the mind or the soul… The supposed psychological implications of the moods are particularly stressed by professed adherents of the so-called psychological method. (Hahn 1951a:30) The ‘modern discussions’ to which she referred were from the mid nineteenth to the mid twentieth century. Of an ‘extreme’ 1897 work, she criticized the author who ‘on the basis of his extensive, and potentially useful but sadly misapplied, collection of examples, endeavors to prove that all indicatives are peaceful and all subjunctives are polemic’ (ibid.). Objecting to a more recent study published in 1906, where the Apollonian phrase was translated as ‘an attitude of mind,’ Hahn suggested instead: ‘I myself would translate it simply as “modal distinction” or “distinction as to mood”’ (p. 31). Thoroughly examining the texts of Apollonius’s treatment of mood, she noted that in all of the passages ‘the phrase in question [psychikê diathesis] is made completely parallel with prosôpon “person” and arithmos “number”…they are all used in a technical sense, and psychê (as implied by psychikê) is no more to be interpreted as “mind” or “soul” than prosôpon is to be interpreted as “face”’ (p. 43). Her conclusion is fair warning even today: That followers of Apollonius like Priscian, Choeroboscus, and Heliodorus should at times have misinterpreted or misrepresented him is not strange. 247

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Dionysius and, later, Apollonius were pioneers who were creating a system of grammatical nomenclature; they had to take everyday words, usually of concrete meaning, and apply them in an abstract and technical sense; and if at times their metaphors were not understood, and their grammatical terms were given connotations that they were not supposed to possess, this is hardly surprising. But we of today should be more discerning, precisely because we are so much more remote and so much better-informed than were the early adaptors and commentators; and we should not interject fancy philosophical or psychological notions of mind or soul into the dry and objective statements of one whose style may have won him his cognomen of Dyscolus or “crabbed” precisely because it was so free from the extraneous ornamentation of any such metaphorical or metaphysical trappings. (Hahn 1951a:48) But despite all of her efforts to practice scientific linguistics, to focus on form, to gather evidence based on distribution, to avoid the dangers of translation or the imposition of the grammar of one language upon another, Hahn was working under tremendous disadvantages. The ancient and classical languages that she studied were of less and less interest to her linguistic colleagues as the decades passed. For her article on Hittite in Language in 1944 (Hahn 1944b), Bloch tried to get her to shorten the manuscript on the grounds that ‘there are readers of Language…who resent the perhaps disproportionately large space devoted to such dead languages as Hittite, Latin, and Greek…’ (BB to EAH 12 November 1943). A decade later he raised the same issue for her review of Syntaxe latine (Hahn 1954b), wanting to limit her to twenty pages (BB to EAH 5 September 1953). She prevailed, however, with a review of thirty five printed pages: It won’t take as much space as Zellig Harris’s review of the Sapir vol. (Lg. 27.288ff.), but it will take more than most reviews. From my point of view, Lat. syntax is as important as the Sapir vol., but I realize perfectly that the editor & the readers of Language will probably not agree with me. (I’m not trying to be funny; I’m deadly serious.) This is a very important book; it is one of the two definitive treatment [s] of Latin syntax of our times…(EAH to BB 4 September 1953) As much of a disadvantage as the languages, Hahn’s interests in syntactic and semantic change came at a time when her American colleagues considered their chief advances in linguistics to be in phonology. And in phonology they had established detailed methods for the analysis of data. Historical phonology and morphology, too, had theories and methods, many developed in nineteenth century scientific linguistics. For diachronic syntax and semantics, however, there were fewer established methodologies that could meet the criteria of objectivity that scientific linguists required (see, for example, Hoenigswald 1992). 248

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Some of the criticisms that Hahn directed at earlier scholars’ interpretations of grammatical mood in her paper on Apollonius Dyscolus (Hahn 1951 a) were soon to be aimed at her own work. The fundamental problem was the absence of any objective and systematic method for analyzing the syntax and semantics of verbal forms in the extensive and complex texts that formed the corpus for the ancient and classical languages at the core of Indo-European studies. Hahn had first dealt with the subjunctive in a brief early article on Latin (Hahn 1935). Then in 1946 she presented an ambitious paper at the annual meeting of the American Philological Association in which she provided a study of Homer’s use of subjunctive and optative forms, drawing also on Sanskrit, early Latin, and Hittite for parallels and insights into ‘the fundamental meaning’ of these moods (the abstract appeared as Hahn 1946a). A year after the Apollonius paper, she published a study of moods in indirect discourse in Latin (1952b). Hahn, a member of both the APA and the Linguistic Society of America, chose to publish all of this work in the proceedings of the APA. The 1946 APA paper eventually became her first book since the dissertation. Subjunctive and Optative: Their Origin as Futures was published by the American Philological Association in the series ‘Philological Monographs’ (Hahn 1953b). In the Preface, Hahn noted that when she had originally submitted this work for publication in TAPA, the APA’s editor made the ‘gratifying suggestion that the paper might well take the form of a monograph’ (1953b:vii). The APA funded publication at a cost of $3,000 (EAH to BB 30 July 1953). It was the first volume in that series to be devoted to language. All previous volumes had been literary, cultural, or historical, a fact perhaps related to the composition of the APA Committee on the Publication of Monographs, none of whom were LSA members the year Hahn’s monograph was published. By 1953 when the book appeared, the LSA and the APA were no longer closely associated, nor were the academic disciplines of linguistics and philology. Since she had been an active participant in both for more than a quarter century, Hahn was well aware of the differences between the two fields, one claiming membership among the sciences, the other with long time connections to the humanities. It could be reasoned that her decision to publish 249

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this work within the APA was informed, deliberate, and based on a recognition that the study was more philological than linguistic. However, it is also possible that the encouragement of the editor and the payment of the costs were her chief reasons for placing her work with the APA monograph series, rather than with the monograph series of the LSA. Supporting the latter explanation was her general reluctance to draw a firm line between the two organizations or between philological and linguistic studies. And it is certainly relevant that she gave five papers on mood at the summer and annual meetings of the LSA from 1949 through 1952 (see Figure 26.1 above), all of which served as preliminaries to the book. In addition, the Linguistic Institute Lecture that she presented as the LSA [Hermann and Klara H.] Collitz Professor in Summer 1951 at the University of California, Berkeley, was also drawn directly from her work on moods in Indo-European languages. The lecture title was nearly identical to what would become the title of the book: ‘Were the Indo-European Subjunctive and Optative Future Tenses?’ (Report of the Chairman of the Department of Classics for July 1951 to August 1952 HCA). Hahn clearly considered this work to lie within the scope of historical linguistics. Prior to publication of the book, Hahn’s arguments, evidence, and conclusions were open to debate by the community of linguists. Reports in the LSA Bulletin show more than a dozen different LSA members participating in the discussions that followed Hahn’s presentations; these discussants included three members who would later review the book, Eric Hamp, Murray Fowler, and Joshua Whatmough (LSA Bulletin 23.21[1950], 25.4, 17[1952], 26.5[1953]). Five other LSA members read the manuscript: Cornelia Coulter, head of the APA Publications Committee when the book was accepted; John Heller, APA publications editor when it was produced; Roland Kent, APA referee; and her long time colleagues Edgar Sturtevant and George Bolling (Hahn 1953b:vii– viii). Against the traditional position taken by most Indo-European scholars beginning with the work of the nineteenth century historical linguist Berthold Delbrück (1842–1922), Hahn argued that the subjunctive and optative forms of Proto Indo-European were pre-historically, ‘originally and fundamentally’ not moods at all but rather tenses, specifically future tenses differing from one another by ‘vividness,’ with the early subjunctive denoting immediate future (‘most vivid futurity’) and the early optative denoting more distance future (‘less vivid futurity’) (Hahn 1953b:147, 73–74). Delbrück’s distinction, familiar even today to those exposed to traditional descriptions of languages which maintain subjunctive and optative forms, was that the original use (Hahn used his German word Grundbegriff ‘basic concept’) of the subjunctive in Proto IndoEuropean was ‘will’, while for the optative it was ‘wish’ (see Hahn 1953b:6). Hahn denied this: ‘When I say the two moods originally denoted futurity and nothing else, I mean that the original subj. denoted futurity and not will, and the original opt. denoted futurity and not wish. That is the essential thesis of the book’ (EAH to BB 25 June 1954). 250

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In discussing Delbrück’s work, Hahn brought up two matters of method that she had raised in her own earlier studies on historical linguistics. First, she planned to include Latin and Hittite in this book. Delbrück ‘was limited by the fact— always an even more serious handicap in syntax than in phonology or morphology—that he was not completely competent in many different language groups. As a matter of fact, he seems to have known just two languages well, Sanskrit and Greek’ (Hahn 1953b:16). But perhaps because he knew these two languages so very well, ‘he was likely to observe all Indo-European linguistic phenomena in the light of conditions existing in Sanskrit and Greek’ (ibid.), to impose their structure on the languages he knew less well or not at all and on reconstructed Proto Indo-European. Hahn tried to be scientific in assembling her own evidence on the matter. She challenged a recent account of the subjunctive and optative in which the author ‘bases his belief in the priority of the subjunctive of will on the later evolution of [Greek]…, and in that of the optative of wish on the ground that the act of wishing is more primitive than the ability to distinguish possible wishes from impossible ones’ (Hahn 1953b:15). Hahn rejected such an approach, commenting on the ‘absurdity and futility of endeavoring to explain problems of Indo-European syntax by speculations on the assumed psychology of primitive man’ (p. 15n. 31), and she called instead for investigation that would ‘eliminate the psychological approach…and truly deal directly and exclusively with language itself’ (p. 5). But there was a problem. By what method could a linguist demonstrate the ‘original meaning’ of a form or a construction when the only texts for the languages were limited in number and frozen in time and when there were no native speakers available for consultation on any of the languages under study? Under other circumstances it might be possible to attempt substitution tests to determine whether two forms had the same or different meaning. If one form could be substituted for the other in an utterance or passage and that utterance or passage retained its meaning, it might then be argued that the forms had the same meaning. But who is to judge whether the meanings are the same? Yet this was the kind of test Hahn attempted. For example, in her examination of early Latin, Hahn considered texts from Plautus and others and found that the future and the subjunctive were both used ‘where we might have expected the present indicative’ (p. 127). As she developed the argument, she revealed the principle underlying her method: The present indicative is also used in combination with both the future and the subjunctive, where we might have expected a second future or subjunctive; and once more suggests the interchangeability of the future and the subjunctive, on the axiomatic grounds that “things equal to the same thing are equal to each other”. (ibid.) However, as one reviewer noted: 251

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Mathematical methods cannot, surely, be thus mechanically applied to problems of syntax. If two forms occur sometimes in identical or similar verbal contexts, it does not follow that they are generally equivalent, or that they have the same meaning even in those contexts in which both occur… ‘May heaven reward you’ and ‘heaven will reward you’ are interchangeable as, for example, expressions of gratitude, but they are not synonymous. (Jones 1955:100) This, of course, is the formula ‘a=c and b=c so a=b’ that she would later call a fallacy in the series of papers on ‘illogical’ uses of language in Vergil’s poetry (1957a). Linguists in particular were critical of the methods she employed. The reviewer for Word, journal of the Linguistic Circle of New York, noted that ‘the author makes extensive use of the criterion of interchangeability or commutability,’ continuing: ‘Such a procedure is debatable. Similarity or identity of the environment (in minimal pairs) is no proof for interchangeability or even similarity of the function of the forms standing in opposition’ (Seiler 1955:133). Murray Fowler asked, ‘how does one use commutation techniques in a Homeric context?… What is substitutable (by comparison of other lines in Homer) can be determined only by asking whether the meaning be altered. And that is what we are asking in the first place’ (Fowler 1954:185–186). Even Joshua Whatmough (1897–1964), the most conservative of linguists, raised a methodology question: ‘The argument is, could not but be, rather fine drawn. But it is presented with all Miss Hahn’s powerful battery of knowledge. One might wish that she had developed the modern technique of oppositions (contrasts), which still await demonstration in syntax…’ (Whatmough 1954:155). The most negative, and the most aggressive, review appeared in Language. Written by Fred W.Householder (1913–1994), at the time associate professor of classics at Indiana University, the manuscript triggered an unprecedented move on the part of Bernard Bloch (BB to EAH 18 June 1954). Although he had already sent the typescript to the printer, he sent Hahn a copy and asked her ‘to let me know whether you find anything in the review that is either grossly unfair or offensively worded,’ not asking her ‘to censor the review’ but promising to ‘try to take your advice’ if ‘there are words or phrases or even short passages that need, in your opinion, to be revised or dropped’ (ibid.). Responding at length (EAH to BB 25 June 1954), Hahn was most upset by a section of the review that Householder began with the words ‘With no thought of parody…’ (ibid.), although that is exactly what the passage apparently was, with Householder spending thirteen paragraphs on an ‘analog [that] might be called, somewhat flippantly, the English simple present: Its origin as a future’ (quotation by Hahn from Householder’s manuscript, ibid.). Hahn was always able to deal with criticism, sometimes accepting it, sometimes not, but this was another matter entirely: ‘The parody…is one of the most unfair things I have ever seen. It literally brought tears to my eyes, probably 252

