Terrien De Lacouperie, “The Old Babylonian Characters and their Chinese Derivatives”, 1888 was the topic of earlier blog post. Here I present another “Chinese derivative”: John D. Bengtson, “Edward Sapir and the ‘Sino-Dene’ Hypothesis”, volume 120, year 1994, pages 207-230 was a science paper in anthropological linguistics. In 1921, American scholar presented a linguistic phylum that included Chinese (Sinitic & Tibeto-Burman) and “Na-Dene” (Haida, Tlingit, Eyak & Athabaskan) of the North American Indians. The geography of this linguistic group spreads across the “Bering Strait” of the Artic Ocean (as shown in the above map). The “Na-Dene” languages include the “Navajo’ which is a tribe of 400,000 members today (shown in the map below). Edward Sapir, “Language: An Introduction to
the Study of Speech”, 1921 was monograph used to supplement linguistic textbooks for which Edward Sapir is best known (book cover is shown below). This book was published the same time Edward Sapir put forth the Sino-Dene” hypothesis.
John D. Bengtson, “Edward Sapir and the ‘Sino-Dene’ Hypothesis”, volume 120, year 1994, pages 207-230 was a science paper in anthropological linguistics. Edward Sapir the ‘Sino-Dene’ was based on the “Chinese derivatives” equating to cognates; and, the value of this discovery in linguistics ranks with the “Rosetta Stone“.
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