THE CLASSIFICATION OF AMERICAN LANGUAGES
By FRANZ BOAS
EVER since Major Powell completed his classification of American languages, which was published in the seventh volume of the Annual Reports of the Bureau of (American) Ethnology, and a revised edition of which is contained in the first volume of the Handbook of North American Indians, students of American languages have paid more attention to a better understanding and a more thorough knowledge of the single languages than to classification. Much of the material on which Major Powell’s work is based is exceedingly scanty, and it is obvious that more accurate studies will show relationships between linguistic stocks which at the time could not be safely inferred. The classification is largely based on vocabularies. Many of these were contained in old literature and are very inadequate. Others were hastily collected in accordance with the exigencies of the situation, and neither Major Powell nor any of his collaborators, like Albert S. Gatschet and James Owen Dorsey, would have claimed that their classification and the map of distribution of languages could be considered as final.
Of late years, largely through the influence of Dr. Edward Sapir, the attempts have been revived to compare, on the basis of vocabularies, languages which apparently are very distinct, and Drs. Sapir, Kroeber, Dixon, and particularly Radin, have attempted to prove far-reaching relationships.
Since for many years I have taken the position that comparison between American languages should proceed from the study of fairly closely related dialects towards the study of more diverse forms, it seems desirable to state briefly the theoretical points of view upon which my own attitude has been and is still based. As early as 1893 I pointed out that the study of the grammar of American languages has demonstrated the occurrence of a number of