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more in anger than in sorrow. It makes it appear to some one who knows only Ho[useholder]’s review and not Ha[hn]’s book that Ha[hn] is very stupid’ (ibid.). She described Householder’s arguments within the parody as inaccurate, ‘rubbish,’ a ‘burlesque,’ and ‘unforgivably misleading’ and concluded that ‘he pretends that what I am trying to do is done as absurdly as what he does’ (EAH to BB 25 June 1954). Bloch agreed and he ‘cut out the whole parody of your method from start to finish’ (BB to EAH 28 June 1954). In its place in the printed review there appeared ten brief quotations of material taken directly from Hahn’s book, provided so that ‘readers unfamiliar with her work may be better able…to form an idea of her style and method of presentation’ (Householder 1954:393). The quotations revealed the weaknesses of Hahn’s approach, with her great reliance on ‘assumptions’ and ‘beliefs’ and her use of expressions like ‘an amalgamation of two wholly different tenses,’ ‘almost completely interchangeable in most cases,’ ‘got mixed and interchanged with each other as well as with many other forms,’ and ‘the precise category of meaning into which we elect to fit each of them is relatively unimportant’ (pp. 393–394). In a linguistic community that had come to be dominated by an anti-mentalist approach that valued procedures based on the analysis of the distribution of forms with minimal recourse to meaning, Hahn’s approach in this book seemed out-ofdate and out-of-touch. Householder argued from post-Bloomfieldian descriptivist concepts that had been developed largely for the study of the phonology of living languages: ‘contrast,’ ‘free variation,’ ‘minimal pairs,’ and ‘complementary distribution’ (p. 393). From a totally different perspective, Hahn was dealing with syntax and semantics in languages no longer extant. Within his framework ‘If these definitions are accepted, none of the forms equated by Miss Hahn are semantically equivalent’ (p. 393). For her, the texts were a closed and therefore limited corpus and the ‘scientific tests’ of more modern linguistics could not be applied. Ultimately, Householder concluded that it is not ‘profitable to ask such questions about “original meaning”…it does not directly contribute to the advancement of knowledge’ (p. 399). Fowler reached the same conclusion. Reviewing another book that challenged Hahn’s own but that also speculated on the original meaning of Indo-European subjunctives and optatives (Gonda 1956), Fowler observed that the discussions in both were for the most part ‘mere differences of opinion’ (Fowler 1957:54). The problem was method: ‘In the absence of a new method which will allow a more exact extrapolation, it is at least doubtful whether any one person can do more than interpret in terms of his own theory evidence of such extreme complexity as is now available for examination’ (ibid.). No progress could be expected ‘until some distributional trends have been accurately plotted in all the related languages in which evidence is to be found’ (ibid.). Eric Hamp, reviewing Hahn’s book in Classical Philology, did not raise methodological issues, although he did close with an indication that ‘on the side of semantic content’ the conclusions would likely ‘have to be revised’ (Hamp 1957:39). 253

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The evidence was slim, the arguments speculative, and virtually no one accepted the conclusion of Hahn’s book. Still, one cannot help but wonder whether it might not have been given more serious and more respectful consideration by the linguists who reviewed it if Hahn had used different terms to explain her study: a ‘theory’ that subjunctive and optative were originally future tenses, a set of ‘hypotheses’ regarding changes in various languages, and the ‘reconstruction’ of meanings in a proto-language (rather than the German terms Grundbedeutung and Grundbegriff she had taken from the nineteenth century work of Delbrück). The methodological and terminological issues that concerned some linguists were not raised by the more traditional reviewers, however. Classical scholars found her study acceptable, even when they remained unconvinced by her thesis. Edward Bassett, a philologist in the Department of Classics at the University of Chicago and a specialist in Latin, called Hahn’s book ‘a subtle and learned work, extremely valuable for the use made of the Hittite evidence, and a most important contribution in the field of historical and comparative morphology and syntax’ (Bassett 1955:198). Although disagreeing with her conclusions, Jan Gonda took Hahn’s work seriously enough to devote much of his own book to addressing her arguments (Gonda 1956). His objections were not to her methods; indeed, his own were similar, and thus subject to the same objections as had been made to Hahn’s work (see Fowler 1957). Hahn’s series of articles on ‘illogical’ uses of language in Vergil’s poetry was apparently prompted by the specific criticism of her axiom ‘a=c and b=c so a= b’ in this book (Jones 1955), as well by the wider rejection of her method of linguistic analysis. The turn back to classical literary studies that the series represented, after her decade of concentration on linguistic work, was surely prompted by the more positive reception the book received among philologists and the generally negative reception accorded the book by linguists. Except for two articles solicited by Bloch for special issues dedicated to Hans Kurath and Yuen Ren Chao (Hahn 1961b, 1966), Adelaide Hahn submitted no further material to Language. Even when Bloch sent her books that she had agreed to review, she never managed to complete the work (e.g., EAH to BB 21 June 1957, 23 April 1962). But there seemed to be no hard feelings about this: ‘I don’t know why I’m so bad about reviews. Perhaps when I was a baby a review bit me’ (ibid.). Following the Subjunctive and Optative book, Hahn had particular trouble completing a major linguistic work to which she had previously committed. A planned book on Hittite syntax would have required her to solve some of the methodological problems that had now been made clear to her and that a comparative study of syntax would present. A revision of Sturtevant’s 1933 book A Comparative Grammar of the Hittite Language was scheduled to appear in two volumes, the first on phonology and morphology to be written by Sturtevant, the second on syntax to be written by Hahn. In 1951, Volume I was issued with both of their names on the title page and the statement in the Preface that ‘Professor E.Adelaide Hahn is 254

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preparing a complete treatment of syntax, which is to form a second volume of this grammar’ (Sturtevant & Hahn 1951:vii). Already in 1949 Hahn acknowledged to Bloch that she was ‘away behind’ on the syntax for this second edition (EAH to BB 31 July 1949), but in 1950 she described the work as ‘getting on nicely, thank you’ with completion of a chapter on pronouns and then the chapters on verbs and particles ‘still to go’ (EAH to BB 9 July 1950). In 1951 she proofread the pages for Volume I and was ‘appalled’ at how badly printed the original edition had been, and now the new page proofs were full of errors (EAH to BB n.d.). Admitting that she had not read all of the first edition, she appeared embarrassed to have her name associated with a work containing so many typographical errors. With characteristic honesty, but perhaps also for that reason—and because her syntax volume was not completed —she made it clear the following year in her obituary of Sturtevant (Hahn 1952a: 422n. 19) and then in her own book (Hahn 1953b:xvii) that he had been the sole author of Volume I. When the volume was reprinted in 1964, she tried to have the publisher remove her name from the title page (EAH to Konstantin Reichardt 10 April 1964 BBP). In the spring of 1954 she was still trying to work on Hittite syntax, even abandoning plans to attend international conferences in Europe that summer so that she could keep the vacation period ‘absolutely clear (except for the LSA meeting)’ for that work (EAH to BB 23 May 1954). Less than a month later Hahn received the typescript of Householder’s review. Nothing more was said, or written, on the Hittite syntax volume for a decade. Then, in 1965, when she was working hard to finish a different book, she wrote to Bloch about her plans for future work: ‘I have loads of other articles that I want to get into shape—not to mention Hittite syntax for the 2nd vol. of HG!’ (EAH to BB 12 July 1965). In the last dozen years of her life, Hahn’s publications became more focused on literary texts, though not exclusively so, and she never abandoned her association with the LSA and with her linguistics colleagues. Immediately after the reviews of Subjunctive and Optative began to appear, she did withdraw from their meetings, missing the October and November sessions of the Yale Linguistic Club in the fall of 1954, as well as the LSA annual meeting in December that year (BB to EAH 4 November 1954, EAH to BB 7 November 1954; LSA Bulletin 28.6[1955]). Her old patterns resumed, however, and for the 1955 LSA winter meeting she was again ‘dividing my time between the APA and the LSA’ (EAH to George S.Lane 10 December 1955 BBP). She continued to go to New Haven for the Yale Linguistic Club meetings, although her visits were less frequent. Bloch wrote to her on several occasions urging her to come, once typing that ‘We have missed you here at the last few meetings of the Linguistic Slub. (I meant ‘Club’, of course; but ‘Slub’ is too attractive to change.)’ (BB to EAH 28 March 1957). She also continued to attend and to present papers at the LSA meetings, both summer and winter. But linguistics was changing, both in its subject matter and in its collegiality, and Hahn found some of these changes difficult to accept. 255

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She wrote to Bloch in August 1956 about the Linguistic Institute at the University of Michigan: The Insti. was enormous and apparently successful, but for me it was to some extent spoiled by the lack of our usual communal luncheons. I go largely for the sake of meeting my fellow linguists, both socially and academically, and the luncheons were among the best means (meanses?) to this end… I think I shall talk about the importance of providing a common eating-place [during the Institutes] at the Exec. Comm. meeting in Dec. (EAH to BB 11 August 1956) For the Yale Linguistic Club, too, the luncheons had become more attractive than the lectures, and she no longer went out of her way to arrange her teaching schedule so that she could be free on Mondays and Tuesdays (EAH to BB 21 May 1958), as she once had done (e.g., EAH to BB 23 September 1944, EAH to BB 15 September 1946). She missed all of Fall semester 1960, explaining to Bloch that the subjects scheduled were not of much interest to her and that ‘Actually, I come for the fun of lunching with the gang as much as for the talk’ (EAH to BB 11 November 1960). The content of LSA sessions was also changing, and Hahn increasingly found the papers to be less appealing than in earlier years. By 1963 the summer meeting was especially disappointing: ‘the LSA meeting didn’t seem too exciting. To tell the truth, I wasn’t deeply interested in any of the papers except my own; but then I may be prejudiced’ (EAH to BB 6 August 1963). For 1965 ‘the LSA summer meeting was very bad’ (EAH to BB 30 August 1965). In fact, other participants found her work to be less interesting, as well. No one chose to discuss her summer paper in either 1963 or 1964. In general, comments following her presentations declined steadily from the mid 1950s on (LSA Bulletin annual reports of the meetings). An incident in 1966 is especially revealing of the changes that had taken place in linguistics during Hahn’s lifetime. Concurrent with the Linguistic Institute held that summer at the University of California, Los Angeles—the last Institute she ever attended—there was a special Conference on American Indian Languages (LSA Bulletin 40.22[1967]). Hahn listened to the papers and at one point joined in a discussion following a presentation by Mary Haas on the reconstruction of proto-languages, a subject which Hahn had studied for half a century. On a tape recording made at the conference (Martin Joos Recording Tapes #1, Reel 20A, MS Coll #22 APS) there is the following (transcription by Brian Kleiner): Hahn: As one completely ignorant of American Indian languages, I’m wondering whether you people have an even harder job than we in Indo-European, which is comparatively easy. But I don’t know how one can always distinguish between an innovating language and an 256

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archaizing one [she then discusses work by Sturtevant and Holger Pedersen on a possible feminine gender in Hittite (JSF)]… Now, when you have such a difference of opinion between two good scholars— and I think Sturtevant was a very good scholar, although people tend to neglect him today, and I know Holger Pedersen was a good scholar in everything except for that one book that I don’t like ((ALL LAUGH))— in which you have such difference of opinion in a clearly defined, comparatively, area like Indo-European, how are you going to get anywhere in your American Indian languages? ((SILENCE)) I suppose you can. You’re great scholars ((LAUGHTER)), but it seems to me pretty difficult ((LAUGHTER)) ((SHORT SILENCE)). Maybe somebody will answer that question? ((ALL LAUGH)). ((SHORT SILENCE)) Chair: I don’t see anybody leaping up to their feet. Anything else? [goes on to announce the publication of a book by Mary Haas] Adelaide Hahn was irrepressibly interested in historical linguistics. She could not be completely silenced, as someone less assertive, less confident, or less mature might have been. But her linguistic colleagues had been increasingly ignoring her attempts to contribute to what had become their discussions. They no longer considered her an inside member of this scholarly community. Still, she continued giving papers at the LSA as well as at the APA. In the mid and later 1950s and in the 60s a number of these presentations were linguistic, describing naming constructions (the constructions in which names were used) in a variety of individual Indo-European languages. Three papers on the subject were published in TAPA (Hahn 1953c, 1954a, and 1960), and in 1962 she spoke on this research at the Ninth International Congress of Linguists (Hahn 1964). This was to be Hahn’s final work, and despite some optimism about going on to other articles and even to the Hittite syntax, it appears that she knew. In July 1965, two years almost to the day before her death from cancer, she wrote to Bernard Bloch: When I was made to enter the hospital at five minutes’ notice just before Christmas, my main thought was, “I mustn’t die before I finish my monograph on naming constructions.” It now seems that my demise is not imminent, and that it was a false alarm that landed me in St. Luke’s; but none the less my scare was doubtless salutary, and I’ve been working hard on the monograph ever since I got out of the hospital. I rejoice to report that it’s now nearly ready…(EAH to BB 12 July 1965) Early in July 1967, the Monograph Committee of the APA ‘enthusiastically accepted Naming-Constructions for publication’ only to learn that Adelaide Hahn had died on 8 July before they could inform her of their decision (Editor’s Note, Hahn 1969:viii). 257

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Unlike Subjunctive and Optative, this book was ‘purely syntactic’ (EAH to BB 12 July 1965). Hahn did not deal with meanings here but with the syntactic constructions in which personal names were used. She examined over 1,300 passages in various languages according to one reviewer so impressed by the author’s erudition that he counted them, mentioning also the 871 footnotes to the text (Taylor 1974). She framed her work in terms of a ‘hypothesis’ provided ‘at the outset’ (Hahn 1969:3) and following the presentation of evidence, stated the conclusion: ‘whenever an Indo-European language uses the construction homo nomen Iulius [=man name Julius] at all, the evidence seems to me to point to an inherited use of nomen as in partitive apposition with homo (or hominem) and not as an accusative of specification’ (p. 210). The problem for analysis was that nomen in Latin and equivalent words in many other Indo-European languages (but not in West German and Old Prussian, see p. 5n. 14) were neuter and thus had the same form in the nominative case and the accusative case. Therefore the syntactic relation of the word for name to the word for the person or thing named was unclear. Previous scholars had suggested that the relationship was historically one of ‘accusative of specification;’ Hahn argued for the nominative case with a structure of ‘partitive apposition.’ Reviewers referred to her ‘theory’ (Burrow 1972:166, Taylor 1974:277) and her ‘hypothesis’ (Wyatt 1972:355, Zgusta 1972:698). Although not all scholars were convinced by Hahn’s evidence, the book was widely recognized as an important work and it was reviewed seriously, not sentimentally as could have happened under the circumstances of its publication. Reviewers in classical, philological, and linguistic journals were all respectful of the work. William F.Wyatt, Jr., for example, wrote in the American Journal of Philology: ‘though I do not accept Miss Hahn’s major premise, I nonetheless feel that her investigation is of value. The subject is highly interesting, and that, combined with the thoroughness and accuracy of the individual investigations, amply justifies the book’ (Wyatt 1972:357). Ladislav Zgusta, reviewing for Language, concluded ‘On the whole, Hahn succeeds in making a highly probable case for her hypothesis. But we cannot be fully sure that this was originally the only possible pattern… So there are some question marks around the topic of the book. What cannot be doubted, however, is its excellence’ (Zgusta 1972: 701). Daniel J.Taylor, in The Classical Journal, pointed not only to Hahn’s analysis but also to a more general statement that appeared in her Preface, a statement that ‘could be a contribution of the first order’ (Taylor 1974:279). Adelaide Hahn opened her final book with a paragraph that addressed many of the issues with which she had dealt throughout her career. It is an important paragraph, reflective of its time in some ways, still relevant in others. One whose research lies in the field of syntax can hardly hope to attain results characterized by the same degree of objectivity and certainty as those achieved by his colleagues who work in the field of phonology 258

