Peter Metcalf in his book Anthropology states that one of Boas's most outstanding students was Edward Sapir.His overview of the field of linguistics called Language (1921)where he expanded on the basic insight that the sounds of language form a system at several different levels.At the most fundamental level any given language makes use of only some of the noises that a human mouth can make.But competence in speaking does not consist of getting noises exactly the same every time which is not human but rather of observing certain distinctions between noises.
Sapir noticed that the conventions of conversation and formal speech making and telling stories and so on constitute particular genres in many Amerindian languages that he studied.He contrasts the way that the poetry of Latin,Greek,French and Chinese produces their effects.He argues that each of these rhythmic systems is part of the unconscious habits of the language.Sapir draws together within one framework a broad range of cultural behaviour that might be called semiotic or message bearing.
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