From: benlizro@ihug.co.nz   
      
   Repeating myself from 2018:   
      
   July 9 - Franz Boas (1858)   
   More important to anthropology than to linguistics, but...He was   
   the teacher of Sapir and Kroeber and thus of a whole line of Americanists.   
   He did important first-hand work on Native American languages   
   (especially Kwakiutl -- well, OK, Native Canadian), and helped to   
   establish their methods and analytical approach.   
   His paper "On Alternating Sounds" (1889) was an important contribution   
   to the emergent concept of the phoneme.   
   Other important themes are the independence of race,language and   
   culture, and the challenge of distinguishing between diffusion and   
   common inheritance to explain shared linguistic traits.   
      
   Oh yes: His doctorate was in physics, with a dissertation on factors   
   affecting the colour of sea-water.   
      
   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Boas   
      
   Crystal emphasizes how the opening vista of indigenous languages of the   
   Americas broadened the European-focused view of linguists generally.   
   Quotes from B's Introduction to the Handbook of American Indian   
   Languages, on how categories like tense and gender may work very   
   differently, or be absent altogether, in various of these languages.   
      
   "In America, true gender is on the whole rare."   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)