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or of morphology. In syntax as in phonology and morphology, studies of origins must rest on a firm basis of historical and comparative investigation. This ideally demands an intensive and extensive acquaintance with many different languages which the worker in syntax —or at all events this worker in syntax—can hardly hope to acquire. A study of sounds and forms is to a certain extent static; one investigates individual words. But a study of the relationship of one word to another in the sentence is dynamic; one must go to the living moving language, whether embodied in speech or—our sole recourse in the many languages no longer in contemporary use—in writing. It is the author’s firm conviction that no quotation should ever be made for syntactic purposes unless the passage quoted has been examined in context, as an archaeologist would fain examine his artifacts in situ; one should know the situation and the circumstances in connection with which the passage is used, and the characteristic style and idiom of the person who uses it. In short, the linguist must be also a philologist. (Hahn 1969:vii)

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The intellectual climate in which Hahn and other American historical linguists were working in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s had evolved out of nineteenth century historical and comparative linguistics, primarily developed in Europe for phonology and morphology, less so for syntax and semantics. What is really quite stunning is how little American historical work from Hahn’s era survived into late twentieth century American linguistics, especially work on those ancient and classical languages studied by so many of the early members of the Linguistic Society of America. In 1998, Historical Syntax in Cross-Linguistic Perspective by Alice Harris and Lyle Campbell (1995) was awarded the Leonard Bloomfield Book Award by the Linguistic Society of America (LSA Bulletin no. 159, p. 3 [March 1998]). Thus identified as an important book in modern American linguistics, it was unusual in its recognition and serious consideration of the contributions of past linguists. The authors discussed themes and theories from the nineteenth century and earlier, and some reference was made to European studies of the early twentieth century, but American work in the first half of the twentieth century passed without acknowledgment (References, Harris & Campbell 1995:436–477). For the first quarter century following the founding of the Linguistic Society in 1924, not only was Adelaide Hahn unmentioned, but so were almost all of her cohorts—there was nothing at all by Bolling on Greek, by Edgerton on Sanskrit, by Kent on Latin or Old Persian, or by Sturtevant on Hittite. The Comparative Grammar of Greek and Latin by Carl Darling Buck (1866–1955; Buck 1933), long a standard reference and text, was unlisted. Represented from that same group of colleagues were only Eduard Prokosch (1876–1938), by his Comparative Germanic Grammar (1939), and Leonard Bloomfield and Franz Boas, Bloomfield by an article and a follow-up note on Central Algonquian reconstruction (Bloomfield 1925a, 1928b), Boas by an article on Nahuatl (Boas 1930). There were in addition just three brief articles by others and a handbook of Old English. It is interesting to note that of the ten linguists named here— seven not appearing in Harris and Campbell’s References and three who were included—all had achieved such prominence in their own time that each was elected president of the Linguistic Society of America. 260

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Within American linguistics, there has been an escalating obscurity for historical linguists from earlier in the century, especially those studying ancient and classical languages. Not only have these linguists faded from memory along with their work, but the very languages that they studied have steadily dimmed in importance to the field. Trends in society as well as in linguistics have contributed to this demise. First is the long decline in the study of classical languages in the schools and colleges. From the days when a knowledge of Greek and Latin was required for admission to the best colleges to today when it is rare indeed to find either language offered in the secondary schools, general interest in the classics has virtually disappeared from educated American society. It is inconceivable, for example, that the New York Times today would regularly print letters on Caesar, Homer, Vergil, or Horace and their parallels in modern society. The factor most at work is surely twentieth century modernism, looking toward the future, dismissing the distant past. Even the retro trends of the 1980s and 1990s looked back only a few decades, and nostalgia usually takes us no further into the past than the memories of our grandparents. Fewer students, fewer classes, fewer positions, and so less interest in Latin and Greek, none at all in Hittite or Sanskrit. On the other side of this coin are the trends in American linguistic theory and practice. Phonology was the focus of theoretical attention from the mid 1920s through the 1930s; the first aspect of a language to be studied was its sound system. As the first language of most American linguists, the pronunciation of English was carefully studied (e.g., Trager & Bloch 1941). Interest in pronunciation also contributed to a project to map current English dialects of the United States and Canada under the auspices of the American Council of Learned Societies during the 1930s. Though there was some historical work on the pronunciation of classical languages (e.g., Sturtevant 1920), without current speakers they were not good candidates for phonemic analysis and although their texts provided evidence of variation, these were more likely to be differences of style, genre, or period, not dialect differences. Boas, Bloomfield, and Sapir all encouraged their students to work on Native American languages in the 1920s and 1930s, and this reflected and contributed to an interest in the diversity of human languages. This interest accounts in part for the flurry of activity on the newly discovered materials in Hittite. With the advent of World War II, virtually the entire community of American linguists turned their attention to the modern languages considered critical to the war effort. Here also were languages not previously well known to the American linguistic community. Young linguists trained in the 1930s studied and taught such languages as Japanese (Bernard Bloch), Melanesian Pidgin (Robert A.Hall, Jr. [1911–1997]), and Thai (Mary Haas). After that war, with the rapid expansion of colleges and universities that came about as the GI Bill funded higher education for thousands of American military veterans, linguists had all they could do to continue their research, teach their students, and tend to the growth of an increasingly autonomous 261

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discipline. As linguistics succeeded in separating itself from philology, from literature, and from the foreign language departments of the universities, and as higher education became available to an ever wider spectrum of American society, there was no movement to return to classical education or to classical languages. In the mid 1950s early work in generative grammar stressed native speaker knowledge of a language, a desideratum that favored English and other currently spoken languages. Historical work, already eased aside by American structuralism, was secondary to theories of grammars and languages that could be investigated through current speakers. Where historical work was undertaken, rather than building on the past it was ‘given more to championing the formal theory of syntax than to actually accounting for the individual changes or to attempting to discover the real nature of syntactic change’ (Harris & Campbell 1995:15). Since it can be argued that ‘Most specific work in the latter half of the twentieth century on diachronic syntax in some way stems from the outlook of generative-transformational grammar’ (p. 34), there has been little recourse to or recognition of the work of Hahn’s generation of historical linguists. And there have been few studies of ancient and classical languages within the generative framework; Robin Lakoff s doctoral dissertation Abstract Syntax and Latin Complementation (1968) was a notable exception. Not one of these trends within the field of linguistics fostered the study of ancient and classical languages. In Harris and Campbell 1995, the ‘Index of languages and language families’ (pp. 478–481) showed English and German, French and Spanish, Finnish, and the languages of Georgia (especially Georgian and Laz) all surpassing Greek, Hittite, Latin, and Sanskrit in entries. Of course this reflects the individual research interests of the authors, but nevertheless, it would have been unthinkable to Hahn and her colleagues that one could write a book on historical syntax that did not give primacy to the ancient and classical Indo-European languages. Linguistics has changed in many ways in the half century since Adelaide Hahn was most active in linguistic scholarship, and one of those ways is in the languages that are considered most interesting. Latin and Greek suffered from their very success in European and American intellectual history. Everyone took them for granted. Even the neogrammarians in nineteenth century Germany had simply ‘assumed that the descriptions existed’ for classical languages (Davies 1998:237). These were the languages that educated people encountered in their schooling well into the first half of the twentieth century. To those linguists seeking diversity in human language, whether for its own sake or as evidence for limits on universal principles, there seemed little to discover in such thoroughly studied and much described languages. Their histories and their texts had been explored, and it was unlikely that they would yield new and exciting insights into the nature of language and of language change. It could happen that these languages will someday so fade from the attention of linguists that the works written about them will warrant rediscovery, much as historians of linguistics are now 262

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rediscovering descriptions of extinct languages of earlier America; see, for example, the account of missionaries’ grammars of Huron in Schreyer 1996. Yet despite the situation in more ‘mainstream’ linguistics, the tradition of historical and comparative study of classical languages does survive, and there we can still find mention of the name of Adelaide Hahn. For example, in a New Comparative Grammar of Greek and Latin, with ‘robust underpinnings’ from Carl Darling Buck (Buck 1933), Andrew Sihler acknowledged the ‘influence of the work of many other scholars’ and included Hahn among the generally younger people from whose work he had drawn (Sihler 1995:ix). Sihler did not provide a bibliography, but in a personal communication (14 July 1998) he recalled relying heavily on Hahn’s discussion of the Latin gerundive (Hahn 1943?) and ‘a masterful article’ that she wrote on reflexive pronouns (Hahn 1963?). Sihler also has personal memories of Hahn’s occasional presence at Yale during his days as a graduate student. Indeed, Hahn lives on very clearly in the memoirs and the memories of those who knew her. In autobiographical accounts of their careers in linguistics, scholars of the generation following her own, who knew her during their own student days in the 1930s and then as professionals in the 1940s, 1950s, and early 1960s, have placed her among ‘the great people of the profession’ (Raven McDavid [1911–1984] 1980:7), the LSA’s ‘leading founders’ (Einar Haugen [1906–1994] 1980:136), and the ‘prominent linguists’ of her time (Herbert Penzl [b. 1910] 1991:248). Henry Hoenigswald, 1958 LSA president, recalled: ‘she was of course an old-fashioned IndoEuropean scholar and a strong classicist…very intelligent, extremely sharp…she had this love for syntax…and she had a magnificent intuition… She was a generative linguist in many ways, with a real feeling for syntactic relations…very creative, and she was a great woman’ (personal communication 8 March 1994). Those who entered the field in the later 1940s, 1950s, and early 1960s also had the opportunity to encounter Adelaide Hahn. For reasons discussed above, few of this group specialized in Indo-European historical linguistics, but what they do recall is important—Hahn’s presence as a woman, sometimes the only woman, reading her research papers and discussing others’ contributions at lectures, conferences, and national meetings of scholarly organizations. Betty Wallace Robinett, whose own work was in the applied linguistics area of English as a Second Language, remembered Hahn at the Linguistic Institutes in the late 1940s and the 1950s: ‘we were all in awe of her ability to analyze some minute problem in Hittite or Latin and present it to the group of men, nearly always the only woman on the program’ (personal communication 6 February 1996). Hahn was older and too distant from young women in the 1950s and 1960s to serve as a role model, but she was a symbol. When the Committee on the Status of Women in Linguistics conducted a symposium on ‘Distinguished Women in Twentieth Century Linguistics’ at the December 1982 LSA meeting, Robin Tolmach Lakoff presented a paper on Adelaide Hahn (Meeting Handbook, pp. vii, 67). Shortly thereafter, Lakoff wrote a longer version of her presentation.1 The text began: 263

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Figure 32.1 E.Adelaide Hahn. Courtesy of Archives and Special Collections of Hunter College, City University of New York.

When I was asked to prepare this paper on the life and work of E. Adelaide Hahn, I knew I had to do it, as the repayment of an intellectual debt. For she was the first woman I encountered, very early in my career, in a position of academic authority; and the example had to last for nearly a decade, until I found myself in a comparable position. Lakoff, as a Hunter College High School student, had been permitted to take a college Latin course with Hahn. She further explained the impact (personal communication 2 July 1995): ‘her effect on me was symbolic rather than literal …Knowing that she existed made it possible for me to imagine myself doing the same.’ 264

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33

EPILOGUE

The women discussed here could not be appropriate role models for most women of today. Morris, Reichard, and Hahn were born into a world where men alone were leaders, and as best these women could, they made their way in that world. They drew upon their women friends and colleagues for strength, but their strategies for success also included alignment with older teachers or prominent scholars who supported and promoted their work. When career shifts, or retirement, or death took these supporters, the women were left on their own, with minimal or no networks within the discipline to aid them. Each then looked beyond the American linguistics academy. Morris turned first to the Europeans and then expanded her staff in New York. Reichard spent more and more time in the Southwest. Hahn remained surrounded by the women of Hunter College and for a time shifted her scholarship back to literature. Their courage and dedication enabled them to go forward. Mid century saw publication of some of their major work—Morris’s Interlingua grammar and dictionary, Reichard’s Navajo grammar, Hahn’s attempted reconstruction of the meaning of mood in Proto Indo-European. None was well received by the linguistic establishment. The most powerful trends in American linguistics in the first half of the twentieth century had pushed their work to the margins. The professionalism of the field during the late 1920s and the 1930s made unacceptable a continued collaboration with the designers of a new auxiliary language. The limited focus and strict methodological requirements of post-Bloomfieldian structuralism cast doubt upon a more ethnographic approach to language study that stressed meaning and variation. Linguists’ attention shifted away from historical studies, from ancient and classical languages and their written texts, leaving behind the classicists who once were at the center of the discipline. Morris turned elsewhere and her project was eventually completed by a team of non-linguists, but Reichard and Hahn continued to practice within the field. They published in the major journals, and Hahn remained visible and vocal at the meetings of the Linguistic Society of America. Their work may not have been fashionable, but they were not about to fade entirely into the 267

E PILOG U E

shadows cast by a new hegemonic paradigm. They did not let their colleagues forget that there are many paths to an understanding of human language. Their work, their influence, and their ideas continue. The Interlingua Institute in New York carries on the promotion of Alice Morris’s Interlingua. Researchers look for insights in Gladys Reichard’s grammars. Adelaide Hahn is acknowledged both for her historical linguistic studies and as a symbol that women can maintain a presence and a productive career in a less than welcoming academic community. At the end of the twentieth century, the synchronic comparison of languages (in typology and in universals), the study of syntax and semantics, the existence of systematic variation within a given language, all have become central to American linguistics. The Chomskyan revolution (Newmeyer 1996:23–38) is often credited with bringing some of this about, challenging the excesses of a neo-Bloomfieldian structuralism that limited much of American linguistics to a mechanistic, procedure-driven description of just the most observable aspects of human language. But these limits were never accepted by the women whose work was discussed here, and that is the reason why some of their work has survived. Further, speakers’ perceptions and ownership of their own language, so important in the work of both Reichard and Hahn, are fundamental precepts throughout much of modern linguistics, and fittingly and especially in women’s own studies of language and gender. It may be possible to weave through these stories some particular linguistic theory, or feminist theory, or theory of class or gender or culture. But given how litte was known about the lives and the thought of women in linguistics earlier in the twentieth century, the stories themselves had to come first. And the three stories here can be only a beginning. Many more must be told before we can expect to form valid generalizations, if there are any, of women’s experiences in the world of linguistics and of their contributions to our understanding of language. Sadly, some important stories probably will never be available. All but gone from the historical record are the women who taught languages in the high schools and those who traveled from one temporary position to another in small colleges. It seems unlikely that future research will uncover sufficient documentation upon which accounts of all their careers could be based. But there are some records, known and to be discovered. Pauline Turnbull’s volume with a brief biography and some of the letters of May Lansfield Keller provides a partial view of how a young woman scholar at the start of the century prepared for a career in language and linguistics (Turnbull 1975). There may be further materials, not only for Keller, but for others whose careers were spent in colleges around the country. Until quite recently, no one was looking at the lives of ‘ordinary’ career women, and thus old records have yet to be thoroughly searched. Even for more prominent women, there are untold stories. Historian Margaret Rossiter, who explored and documented the professional lives of women in science (Rossiter 1982, 1995), identified Louise Pound as one of the 268

