All Anthropological and Documentary Linguistics

Scholars whose primary contribution is fieldwork describing previously undescribed languages, usually in connection with anthropology. Belongs here: Franz Boas, founder of the four-field approach and of descriptive Native American linguistics; Edward Sapir, extensive descriptive fieldwork across several Native American language families; and Benjamin Lee Whorf, grammatical fieldwork on Hopi. Does not belong here: a scholar working chiefly from already-recorded texts rather than fieldwork on a living, previously undescribed language.