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On Classification, Language, and American Indian Scholarship: Commentary on Boas 1929

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2026

Barbra A. Meek
Barbra A. Meek*
Affiliation:
University of Michigan
*
[bameek@umich.edu]
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Extract

So far as I know the actual process of a transfer of grammatical categories from one language to another [or hybridization] has never been observed, although minor changes, like the adoption of a form here and there, and syntactic influences are known to occur. ... The question in which we are interested is not that of the theoretical definition of relation of languages as defined by Meillet ..., but merely a question of historical development. (Franz Boas 1929:2, 7)

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Type
Commentary
Information
Language , Volume 100 , Issue 1 , March 2024, pp. 172 - 178
Copyright
Copyright © 2024 Linguistic Society of America

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