EPI LOGU E

‘major academic stateswomen of the 1920s’ (Rossiter 1982:363–364n. 12). Pound, usually considered a figure in English language studies, was, at least for a time, formally and even officially involved in American linguistics. She was the first woman to teach in a Linguistic Institute, one of the first to give a paper before the LSA, and the first to hold the office of LSA vice president. She was a pioneer in research on American English, and yet, when the linguists of the LSA inaugurated the project for a linguistic atlas of the United States and Canada, Pound disappeared from the scene. This is a story to be written next. Also active in the field of English was Margaret Schlauch. With a Ph.D. in medieval English studies from Columbia University in 1927, Schlauch was a member of the faculty of New York University for many years. Her popular book The Gift of Tongues introduced linguistics to a lay audience and was for many readers their first contact with the science of language (Schlauch 1942, 4th edn. 1955). In 1951 she became professor of English at the University of Warsaw. Her Marxist approach to literature and linguistics adds a perspective to her story that differs from those so far recounted, just one of many reminders that each story brings new dimensions. Mary R.Haas would surely be the first to consider among women from the generation after the founding of the LSA. With a 1935 Yale dissertation on the Tunica language, her early career touched upon many dimensions of linguistics in the 1930s and 1940s, not only Native American languages, but also, as noted here in passing, on semantics for IALA and on Thai for the Intensive Language Program. She went on to become a leading figure in linguistics in the United States, with a career extending well into the final quarter of the twentieth century, a career documented not only by her own numerous publications, but also in the records of the University of California, Berkeley where she taught for many years, and in a memorial issue of Anthropological Linguistics (vol. 39, no. 4 [1997]). For yet more recent times, for women who remain active in their careers, there can still be memoirs and autobiographical accounts, interviews, and oral history. Within the LSA, the Committee on the Status of Women in Linguistics has been engaged in documenting contemporary women linguists’ lives. The 1982 LSA symposium at which Robin Lakoff presented her paper on Adelaide Hahn was an early public work in this continuing project. We need all of these stories, ‘all in their fascinating intricate association,’ as Gladys Reichard said about language (Reichard 1951:11). There was no single ‘women’s story’ from the first half of the twentieth century, and there was no monolithic linguistics, despite the image of the latter sometimes given by historiography. The notion of lessons from history has faded from the postmodern intellectual world, but it does no harm to recognize that today, as well, there are many dimensions to linguistics and many stories of linguists who work within, and beyond, the field.

269

NOTES

2 WOMEN FOUNDATION MEMBERS OF THE LINGUISTIC SOCIETY OF AMERICA 1

2

The following material draws on the article ‘The Women Foundation Members of the Linguistic Society of America’ (Falk 1994). Additional details and documentation about some of the women discussed in this chapter can be found in that article. See the bibliography in Pound 1949; for additional information on Pound’s life and career, see Andresen 1990:233–235, Falk 1995a, and the entries in Woman’s Who’s Who, p. 658; Who Was Who, p. 1167; Who’s Who of American Women, pp. 1030– 1031.

5 A VANDERBILT WOMAN 1

Information on Elliott Fitch Shepard comes from the entry in The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Vol. 1, pp. 159–160.

6 FOUNDING OF IALA 1 2

For Cottrell’s life and career, see the brief account in Barker 1952 and the thorough biography by Cameron 1952. See the ‘Brief History of the International Auxiliary Language Association’ published by IALA in 1936 and the IALA Annual Reports. These materials can be found at the New York Public Library, to which Alice Vanderbilt Morris donated her interlingua collection in 1949. Later materials on IALA and its successor, the Interlingua Institute, have since been donated by members of the latter organization. Books and pamphlets are located in the regular collection; correspondence, records, etc., are in the Rare Books and Manuscripts Division, Interlingua Institute Papers (IIP).

8 THE ACADEMY 1

Manuscripts of these dictionaries, as well as correspondence between Kent and Fanti, are contained in the LSA Archives (LSAA) which I consulted in March 1994 at the American Philosophical Society Library in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The LSA

270

NOTE S

collection has since been transferred to the Western Historical Manuscript Collection at the University of Missouri-Columbia.

10 ALICE VANDERBILT MORRIS AND EDWARD SAPIR 1

I have reconstructed the incident from the correspondence between Morris and Sapir dated 30 April 1925 through 26 May 1925 (ESC). The visiting Norwegian scholar was Anathon Aall; the Princeton professor was Herbert Sidney Langfeld.

11 CONFLICTS AND CHANGES 1

This privately printed report can be found at the New York Public Library, to which Morris donated her collection of reports and pamphlets.

12 THE FINAL PRODUCT 1 2

Privately printed report available at the New York Public Library. Privately printed report available at the New York Public Library.

1

These reports, and those for preceding and following years, are contained in documents issued by IALA at approximately annual intervals under varying titles, e.g., Annual Meeting, Excerpts and Summaries of Reports of Activities, Report of Executive Secretary, Annual Report. The most complete collection is located at the New York Public Library. See ‘Research Corporation: A Brief History,’ pp. 3–13, Report for 1987; ‘Dr. Cottrell’s Incredible Science Advancement Machine,’ pp. 5–14, Report for 1989; also the account in Barker 1952. Cameron 1952 does mention Cottrell’s role in the founding of IALA (pp. 241–242), but he too fails to discuss the funding of IALA by the Research Corporation.

13 MONEY AND CONNECTIONS

2

15 TRADITIONS 1

Sources on Helen Hunt Jackson include Pound 1931b, Odell 1939, Rolle 1965, Banning 1973, and Mathes 1990.

16 ELSIE CLEWS PARSONS: SCIENTIST, BENEFACTOR, INSTITUTION 1

2 3

Major sources on Elsie Clews Parsons, her life, and her work include Hare 1985, Lamphere 1989, Zumwalt 1992, Hieb 1993, Jones 1994, and Deacon 1997. The Elsie Clews Parsons Papers are held at the American Philosophical Society (APS), Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; that collection is here abbreviated ECPP. Sources on Ruth Fulton Benedict include Mead 1959, Modell 1983, Caffrey 1989, and Babcock 1993. Hereafter, unless otherwise noted, the source of all correspondence from Gladys A. Reichard to Elsie Clews Parsons is the Elsie Clews Parsons Papers (ECPP), held at the American Philosophical Society. 271

NOTE S

18 LANGUAGE-A LIVING, CULTURAL PHENOMENON 1

2

Sources of information regarding Gladys Reichard include Goldfrank 1956, Smith 1956, Mark 1980, Leacock 1988, Lyon 1989, and Lamphere 1993 [1992]. There are some letters and materials in the Gladys A.Reichard Collection (GARC), Library of the Museum of Northern Arizona (MNA), Flagstaff. Letters from Reichard to Elsie Clews Parsons are in the Elsie Clews Parsons Papers (ECPP), American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The symbols correspond approximately to their usual phonetic values; Reichard describes L as a ‘lateral voiceless affricative’ (Reichard 1925:9).

19 THE HOGAN SCHOOL 1

2

For brief descriptions of this project, see Reichard 1945b, Young 1977, Lyon 1989, Lamphere 1993, and Lockard 1995; an unpublished account by Reichard is among her papers at the Museum of Northern Arizona, Flagstaff, AZ, and a Hogan School is described in her novelistic Dezba: Woman of the Desert (Reichard 1939a). There are also accounts in her letters to Franz Boas and Elsie Clews Parsons at the American Philosophical Society. For a survey of Sapir’s Athabaskan linguistic studies, with an annotated bibliography of his manuscripts, fieldnotes, and publications, see Krauss 1986.

20 NATURE OF LANGUAGE AND GOALS OF LINGUISTICS 1 2

Variant spellings of this language family over time include Algonquian and Algonkian; it includes the Algonquin (or Algonkin) language. The typescript of the paper is titled ‘The Question of Wiyot and Algonkin.’ I have worked with a copy generously provided by Victor Golla, who received it from Mary Haas. The earlier provenance of this copy is unknown.

24 A LIFE WITHOUT BOUNDARIES 1

2

3

Information about Hahn’s personal life comes from documents in the Distinguished Alumni Series, Box 145, of the Alumni Association Collection in the Hunter College Archives (HCA); also from her rare reminiscences about her life in letters to Bernard Bloch (Bernard Bloch Papers (B B P), Yale University Archives) and in obituaries that she wrote for her friends and colleagues Edgar Howard Sturtevant and Franklin Edgerton (Hahn 1952a, 1965a). This paragraph draws on a special issue of The Echo: Journal of the Hunter College Archives published ‘In Celebration of the 125th Anniversary of Hunter College.’ The issue has no volume number and no date; it gives the founding date of the college as 14 February 1870. From 1939 until 1965, Adelaide Hahn carried on an extensive correspondence with Bernard Bloch (1907–1965), who during all these years but the first was editor of Language, the journal of the Linguistic Society of America. Her letters were handwritten, and so, apparently, were many of his. In the Bernard Bloch Papers in the Archives of Yale University there are three folders of this correspondence, mostly the original letters that Hahn wrote to Bloch, some carbon copies of letters that he typed to her. All correspondence here given as EAH to BB or BB to EAH is from this collection. 272

NOTE S

25 FRIENDS AND COLLEAGUES 1

For basic biographical information on Thelma DeGraff and Pearl C.Wilson, see their entries in the Directory of American Scholars (1964).

26 ADELAIDE HAHN AND THE LINGUISTIC SOCIETY OF AMERICA 1 2 3

All information regarding Hahn’s participation in LSA activities, offices, committees, etc., is taken from lists, minutes, reports, etc., in the LSA quarterly journal Language and the LSA Bulletin. The list of past LSA presidents appears each year on the second page of the December issue of the LSA Bulletin. Throughout his twenty six years as editor of Language, Bloch kept meticulous records on submissions to the journal noted on 3×5 cards. Access to these cards was generously provided to me by Sarah Grey Thomason, editor of Language from 1988 through 1994.

28 PHILOLOGY AND LINGUISTICS 1

2

3 4 5

Sturtevant’s papers are in three locations: Edgar Howard Sturtevant Papers, Yale University (EHS); Sturtevant folder in the Bernard Bloch Papers, Yale University (EHS/BB); Sturtevant papers in the Archives of the Linguistic Society of America (EHS/LSA). I acknowledge with appreciation the permission of Dr. Julian M. Sturtevant, Professor Emeritus of Chemistry & Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry Senior Research Scientist, Yale University, for permission to quote from his father’s archived papers. Information on officers of the Linguistic Society of America, its members, and their specializations can be found in issues of Language and the LSA Bulletin of the period. These are also the sources for the minutes and records of the Society’s annual and summer meetings and for reports on the Linguistic Institutes. Information on the offices Hahn held in various societies can be found in her annual reports of activities in the Hunter College Archives, as well as in the records of the organizations to which she belonged. Titles and dates from Hahn’s annual reports in the Hunter College Archives, confirmed in issues of Language and the LSA Bulletin. In recent years the LSA has facilitated concurrent sessions by smaller organizations of linguists. In 1999, for example, the American Dialect Society, the American Name Society, the North American Association for the History of the Language Sciences, and the Society for Pidgin and Creole Linguistics all scheduled concurrent meetings during the LSA convention in Los Angeles (LSA Bulletin no. 161, p. 3, October 1998).

32 NOT FORGOTTEN 1

Lakoff generously provided me with a copy of this manuscript in July 1995 and with permission to quote from it.

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290

INDEX

Aall, Anathon 62 Academia Pro Interlingua 64 acculturation 116 Aginsky, Ethel G. 4 Agnes Scott College 8, 10 Albion College 8 Albright, Ruth 25 Algonquian languages 125, 139, 144, 157, 164–5, 167, 260 alternants in language 129–31 American Anthropological Association 87, 109, 170, 224; Memoirs of 106, 127 American Anthropologist 106, 127, 139, 152, 162 American Association for the Advancement of Science 41, 44, 87, 91 American Association of Universiyy Professors 87 American Classical League 46, 229, 235 American Council on Education 52, 84 American Council of Learned Societies 24, 50, 123, 219–20, 261 American Dialect Society 17 American Ethnological Association 109 American Folklore Society 107 American Indians see Native American languages American Journal of Philology 258 The American Mercury 67–8 American Museum of Natural History 5, 59, 112, 126, 165, 168 American Oriental Society 212, 223–4, 231 American Philological Association 20, 87, 198, 221, 223–4, 229–33, 250; see also Hahn American Philosophical Society 28, 44, 57, 104, 171

American Sabbath Union 35 The American Scholar 90 American Speech 16, 57, 76 American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T) 42, 82 Amherst College 96 Amoss, Pamela 126 anacoluthon 236, 242 anaphora 150 ancient and classical languages: in contemporary historical linguistics 260–3; courses in at Linguistic Institutes 11, 227; declining interest in 218, 229, 248, 260–2, 267; grammatical frameworks for 244–5; in Hahn’s work 239–59; reliance on closed corpus of written texts in 227, 241–3, 245, 249, 251, 253, 261; specialization of early LSA members 22, 28–9, 223, 228, 260; see also Greek; Hahn; Hittite; Latin; philology; Sanskrit Anderson, Stephen R. 145, 157 Andrade, Manuel 125 Andresen, Julie Tetel 4, 270n. 2.2 Anglo-Saxon 10 Anthropological Linguistics 4, 269 anthropology 4–5, 103, 105, 120, 155, 157, 170; at Columbia University 95, 103–4, 107, 111, 117, 119, 168; Parsons and 101–10, 171; see also Boas; ethnography and ethnology; Native American languages; Reichard; Southwest Apache 112, 135, 161, 172 Apollonius Dyscolus 247–9 Archaeological Institute of America 87 archaeology 15, 112, 115–16, 119, 169, 228

291

I N DEX

Army Specialized Training Program 24 Asakawa, Kwan-Ichi 71 Association of American Universities (AAU) 11–13, 19 Astor Library 96 Athabaskan languages 135, 154, 156, 160, 164–6 Auchincloss, Louis 36, 38 Augustin, J.J. 128 Austerlitz, Robert P. 55, 86, 201 Austin, William M. 173 auxiliary languages 28, 39–42; Chinese as model for 61–5; history of 43–7; see also Esperanto; IALA; Interlingua (IALA); Interlingua (Peano); Morris; Volapük Avestan 18

bilingual education 134 Bitanny, Adolph Dodge 129, 147–8, 155, 161, 177, 181 Blair, Hugh E. 81 Bloch, Bernard 19, 194, 199, 206; on autonomy of linguistics 232–3; correspondence with Hahn 28, 188–257 passim; editor of Language 20, 23–5, 166, 193, 195, 200, 204, 213–15, 229, 248, 252–4; work on English phonology 147, 161, 261; and Yale Linguistic Club 194, 255 Bloch, Florence J. 188, 194, 199, 202 Bloomfield, Leonard 3–4, 13, 22, 121, 171, 228, 239, 243; and autonomy of linguistics 120; and auxiliary languages 45, 50, 54, 61, 68, 88–9, 142; definition of linguistics as a Babcock, Barbara A. 5, 98, 105, 111–12, science 224–6; at Linguistic Institute 116, 120, 174, 271n. 16.2 118; studies of Native American Babcock, Earle B. 54, 68–9, 71–2, 85 languages 112, 179–80, 260–1; at Yale Bally, Charles 71–2 University 180, 202 Banning, Evelyn I. 97, 271n. 15.1 Boas, Franz 243, 260–1; appointment Barker, Joseph Warren 270n. 6.1, 271n. recommendations for Benedict and 13.2 Reichard 173–5; caution regarding Barnard College 19, 41, 55, 88; see also comparative linguistics 118, 142; Parsons; Reichard documenting endangered cultures and Barrick, M.Olive 191 languages 103–4; founder of modern Barrows, Sarah T. 8, 11–13, 24 American linguistics 3–4, 22, 88–9; Bartlett, Katharine 179 Handbook of American Indian Languages Barto, Elsie 143 118, 122, 125, 130, 153, 176; and Basic English 56 IALA 54, 61; not receptive to Bassett, Edward 254 phonemic transcription 145; and Bateson, Mary Catherine 105 Parsons 9, 14, 103–5, 107, 109, 113, Beaglehole, Ernest 113 115, 122; popularizing work on race Beaver Country Day School 51 170; program at Columbia 111, 115, Beggs, Gertrude H. 8, 10 117–18, 145, 174; and Reichard 28, Belmont, Oliver Hazard Perry 38 95, 120–5, 129, 134, 139–40, 142–3, Benedict, Ruth: candidate for Barnard 153, 157–8, 164–5, 169, 173, 177–8, position 173–5; editor of Journal of 180; and Sapir 113, 164; territoriality American Folk-lore 176; faculty position 157, 160; see also International Journal of at Columbia 168, 175–6; hearing loss American Linguistics; ‘salvage’ ethnology a barrier to linguistic work 108; letters and linguistics to Mead 108, 111–12, 160, 162; Bolling, George Melville 13, 201, 204–5, mythology project funded by Parsons 224, 228, 239, 250, 260; and 107; Patterns of Culture 170; relationship auxiliary languages 61, 68; editor of to Mead 104–5; and Sapir 113–15, Language 13, 24, 166, 229; at 165, 174; shift away from Boas 164, 178 Linguistic Institute 19, 200 behaviorism 183 Bonfante, Giuliano 213 Bentley, M.Julia 8, 10 Bopp, Franz 225 Bernard, Jessie 12 Bourgoin, Louise M. 8, 10 Berry, Miranda 143 Brachman, Florence C. 8

292

I N DEX

Brinton, D.G. 44, 57–8 Brooklyn College 18, 194–5 Brooks, Beatrice Allard 8–9 Brown University 229 Brugmann, Karl 225 Bryn Mawr College, 9 Buck, Carl Darling 260, 263 Buning, William de Cock 73 Bunzel, Ruth 5, 115, 125, 176 Bureau of American Ethnology 98, 111, 132, 138 Bureau of Indian Affairs 132, 134–5, 138 Bureau of Mines 40 Burrow, T. 258 Butler, Nicholas Murray 175

The Classical Outlook 235 Classical Philology 253 classical studies: declining interest in 196; specialization of early LSA members 5, 8, 28, 121; see also Hahn; Hunter College; philology Classical Weekly 204, 218–19, 234, 240 The Classical World 199, 234 classicists 228, 231–3, 239, 243, 267; see also Greek; Hahn; Latin; philology Clews, Henry 101 Clews, Lucy Madison Worthington 101 Cody, ‘Buffalo Bill’ 97 Coeur d’Alene: Reichard’s studies of 95, 120–1, 123–6, 129–30, 142, 144–5, 156, 158–61, 169–70, 172, 176, 178, 180 Coleman, Algernon 84 Caesar, Julius 235, 238, 261 Caffrey, Margaret M. 174–6, 271 n. 16.2 College Art Association of America 87 Cameron, Frank 40–1, 82, 91, 270n. 6.1, College of the City of New York see City College 271n. 13.2 Collier, John 132, 138 Campbell, Lyle 142, 246, 260, 262 Collinson, William Edward 53–4, 67, Canadian National Museum 112 69–73, 75, 79–80, 84 Carnap, Rudolf 64 Collitz, Hermann 11, 13–15, 68, 74 Carnegie Corporation 42, 79 Collitz, Klara Hechtenberg 14–15, 25 Carnegie Endowment for International Collitz Professorship, Hermann and Peace 68 Klara H. 14–15, 20; see also Hahn Carty, John J. 42, 82 Colorado Scientific Society 44 Cather, Willa 235 Columbia University 19, 88, 127, 158, Catullus 241–2 160, 164–5, 198, 210, 220, 269; exile Chao, Yuen Ren 62, 212, 254 community around 171–3; IALA Chautauqua 192–3, 207 supporters at 41, 48, 54–5, 61–2, Chehalis 142 76–7, 84, 86, 88; Teachers College Cheyene 97 49–50, 52–3, 79–80; see also Chicago Folklore Society Prize 121 anthropology; Benedict; Boas; Hahn; Children’s University School 51 Parsons; Reichard Chinese 61–5, 219–20 comparative grammar see linguistics, Chinook Jargon 63 comparative Chippewa 124 comparative philology see linguistics, Choeroboscus 248 comparative; linguistics, historical; Chomsky, Noam 246 philology Chomskyan revolution 268 complementary distribution 253 Churchill, Winston 235 Conference on American Indian Cicero 235, 238, 241 Languages 256–7 City College 41, 200, 226, 240 contrast 253 City University of New York 18 Claflin, Edith Frances 8, 10, 15–16, 19–24 Cooper, James Fenimore 114 Cooper, John Milton, Jr. 96 Claflin, Isabel 20 Cornelius, Roberta D. 8, 23 Classical Association of the Atlantic Cornell Medical College 173 States 198–9, 229–31, 234 Cottrell, Frederick Gardner 40–2, 45, 48, The Classical Journal 235, 258 61, 79, 82, 90–1, 142 classical languages see ancient and Cottrell, Jessie Fulton 41 classical languages; Greek; Latin

293

I N DEX

Coulter, Cornelia Catlin 224, 250 Council of Languages and Literatures 218 Cowan, J Milton 24, 50, 219–20, 229 Crawford, James P.Wickersham 55, 84 Cree 112, 141, 180 Crystal, David 172 Curley, Marie 126–8 Cytowic, Richard E. 171 Czaykowska-Higgins, Ewa 159

Eckert, Penelope x Eco, Umberto 43 École des Hautes-Études 55 Ecuadorean Indians 171 Edgerton, Eleanor 202 Edgerton, Franklin 200–2, 205, 231, 260 Egesdal, Steven 159 Eisenhower, Dwight D. 235 Emeneau, Murray B. 118, 157 English: and auxiliary languages 44, 46, 53, 63, 65–6, 75–6; in contemporary Darnell, Regna 67, 69, 117–18, 134, 140, linguistics 262; language of 161 international communication 49, 90; Davies, Anna Morpurgo 225, 228, 262 at Linguistic Institutes 16, 227; Davis, Boyd H. x Middle 16; Old 16, 18, 260; Pound’s Davison, Alice x studies of 4, 16, 269; specialization of De Graff, Thelma B. 197–9, 230, 234 early LSA members 5, 8, 17, 23; de Guesnet, L.M. 53 studies of phonology of 147, 161, 261; De Laguna, Frederica 179 teaching of 23–4; see also dialects; de Wahl, Edgar 84 Linguistic Atlas of the United States Deacon, Desley x, 101–8, 110, 114, 116, and Canada 164–6, 170, 180, 182, 271n. 16.1 ergativity 244 Deardon, Jeannette 24 Esperanto 38–41, 44, 47, 49–52, 56, Debrunner, Albert 55, 71, 73, 170 62–4, 68, 87, 90–1 Delaware 124 Esterhill, Frank 60, 77, 86 Delbrück, Berthold 250–1, 254 ethnography and ethnology: humanistic deletion processes 154 27, 225; Reichard and 95, 124, 126–9, Department of the Interior 95, 132 136, 138, 145, 148, 155, 160–1, 180; derivational morphology, in auxiliary in series edited by Kroeber 119; languages 57, 63–4, 75 studies conducted by Parsons 14, Descartes, René 43 102–3; studies funded by Parsons descriptivism see structural linguistics 107–8, 113; see also fiction in Dewey, John 41 anthropological writing; Southwest dialects, study of 15, 23, 24, 117, 146–7, etymology 16, 131, 167, 170 227, 261 Evans, Matilda Coxe see Stevenson, Dickenson, Emily 96 Matilda Coxe diffusion, cultural and linguistic 116, 142 Dil, Anwar S. 120 Fabbri, Edith Shepard 34, 86 Dionysius 248 Fabbri, Ernesto 34 distributional analysis 3, 23, 145, 153, Faegre, Frances 80 167, 172, 243, 247, 253; see also Falk, Julia S. 10, 14, 23, 46, 50, 68, 109, 147, substitution tests 166, 226–7, 239–40, 270n. 2.1, 270n. 2.2 diversity of languages 67, 261–2 Fanti, A. 46–7, 64 Dixon, R.M.W. 172 Father Berard see Haile, Berard Fawcett, Dixon, Roland B. 139 David M. 176 Doak, Ivy 159 Federation of Women’s Clubs 212 dogmatism 181–2 fiction in anthropological writing 97–8, Doyle, Henry Grattan 52, 55, 71, 84 113–15, 127 Dravidian 228 fieldwork: in the classroom 124, 227; Duggan, Stephen P. 41, 52, 85 living conditions during 128, 169; preparation for 111–18; Sapir’s Eaton, Helen S. 49–54, 66, 69, 71, 80, 84, ‘problem’ of women in 115–16 87; Semantic Frequency List 52, 74–5, 80, Fife, Robert Herndon 51, 55, 84, 220 92 294

I N DEX

Finley, John H. 42, 73, 85 Finnish 262 Firth, John Rupert 205 Fischbach, Henry 86 Fiske, Helen Maria see Jackson, Helen Hunt Fiske, Nathan Welby 96 Flint, Charles W. 85 folktales, African-American and AfricanCaribbean 106–7 foreign language teaching 22–4; research on 50, 219; see also IALA; Intensive Language Program The Forum 56, 85 Fosdick, Raymond B. 82 Foster, Edward P. 78 Fought, John 3–4, 183, 223, 247 Fowler, Murray 250, 252–3 Fox 140–1 Franciscan Fathers 113, 128, 134, 137–8, 162 Franklin, Benjamin 96 ‘free variation’ 143, 151, 253 French: and auxiliary languages 41, 50, 65–6, 75, 90; in contemporary historical linguistics 262; language of international communication 49, 90; specialization of early LSA members 8, 10, 189; see also Romance languages Friends’ Academy 51 Fries, Charles C. 16–17, 52, 117, 228, 244 funding of linguistic research see Morris; Parsons Funke, Otto 71 Galen 43 General Language Course 51–2 generative grammar 3, 156–7, 246, 26; phonology in 147–8; semantics in 156–7, 167–8 genetic classification of languages 118, 120; see also Sapir George Washington University 55, 84 Georgia Historical Society 44 Georgian 262 Gerig, John L. 54, 59, 61, 69, 84 German: and auxiliary languages 41, 44, 50, 65–6, 76, 90; in contemporary historical linguistics 262; at Hunter College 222; language of international communication 49, 90; specialization of early LSA members 8, 10, 18; West 258

Germanic 260; philology 14–15, 228 Gildersleeve, Virginia Crocheron 41, 165, 178 glottalization of resonants 159 glottochronology 92 Goddard, Pliny Earle: co-founder of International Journal of American Linguistics 119; curator at American Museum of Natural History 126, 165; lecturer at Columbia 175; Navajo work 126, 162; and Parsons 105, 115, 126, 165; and Reichard 108–9, 126, 128, 135, 146, 161–2, 164–5, 168, 174; and Sapir 164–5 Gode, Alexander 76–7, 81, 86 Goldfrank, Esther Schiff 105, 109, 111, 126, 168–9, 171, 174–5, 271n. 18.1 Goldfrank, Walter 174 Goldsmith, John A. 3, 156–7, 167–8 Golla, Victor 122, 140, 144, 164, 174, 272n. 20.2 Gonda, Jan 253–4 Gopsill, F.P. 43 Goucher College 8, 10, 12 grammar: in auxiliary languages 52, 57–8, 61–5, 67, 75–6; see also generativegrammar; morphology; syntax; universal grammar Grandgent, Charles 17, 55, 68 Graves, Mortimer 219 Greek: Hahn’s studies and teaching of 189, 197, 200–1, 218, 222, 228–30, 239, 242, 247–8, 251; as source for auxiliary languages 65; specialization of early LSA members 8, 13–14, 19–20, 28, 224, 260; Sturtevant’s study of 201, 227, 240; see also ancient and classical languages Grimm, Jacob 225 Guggenheim Fellowship 158 Haas, Mary R. 4, 116–17, 120, 206, 269; and Algonquian classification 139–40, 143–4; at Conference on American Indian Languages 256–7; in Intensive Language Program 24, 220, 261, 269; LSA president and officer 21–2, 25, 211; and Wiyot 144–5, 157; work with IALA 55, 66, 68, 92, 269 Hadley, Emily Morris 34, 73 Hadley, Hamilton 34 Haeberlin, Herman K. 158

295

I N DEX

Haessler, Luise 5, 8, 16, 18–19, 21–2, 25, 194 Hahn, E.Adelaide 5, 20, 27–9, 185–264 passim, 267–9; and APA 215, 223–4, 229–33, 244, 249–50, 255, 257; breast cancer 197, 257; as classicist 16, 187, 189–90, 217, 222, 229–30, 234–9, 254; Collitz Professorship 207, 212, 231, 250; concern for and relationships with students 204–5, 210–11, 221–2; conference participation 192–9, 215–16, 230, 249, 255–7; conflict with Bloch over dissociation of linguistics and philology 232–3; correspondence with Bloch 28, 188–257 passim; development of linguistics programs at Hunter 218, 221–2; diachronic focus 246–7, 257; early years 187–91, 229–30; first name 205–6; first woman officer in professional societies 212; on foreign language teaching methods 218–19, 221; graduate studies at Columbia 189, 200, 229, 241; holistic view of classics, philology, and linguistics 221, 229–33, 242, 249–50, 258–9; at Hunter College 5, 8, 20, 28, 188–91, 193–9, 203, 212, 217–22, 229, 235, 264; on the integrity of native speakers’ and writers’ usage 234, 241–3; Intensive Language Program brought to Hunter 219–21; as linguist 16, 187, 229–33, 239–59; linguistic historiography 247–8; at Linguistic Institutes 200–2, 204, 207, 229, 240, 256–7, 263; on logic and mathematical models 236–8, 242, 251–2, 254; and LSA 199, 207–16, 231–3; LSA Foundation Member 8, 10, 200, 212, 229; LSA president and officer 21–2, 25, 194, 211–12, 217, 224, 231; men friends and colleagues at Yale 20, 193, 199–204, 224, 231–3, 255–6, 263; methodology in linguistic studies 244–59; Naming Constructions in Some Indo-European Languages 257–9; philological and literary studies 234–8, 254–5; as philologist 16, 187, 229–38; presence and presentations at LSA meetings 193, 200, 207–10, 223, 230, 240, 246, 250, 255–7, 267; relationship and work with Sturtevant

4, 200–3, 220, 239–40, 250, 254–5; remembered in contemporary linguistics 260–4, 268; reviews of work 251–4, 258; scholarship of 29, 204, 212–13, 239, 245, 258; Subjunctive and Optative 198, 201, 213, 215, 230, 249–55, 258; submissions to Language 20, 200, 213–15, 230, 244–5, 248, 254; use of term ‘confusion’ 236–7; verse by 189, 195–6, 214; women friends and colleagues at Hunter 197–9, 203, 205; see also Greek; Hittite; Homer; Indo-European; Latin; meaning; syntax; Vergil Hahn, Eleonore Funk 188–94, 197 Hahn, Otto 188 Haile, Berard 113, 115, 128, 134–5, 160–3, 166; see also Navajo Hale, Kenneth L. 159–60 Hall, Robert A., Jr. 202, 205, 261 Halle, Morris 147–8 Halpern, Abraham M. 166 Hamerschlag, Arthur A. 42 Hammond, Elizabeth Lowell 191 Hammond, Emily Vanderbilt Sloane 34, 36, 41–2, 73 Hammond, John Henry 34, 36 Hamp, Eric 250, 253 Hanley, Miles 228 Harbord, James G. 42, 82 Hardin, Margaret A. 112 Hare, Peter 101–2, 108, 271n. 16.1 Harper & Row 97 Harrington, John P. 100, 138 Harris, Alice C. 246, 260, 262 Harris, Randy Allen 3, 156 Harris, Zellig S. 118, 145, 153, 243, 248 Harvard University 35–6, 51, 55, 68, 180 Haudricourt, André G. 173 Haugen, Einar 263 Hayes, Rutherford B. 98 Hearst, Phoebe Appeson 119 Hearst, William Randolph 119 Heliodorus 248 Heller, John 250 hendiadys 236, 241 Herald Tribune 235 Hermann and Klara H.Collitz Professorship see Collitz Professorship Hermann, Eduard 71 Herskovits, Melville 175 Herzog, George 138, 152, 161

296

I N DEX

Hieb, Louis A. 271n. 16.1 high school teachers 5, 10–11, 13, 19, 268 Hildegard of Bingen 43 Hill, Archibald 211 Hindi 220 Hindustani 220–1 Hinton, Leanne 99–100, 112 Hittite 19, 20, 228, 239–41, 246–8, 261–2; Hahn’s studies of 20, 199–200, 202, 207, 215, 229–30, 239–51, 254–5, 257–8; Sturtevant’s studies of 19, 200–1, 203, 227, 239–40, 254, 260 Hjelmslev, Louis 206 Hockett, Charles F. 180 Hoenigswald, Henry 204, 220–1, 248, 263 Hogan School see Reichard Hoijer, Harry 108, 206; Apache studies 172, 180; disputes with Reichard over Navajo 130–1, 146, 148, 150–3, 156, 160, 162, 166–8, 177, 181; dissertation 125, 120; modern assessments of work 150, 159–60; omission of Reichard from history 161–2, 168, 179; Sapir’s student and literary executor 134, 138, 146, 160–1, 166, 173, 181; see also Navajo Holmes, Henry W. 51 Holmes, Urban T. 24 Homer 198, 249, 252, 261 Hopi 113 Hopkins, Grace Sturtevant (Mrs. Francis W.) see Sturtevant, Grace Horace 234–6, 244–5, 261 Householder, Fred W. 55, 76, 206, 215, 252–3, 255 Howard, Clarence H. 42 Howard, Jane 104, 112 Hoyt, Edwin P. 36 Hubbell, Harry Mortimer 231–3 Hubbell, Roman 128 Huck, Geoffrey J. 3, 156–7, 167–8 humanities: attacks on 23, 218; and linguistics 3, 22–3, 27, 45, 183, 249; see also ethnography and ethnology; philology Hunt, Edward Bissell 96 Hunter College 12, 194, 198, 210, 217, 230; classical languages at 217–19, 222; Intensive Language Program at 219–21; linguistics courses and programs at 203, 218, 221–2; LSA women Foundation Members at 5, 8, 10, 18, 194; see also Hahn; Sturtevant

Huron 262 Hymes, Dell 3–4, 183, 223, 247 hypallage 236 hypotaxis 215, 246 IALA: academics in support of 82, 84–5; Advisory Board for Linguistic Research 66, 72, 80; committees of 42, 54–5, 70, 82; creation of Interlingua 73–7, 81, 88; educational research 49–53, 80; founding of 27, 41–2, 44; lexicon central to 57, 65; linguistic research 47, 53–8, 70–4, 79–81; LSA members affiliated with 53–5; Meetingof Linguistic Research in Geneva 71–3, 84; relationship to American linguistics 87–9, 91–2; research programs 48–58; sales of material by 47, 50; Sapir’s work for 59–74, 92; scientific investigation in 45, 47, 56–7, 88–9, 91; sociological research 48–9, 53, 80; sources of funding for 48, 78–86, 91, 107; see also Interlingua (IALA); Morris; universal grammar IBM 82 Ido 50, 53, 56, 64 Indian Appropriation Act 95 ‘Indian Territory’ 95 Indiana University 55, 252 Indo-European: Hahn’s studies of 28, 239–40, 242, 247, 249–54, 256–8, 267; specialization of early LSA members 15, 18–19 inflectional morphology, in auxiliary languages 46, 57–8, 62–4, 75–6 Institute of International Education 41 integrity of the authors of texts see Hahn Intensive Language Program 24, 50, 219–21, 261; see also Haas; Hahn; women, participation in interchangeability of linguistic forms see alternants in language Interlingua (IALA) 52, 64, 75–7, 81, 86, 88, 267–8 Interlingua (Peano) 46–7, 64–5, 75; see also Latino sine flexione Interlingua Institute 60, 86, 268 International Auxiliary Language Association, Inc. see IALA International Chamber of Commerce 42 international conferences, languages used at 48–9, 52

297

I N DEX

International Congress of Linguists: Second 64, 66–8, 72–3; Eighth 212, 215–16; Ninth 257 International Congress of Orientalists 199, 215 International Journal of American Linguistics 119, 140, 142, 152, 158, 165–6 International Research Council (IRC) 40–2 Interpreters’ Institute 135 interpretive semantics see generative grammar Isleta 171 Italian 50, 63, 65 Jackson, A.V.Williams 18 Jackson, Helen Hunt 29, 95–9, 127 Jackson, William Sharpless 96 Jacobson, Anna 5, 8, 10 Jakobson, Roman 4, 171–2 James, Birdie 143–4 James, Jerry 123, 143 Japanese 219–20, 261 Jespersen, Otto 53–4, 56–7, 64–7, 69, 71–2, 84 Johns Hopkins University 16 Johnson, Edith Trager 222 Johnston, Eva 8, 12 Jones, D.M. 252, 254 Jones, Margaret C. 271n. 16.1 Joos, Martin 16, 118, 124, 200, 205–6, 211, 214, 256 Jorden, Eleanor 24 Joseph, John E. 57, 226–7, 240 Journal of American Folklore 106, 171, 176 Journal of the American Oriental Society 202, 215, 240 journals, blind reviewing for 83–4 Kachru, Yamuna 220 Kahane, Renée 24 Kalispel 142 Karcevski, Serge 71 Kari, James M. 154 Kartvelian languages 244 Kehoe, Alice 179 Keller, May Lansfield 8–10, 22–3, 268 Keller, Ruth M. 8 Keniston, Hayward 52, 55 Kennedy, Arthur G. 16 Kennedy, Hubert C. 65 Kennon, Laura H.V. 49–50, 80

Kent, Kate Peck 179 Kent, Roland Grubb 11, 13, 18, 223, 228, 242, 250, 260; and Latin as auxiliary language 45–7, 54; LSA secretarytreasurer 7–9, 24, 59, 229 Keppel, Frederick P. 42 Keyser, Samuel Jay 147 Kidder, Alfred V. 115 Kinkade, M.Dale 111, 117–18, 144–5, 159 Klah, Hastiin 150–1 Kleiner, Brian 256 Kluckhohn, Clyde 152, 160, 173, 178–80 Knapp, Charles 191, 236, 241 Knowlson, James 43, 63 Kober, Alice E. 194–5, 204 Koerner, Konrad x, 225 König, Selma S. 8, 10 Krapp, George Philip 54, 61 Krauss, Michael E. 134, 154, 162–4, 272n. 19.2 Kroeber, Alfred Louis 117, 119, 162, 164, 180, 205; and Parsons 9, 108–9, 115, 164–5; and Reichard 122–3, 142–4, 164–5, 177; work on Wiyot and Ritwan 139–40, 144, 157 Kurath, Hans 15, 17, 147, 227, 254 Kwakiutl 135 Laboratory of Anthropology 111, 115–16, 134, 160 Lafayette College 44 Laguna 109 Laidlaw, Mrs. James Lees 41–2 Lakoff, Robin Tomach 262–4, 269, 273n. 32.1 Lamphere, Louise 120–1, 126–30, 134–5, 152, 165, 168, 177–80, 271n. 16.1, 271n. 18.1, 272n. 19.1 Landar, Herbert 126, 144, 160 Lane, George S. 188, 193, 202, 205, 255 Language 8, 15, 61, 77, 224, 252, 258; first names in obituaries 205–6; protests over contents of 228–9, 240, 248; see also Bloch; Bolling; Hahn; women, underrepresented in Language Dissertations 14, 18, 25 Language Monographs 14, 25, 66 Large, Andrew 39, 43–4, 47 last speakers 144 Latin: Hahn’s studies and teaching of 20, 189, 196, 200–1, 207, 217–19, 222, 228–30, 234–49, 251, 258, 264; at

298

I N DEX

Linguistic Institutes 11, 13; as source for auxiliary languages 44, 46–7, 65, 68; specialization of early LSA members 8, 14, 18–20, 28, 45; Sturtevant’s study of 201, 227, 240; see also ancient and classical languages Latin Notes 196–7 Latino sine flexione 46, 59, 63–5, 75; see also Interlingua (Peano) Laz 262 Leacock, Eleanor 127, 158, 170, 179, 271n. 18.1 Lee, Mary S. 8, 10 Leeds-Hurwitz, Wendy 115 Leighton, Dorothea 180 Lerner, Gerda 43 Lewinson, Ruth 194 Lewis, Sinclair 235 lexicon: focus of auxiliary language work 57, 65–6, 73, 75–6, 91; in oral texts 108; women concerned with 23; see also vocabulary lexicostatistics 92 Lieberson, Stanley 49 Li, Fang-Kuei 148 Linguist Discussion List 225 Linguistic Atlas of the United States and Canada 17, 227, 229, 269 Linguistic Circle of New York 84, 171, 173, 183, 211, 230, 252 Linguistic Institutes 12, 19, 24, 221, 228; courses and curricula at 11, 13, 23, 91, 117–18, 124, 227, 240; faculty of 8–9, 15–17, 200, 207, 269; see also Hahn; Sturtevant; Yale University Linguistic Society of America (LSA): annual meetings of 208–10, 223–4, 231–3; associate memberships 24; and the auxiliary language movement 44, 46, 53–6, 68–9, 84, 87–9, 91–2; Committee on Publications 21, 25, 84, 214, 229; Committee on the Status of Women in Linguistics x, 263, 269; early years of 11, 20, 27, 45, 223, 260; Executive Committee 21–3, 207, 211, 217, 226, 231, 256; Foundation Members of 4, 7–20, 109; founding of 5–6, 87; Leonard Bloomfield Book Award 260; Nominating Committee 21, 210, 231; officers 12–13, 15, 17–22, 24, 207, 211, 229, 260, 269; Signers of the

Call for 5, 9, 14, 16, 29, 61, 88, 109, 223–4, 239; Standing Committee on Research 21; student memberships 205, 210–11; see also Hahn; Language; Linguistic Institutes linguistics: anthropological 108, 111–12, 118, see also Boas; Riechard; applied 13, 23, 50, 53, 92, 221, 263; autonomy of 4, 47, 87, 92, 120, 183, 228, 233, 261; comparative 13, 15, 19, 142–3, 148, 215, 223, 225, 240, 263, see also linguistics, historical; diachronic see linguistics, historical; dissociation from philology 6, 23, 27, 45, 223–33, 249, 261; generative see generative grammar; historical 13, 16, 19, 22–3, 118, 142, 200, 215, 223, 227, 229, 250 260–3, 267, see also Hahn; linguistics, comparative; philology; history and historiography of 3–5, 7, 27, 29, 53, 69, 92, 121, 150, 156–7, 161–2, 168, 179, 183, 247–8, 260, 262, 269; mechanistic 6, 23; mentalism in 23, 226, 247, 253; nationalism in 215–16; professionalization of 6, 11, 27, 47, 87–9, 267; as a science 4, 6, 23, 27, 45, 47, 88–9, 91, 110, 183, 224–8, 247–8, 253, 269; scientific argument in 156–7, 167–8; structural see structural linguistics; synchronic 6, 22–3, 29, 91, 118, 120, 179–80, 223, 268, see also Reichard; trends in theory 261–2, 267, see also generative grammar; structural linguistics linguists’ knowledge of languages 245–6, 251, 259, 262 literature: not part of linguistics 225–8, 261; studied by Hahn 229, 234–8 Littlejohn, Charlotte Townsend (Mrs. Edward Norris Rich) 8, 10, 13 Littlejohn, Rebecca Bolling (Mrs. Robert M.) 8, 10, 13 Livy 238 Lockard, Louise 135, 272n. 19.1 Locke, Alain 112 Lodwick, Francis 43 Lowrie, Robert H. 109, 115 LSA Bulletin 8, 14, 22, 250 Lucretius 235 Lyon, William H. 120, 134, 135, 160, 162, 164, 177, 271n. 18.1, 272n. 19.1 MacCracken, Henry Noble 41

299

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Macmillan 127 Macurdy, Grace 24 MacVay, Anna P. 8, 10 Macy Foundation 85 Mail and Express 35 Malone, Kemp 16 Man 106 Marckwardt, Albert Henry 206 Maria Antonia 126–8, 132 Mark, Joan T. 271n. 18.1 Martinet, André 55, 75–7, 84, 86 Massachusetts Institute of Technology 44 Mathes, Valeric Sherer 96–9, 271n. 15.1 Matthews, P.H. 3–4 Matthews, Stephen 62 Matthews, Washington 152 Mattina, Anthony 111, 117–18, 144 McCrea, Nelson G. 191 McDavid, Raven I., Jr. 117, 263 McLaughlin, Daniel 134 McLuhan, Teri 176 McQuown, Norman A. 55–6 Mead, Margaret: account of Reichard’s appointment 173–5; at American Museum of Natural History 112; and Benedict 104–5, 108, 111–13, 160, 162, 271n. 16.2; Coming of Age in Samoa 129, 170; on Parsons 103–4, 107; and Sapir 104, 165; shift away from Boas 164, 177–8 meaning: in Hahn’s work 243, 246, 248– 53; in Reichard’s work 121, 129–31, 148–51, 153–4, 156, 170, 172, 183, 267; in Sapir’s work 65, 153; see also semantics Melanesian design 95, 158 Melanesian Pidgin 261 Meng, John J. 195, 197–9 Menomini 180 methods for diachronic analysis in syntax and semantics 249–59 Mezes, Sidney E. 41 Michelson, Truman 115, 125, 139–41, 144 Michener, James 235 Miguelito 121, 126–8, 132 Milton Academy 51 Milwaukee-Downer College 10 minimal pairs 253 Minoan 195 Mission Indians 97–8 missionaries, language work by 111, 134, 136–8, 162, 262

Modell, Judith Schacter 174, 176, 271n. 16.2 Modern Language Association of American, 68, 87, 223–4 Modern Language Journal 51, 84 Molee, Elias 57 mood 247–50, 267; see also Hahn Morgan, William 138, 159–60 morphology: in auxiliary languages 65; in historical linguistics 248, 254, 260; in Reichard’s comprehensive view of language 131, 139, 167, 170; as Reichard’s focus 153–4; in structural linguistics 23, 108; see also derivational morphology; inflectional morphology Morris, Alice Vanderbilt 14, 27–9, 31–92 passim, 267–8; correspondence with Sapir 59–61, 75, 80, 87, 89; early life 33–9, 90, 101; as facilitator 48; financial support of IALA 78–82, 85–6, 92; founding of IALA 41–2; funding of Sapir’s monographs on meaning 153; grammar of thought 56–7, 89; honorary degree awarded to 85; and linguistic research 53–4, 56–7, 59–74, 76, 80; LSA Foundation Member 8, 10; published work of 25, 56, 85, 90; reference to as ‘spirit’ by Sapir 142; see also IALA Morris, Alice Vanderbilt II see Sturges, Alice Vanderbilt Morris, Dave Hennen 49, 85–6; ambassador to Belgium 72–3, 82–3; founding of IALA 41–2, 54; IALA treasurer 78–81; marriage to Alice Vanderbilt Shepard 33–8, 90 Morris, John A. 35 Morris, Mrs. Dave Hennen see Morris, Alice Vanderbilt Moulton, Jenny K. 24 Mount Holyoke College 12, 51 Muller, Henri F. 55 Murray, Stephen O. 7, 49–50, 59, 112, 117, 183 Museum of Northern Arizona 178, 182 mythology 107, 111, 119, 130, 177 Nahuatl 260 National American Woman Suffrage Association 38 National Association of Teachers of Spanish 87 National Bureau of Standards 46

300

I N DEX

National Research Council (NRC) 40 National Woman’s Party 38 Native American languages 66–7, 93–183 passim, 256–7; as focus in anthropological linguistics 4, 14, 28–9, 62–3, 89, 91, 223, 261; see also Coeur d’Alene; Navajo; Wiyot; etc. native speaker as colleague 147–8, 155–6 Navajo 95, 108–82 passim; ‘correct spelling’ of 151–3; Haile’s work on language 113, 134, 150–3, 159, 161–3; Hoijer’s work on language 130–1, 134, 138, 146, 148, 167, 180–1; literacy 132–8; Reichard’s studies of language 108–9, 120–1, 125–38, 144– 56, 159–63, 166, 169–70, 173, 180–1, 267; Reichard’s studies of religion 120–1, 133, 150, 170, 177–8, 180–1; Reichard’s studies of weaving 120–1, 127–8, 137, 161, 170, 177, 181; Sapir’s work on language 116, 134–5, 146, 154, 159–63, 166; see also Hoijer; Reichard Nelson, Mrs. Nils 105 Nelson, Nils 105 neogrammarians 15, 147, 262 New School for Social Research 103 New York Central Railroad 35 New York City schools 50–1 New York Classical Club 229–31 New York League of Women Voters 41 New York Oriental Club 212 New York Public Library 28 New York State Bar Association 35 New York Times 33, 35–6, 42, 73, 217–18, 261 New York University 38, 54, 85 Newcomb, Arthur 177 Newcomb, Franc J. 130, 177 Newman, Stanley 206 Newmeyer, Frederick J. 3, 156–7, 268 Nichols, John D. 143, 156 Nicodemus, Lawrence 124, 158 Nootka 135, 152 North American Review 97 Novial 56, 64 Novick, Peter 4, 12, 26 Nyce, James M. 115 observer paradox 106–7 O’Cain, Raymond K. x Occidental 64, 84 Odell, Ruth 97, 271n. 15.1

Office of Defense Transportation 223 Ogden, C.K. 48, 54, 56 Ohio State University 54, 61, 88, 200 Ojibwa 141, 180 Olmsted, David L. 156, 173 onomatopoeia 148 Opler, Morris 112–13 optative see Hahn; mood oral texts, recording of 108, 117–18, 123, 132–3, 137–8 Orbeck, Anders 55 orthographies, devising of 108, 132–8, 151–3; see also phonetic transcription ‘Papa Franz’ see Boas, Franz parataxis 215, 246 Parezo, Nancy J. x, 4–5, 26–7, 98–100, 112, 116, 120 Parks, Douglas R. 120 Parsons, Elsie Clews 9, 14, 101–10; American Indian Life 113–15, 127, 166; at Barnard College 101–3; and Boas 9, 14, 103–5, 107, 109, 113, 115, 122; at Columbia University 9, 102; concern for detail 103–4, 109–10; financial support for research 14, 27, 107–9, 111–13, 115, 122, 126, 134, 161, 168, 176; and Goddard 105, 115, 126, 165; and Kroeber 108–9, 115, 164–5; LSA Foundation Member 8–9; and Reichard 14, 27–9, 95–177 passim; research and writing 98–9, 101–10, 116, 169–71; and Sapir 104, 112–16, 161, 165–6; see also ethnography and ethnology; Southwest Society Parsons, Herbert 102–3 Parsons, Herbert, Jr. 170 Parsons, John 168, 171 Partee, Barbara Hall 21 partitive apposition 258 pattern in morphology 153–6 Peabody Museum 180 Peano, Giuseppe 46–7, 59, 63–5, 71, 75 Pedersen, Holger 257 Pei, Mario 43 Penzl, Herbert 263 Persian, Old 242, 260 Peru State Teachers’ College 10 pharyngeals 159 philology: dissociation from linguistics 6, 23, 27, 45, 91, 223–33, 249, 267; specialization of early LSA members

301

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13–16, 18, 22, 45; see also Collitz Professorship; Hahn; linguistics, historical philosophical language 43; see also auxiliary languages phonemic theory: analysis of [h] and [x] in Navajo 151–2; developed prior to Reichard’s Wiyot grammar 145; development in structural linguistics 120, 123, 137–8, 261; Hoijer as champion of 167–8; see also phonology; Reichard phonemics: in Reichard’s comprehensive view of language 131, 146, 154–5, 167–8, 170; see also phonemic theory; phonology phonetic transcription 108, 117–18, 134, 138, 144–5, 147; see also orthographies, devising of phonetics: in Reichard’s comprehensive view of language 131, 167, 170; specialization of early LSA members 8, 13, 23; teaching of 23, 117–18, 227 phonology: in historical linguistics 260; in Reichard’s comprehensive view of language 139; in structural linguistics 3, 23, 27, 108, 131, 183, 242–3, 248, 253, 261; see also Hoijer; Reichard physics 225 Plautus 238, 241, 251 poetic language 236–8 Ponca 95–7 Portuguese 65 Pound, Louise 11–12, 16–18, 24, 97, 268–9, 270n. 2.2, 271n. 15.1; co-founder of American Speech 16; LSA Foundation Member 8; LSA officer 17, 21, 269; see also English Prentiss, Henrietta 5, 8 Prince, Della 144 Princeton University 62 Priscian 248 Private School News 51 Prokosch, Eduard 260 Prussian, Old 258 Psyche 68 psychology 23, 50, 66, 70, 225 Pueblos 95, 108–9, 116, 169 Quest 85 Quintilian 201 Radcliffe College 36, 38, 85–6

Radin, Paul 112–13 Radio Corporation of America (RCA) 42, 82 Ramona 97–8, 127 Randolph-Macon Woman’s College 8 Rask, Rasmus 225 Reichard, Gladys Amanda 5, 14, 27–9, 93–183 passim, 267–8; at Barnard College 120, 122, 125, 143, 165, 168, 171, 173–6, 178–9; and Boas 28, 95, 120–5, 129, 134, 139–40, 142–3, 153, 157–8, 164–5, 169, 173, 177–8, 180; comparative Salish studies 108, 142– 3, 158; comprehensive view of language 131, 167, 170, 183; debates with Hoijer on alternants in Navajo 130–1, dogma 181, insights of native speaker 148, meaning in linguistic analysis 150, 153, Navajo phonology 151, 153, 166, Navajo verb analysis 167, phonemic status of [h] and [x] 151, 153, phonemic theory 167, phonetic details 146, 151, spelling of Navajo 151–3; delays in publishing 180–1; editor of Journal of American Folklore 176; effects of territoriality on 156–63; focus on meaning 148, 150, 153–4, 170, 172, 183; focus on synchronic linguistics 29, 120, 125–6, 142, 179–80; focus onvariation 28, 107, 120–1, 123–4, 129–31, 133, 138– 9, 143–4, 146, 148, 150, 155–6, 167– 8, 170, 182–3; and Goddard 108–9, 126, 128, 135, 146, 161–2, 164–5, 168, 174; graduate studies at Columbia 95, 120–3, 139, 145, 177– 8; in history of linguistics 5, 120, 156– 8, 161–3, 166–8, 179; Hogan School 132–8, 147–8, 155, 162–3, 272n. 19.1; isolation of 179–80; language inseparable from culture 120–31, 170, 183; Linguistic Circle of New York participation 171, 183; LSA participation 166–7, 183; modern assessments of work 153–5, 158–60, 162, 172; not comfortable with phonemic theory 145–6, 153; orthography and transcription 126, 136–7, 143–6, 151–3, 156, 159, 181; and Parsons 14, 27–9, 95–177 passim; personal relationships 164–75; popular writing 98, 127, 170;

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relationship with Kluckhohn and Wyman 178–9; reputation of 156, 176–83; and Sapir 115, 118, 125, 128, 134–5, 137–42, 144, 157, 161–7, 169, 179; and Sapir’s Navajo materials 128–9, 146, 151, 181; synesthesia and sound symbolism 148–9, 171–2; work with women 177, 179; see also Coeur d’Alene; ethnography and ethnology; meaning; morphology; Navajo; ‘the Sapir school;’ semantics; Wiyot Reichard, Lilian 177 Reichardt, Konstantin 255 relationships, personal: Hahn 197–9, 203; Reichard 156, 164–75 religion, study of 9, 99, 111; by Parsons 170; by Reichard 120–1, 129, 137, 170 repetition in chants 150 Research Corporation 40–2, 48, 73, 79, 91 Ritwan see Wiyot; Yurok Ro 78 Robinett, Betty Wallace 263 Robins, R.H. 3–4, 245 Robinson, Fred N. 17 Rockefeller Archive Center 79–80 Rockefeller Foundation 79–80, 219 Rockefeller, John D., Jr. 82, 107 Rodnick, David 113 Rolle, Andrew F. 96–7, 271n. 15.1 Romance languages 15, 44, 75–6, 84, 222, 228–9, 245 The Romanic Review 61, 68, 84 Romanucci-Ross, Lola 104 Roosevelt, Franklin Delano 78, 138 Roosevelt, Theodore 96–8, 102 Rosemary Hall 19 Ross & Haines 97 Rossiter, Margaret W. x, 11–12, 16, 23, 176, 205, 268–9 Russell, Bertrand 64 Russian 44, 65, 90, 219–20 Ryan, Dr. 133

Sanskrit 65, 123, 199–200, 228, 242, 244, 246, 249, 251, 260–2 Santa Ana Junior College 8, 10 Sapir, Edward 3–4, 22, 121, 125, 171, 173, 243, 248, 261; and Benedict 113–15, 165, 174; and Boas 113, 164– 5; correspondence with Morris 59–61, 75, 80, 89; fieldwork by 112, 116–17, 131, 135, 160–1, 179; genetic classifications by 118, 120, 125, 139– 42, 157; and Goddard 164–5; and IALA 53–4, 59–74, 76, 80, 84, 88–9, 91–2, 153; on inflectional morphology 58, 61–3; and Mead 104, 113, 165; and Parsons 104, 112–16, 161, 165–6; and Reichard 115, 118, 122, 125, 128, 134–5, 137–42, 144, 157, 161–7, 169, 179; support for students and colleagues 112–13, 115– 16, 161, 166, 180; teaching 116–18, 161; transcriptions 118, 123, 132, 137–8; at Yale University 68, 72, 115– 17, 180; see also Algonquian languages; Navajo; ‘the Sapir school;’ semantics ‘the Sapir school’ 129–30, 148, 151, 166, 168 Sappho 235 Sargent, John Singer 38–9, 57 Sauk 141 Schieffelin, Louise Shepard 34, 41, 73, 86 Schieffelin, William J. 34 Schlauch, Margaret 4, 52, 269 Schleicher, August 225 Schleyer, Johann Martin 44, 47 Schreyer, Rüdiger 262 Schwartz, Eli Arthur 196 Science 106 Scientific Monthly 106 Sechehaye, Albert 71 Seiler, Hansjakob 252 semantics: in contemporary linguistics 268; in historical linguistics 243, 248– 53, 260; methodological problems for diachronic analysis in 249–59; in St. Lawrence University 10 Reichard’s comprehensive view of Saleski, Else M. 8, 10 language 131, 139, 167, 170; studies of Saleski, Reinhold Eugene 47, 91, 226–7 by K.Collitz 14, by Reichard 147–8, Salish languages 108, 120, 142, 145, 153, 150, 167, 181, by Sapir and his 156, 158–9 students 66–7, 70, 72, 91–2, by Salmon, Vivian 43 women 23, 28–9; see also generative ‘salvage’ ethnology and linguistics 99, grammar; meaning 104, 123, 169 ‘separation of levels’ 131, 173 Sampson, Geoffrey 3–4

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Sexton, Brian C. 77 Shakespeare 226 Shawnee 141 Shenton, Herbert N. 48–9, 52–3, 80, 85, 92 Shepard, Alice Vanderbilt see Morris, Alice Vanderbilt Shepard, Elliott Fitch 34–6, 101 Shepard, Elliott Fitch, Jr. 34, 86 Shepard, Margaret Louise Vanderbilt 33–8, 86 Shuster, George N. 196–8, 205, 220–1 Sihler, Andrew L. 263 Sioux 97 Slaughter, M.M. 43 Sloane, William D. 34 Sloat, Clarence 158–9 Smith, Carlota 210 Smith College 8, 10, 12, 14 Smith, Henry Lee, Jr. 147 Smith, Lillian S. 8, 10 Smith, Maria Wilkins 8, 16, 18, 24–5 Smith, Marian W. 120–1, 165, 177, 179, 271n. 18.1 Smithsonian Institution 40–1, 99 Snoqualmie-Duwamish 142 Society of Biblical Literature and Exegesis 87 sociolinguistics 147, 155 sociology 102–3; see also IALA Sommerfelt, Alf 205–6 sound symbolism 148–9, 172 Southwest: languages of see Navajo, Zuni, etc.; women anthropologists in 4–5, 95, 98–110, 112, 115–16; see also Parsons; Reichard Southwest Society 14, 107, 109, 112–13, 126–8 Spanish 50, 62, 65, 262 speech (spoken language), as basis for linguistic science 226–8 speech (therapy) 117; specialization of early LSA members 8, 13, 23 Spelin 57 Spence, Clara B. 41 Spier, Leslie 127 Standing Bear 96 Stanford University 16 Stanley, Richard 150 Steel, Mary Summers 8, 13 Stasz, Clarice 35, 37 Stevenson, James 98 Stevenson, Matilda Coxe 29, 98–100, 111–12

Steward, Julian H. 119 Stimson, Hugh 201 Stocking, George W., Jr. 107, 111 Stowe, Harriet Beecher 97 structural linguistics: common characteristics of 120–1, 183, 223, 267–8; deemed appropriate for Collitz Professorship 15; focus on synchronic studies 6, 22, 262; in histories of American linguistics 3–4, 7; most rigid form of 173; proposed single system for all dialects 146–7; reactions of exiled European linguists to 171, 173; secondary status of written texts in 242–3; second generation practitioners of sometimes intolerant 203–4; see also distributional analysis; phonemic theory; phonology; substitution tests Studies in Linguistics 173 Sturges, Alice Vanderbilt 34, 37–9, 41, 86 Sturges, William Knight 34 Sturtevant, Edgar Howard 11, 47, 223–4, 231, 239–40, 257, 261; constructing nonhistorical linguistic science 91, 226–9; and Hahn 200–3, 239–40, 250, 254–5; at Hunter College 220–1; and the Linguistic Institutes 11, 15, 19, 23, 91, 117, 200, 207, 226–8, 240; and Sapir 4, 68; at Yale University 14, 68, 200, 227; see also Greek; Hittite; Latin Sturtevant, Grace 8, 13–14, 25, 203 Sturtevant, Julian M. 273n. 28.1 subjunctive see Hahn; mood substitution tests 251–3 Summer Institute of Linguistics, Inc. 89 Swadesh, Mary Haas see Haas, Mary R. Swadesh, Morris 55, 66–8, 80, 84, 92, 153 Swarthmore College 121–2 synesthesia 148, 171–2 syntax: in auxiliary languages 46, 57, 61– 4, 75–6; in contemporary linguistics 268; frequency studies of 52; in Hahn’s work 20, 245–8, 251–5, 257– 9; in historical linguistics 245–8, 251– 60, 262; and machine translation 91; methodological problems for diachronic analysis in 249–59; of oral texts 108; in Reichard’s work 139, 155, 159; women concerned with 23; see also generative grammar

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Syracuse University 48, 85

University of Heidelberg 10, 14, 16–17 University of Iowa 8, 11–13, 229 Tagalog 22 University of Leiden 55 Tanzer, Helen H. 5, 8, 21, 210 University of Liverpool 53–4, 79 Taylor, Daniel J. 258 University of Michigan 88, 124, 201–2, Teeter, Karl V. 139; see also Wiyot 207, 220, 256 Teit, James A. 158 University of Missouri 8, 12 Temple University 18 University of Nebraska 8, 11–12, 16–17 Terence 238 University of New Mexico 131, 133, 135 territoriality 156–64, 166 University of Pennsylvania 8, 18, 54–5, Thai 220, 261, 269 84, 88, 229 Thomason, Sarah Gray 201, 273n. 26.3 University of Richmond 8–9 Thompson 159 University of Rochester 55 Thompson, Laurence C. 158–9 University of South Carolina 44 Thompson, M.Terry 158–9 University of Warsaw 269 Thorndike, Edward L. 49–50, 52–3, 79–80, University of Wisconsin 8, 10 85 Urdu 220 Tiffany, Mrs. Charles L. 41–2 Tillamook 142 van Wijk, Nicolaas 55, 73 Todd, Henry Alfred 54, 59, 69, 84 Vanderbilt, Arthur T. 90 Tonkawa 130 Vanderbilt family 33, 34, 37–8, 89–90; Tozzer, Alfred M. 115 Alice Gwynne Vanderbilt 34, 37; Alva traditional grammatical frameworks 28, Smith Vanderbilt 34, 38; 243–5 ‘Commodore’ Cornelius Vanderbilt Trager, George 55, 66, 68, 117–18, 146–7, 33–4; Cornelius Vanderbilt II 33–4, 173, 261 37, 101; George Washington Transactions and Proceedings of the American Vanderbilt II 34, 90; Grace Wilson Philological Association (TAPA) 203, 215, Vanderbilt 34, 37; William Henry 230, 240, 244, 249, 257 Vanderbilt 33–4, 86, 101; William translation, difficulties created by 243–5, Kissam Vanderbilt 34, 38, 101; see also 247–8 the genealogy on page 34; Shepard Trask, R.L. 172, 242 family members; Whitney, Gertrude Trotter, Spencer 121 Vanderbilt Tunica 4, 269 variation in language 261, 267–8; see also Turnbull, Pauline 10, 24, 268 Reichard typology 268 Vassar College 12, 14, 41, 51 Vaughn, Eloise 24 Uncle Tom’s Cabin 97 Vendryes, Joseph 55, 73, 75 universal grammar: in contemporary Verd, Gabriel M. 37, 39, 86 linguistics 37, 62, 262, 268; in work by Vergil 187, 190, 230, 234–8, 241, 254, 261 IALA 37, 51, 56–7, 60, 65, 71, 80 Victoria Memorial Museum, Division of universal language see auxiliary languages Anthropology 59, 164 Université de Montréal 55 Vinay, Jean-Paul 55, 76 University of Arizona 116 vocabulary: alternants in Navajo 130–1; University of Berne 55 in General Language Course 52; in University of California, Berkeley 40, 88, Interlingua 52, 65, 75–6; see also 119, 269; Linguistic Institute at 20, lexicon; lexicostatistics 207, 231, 250; studies of Native Voegelin, C.F. 118, 125, 145, 153, 157, 243 American languages at 119, 122, 139, 174 Voegelin, Florence M. 142 University of California, Los Angeles voice 244–5 180, 256–7 Volapük 44, 57, 63, 68 University of Chicago 53–6, 88, 116, Wakashan languages 135 129–30, 160–2, 220, 254 War Department 24, 95 University of Copenhagen 53–4 305

I N DEX

Waterman, T.T. 115 Watson, Lella B. 8, 10 Watson, Thomas J. 82 Weinreich, Uriel 146–7 Wellesley College 9 Welter, Barbara 99 West, Dr. 197 Western College for Women 9 Westhampton College 9–10 Whatmough, Joshua 206, 250, 252 Wheelwright, Mary 177 Whicher, George M. 191 White, Leslie 112–13 Whitney, Gertrude Vanderbilt 34–6, 38, 101 Whitney, Harry Payne 34, 36 Whitney Museum of American Art 38 Whorf, Benjamin Lee 146 Wilson, Pearl C. 197–9, 203 Wimberly, Lowry C. 17 Winslow, Ola Elizabeth 8, 10 Wissler, Clark 112, 115 Witherspoon, Gary 160, 162 Wiyot: Algonquian classification of 125, 139, 144, 165, 167; Reichard’s studies of 27, 95, 108, 120–6, 129, 139–45, 154, 156–8, 161, 164, 167, 174, 180; Teeter’s studies of 124, 143–4, 156–7 Wollheim, Augusta T. (Mrs. Albert) 194, 199 Woman Suffrage Party 188 women: absent from histories of linguistics x, 3–5, 7, 9–10, 26–7, 29, 156–8, 161–3, 166, 168, 179; concerned with lexicon 23; concerned with syntax 23, see also Hahn; disrespect toward 115, 203–5; exclusion from LSA participation 9, 16, 21–5; first names of 205–6; Foundation Members of LSA 4, 6–20; further studies on 268–9; in history of science 176; limited access to major universities 9, 11–12, 16, 25, 176; limited funding for conference participation 17, 25, 205; marital status of in relation to employment 174–5; meaning as common theme among 23, 28–9; membership in professional societies 212; minority in professional settings 168, 175, 212, 263–4; motherhood and career 190; museum work considered suitable for 112; participation in IntensiveLanguage Program 24, 220–

1; paternalism of male mentors 177–8; in phonetics and speech therapy 12– 13, 23; pioneers in Native American studies 95–100; promotion of at Barnard College 165; publications in Language 13, 18, 24–5, 166; religion considered suitable subject of study for 99; role models 263–4, 267; sexuality in relationships with 165–6; small number of in Southwest linguistics 112–13, 115–18; supporters of humanistic linguistics 22–3, 183, 218; underrepresented in Language 24–5; voices considered unsuitable for recording 17; willingness to conduct fieldwork 179; work taken over by men 16–17, 23, 27, 29, 100, 135; writing described as sentimental 96, 114; see also Hunter College; Southwest Women’s National Indian Association 98–9 Women’s Pro-League of Nations Council 41 Woodbridge, F.J.E. 175 Woodbury, Nathalie 142, 179 Word 76, 84, 171–3, 252 word, definition of 200 World 235 Wyatt, William F., Jr. 258 Wyman, Leland 152, 160, 177–9 Yaguello, Marina 43 Yale Club 115 Yale Linguistic Club 19, 200, 229–31, 255–6; see also Bloch Yale University 88, 200, 210, 214, 220, 231–3, 269; Archives 28, 200; and IALA 54–5, 71; Linguistic Institutes at 19; see also Bloomfield; Hahn; Sapir; Sturtevant Young, Clarence H. 191 Young, Robert W. 135–8, 159–60, 272n. 19.1 Young Women’s Christian Association 36, 85 Yurok 121, 125, 139–40, 142 Zamenhof, Ludwig Lazarus 38, 44, 47 zero morph 154 zero morpheme 172 Zgusta, Ladislav 258 Zumwalt, Rosemary Levy 102–4, 106–7, 112, 115, 126, 271n. 16.1 Zuni 99–100, 102, 105, 108, 111–13, 176

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