INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF AMERICAN LINGUISTICS
��VOL. I
��57. THALBITZER, WILLIAM. Eskimo (BBAE 40 [pt. l]:
967-1069).
58. SAPIR, EDWARD. The Takelma Language of South-
western Oregon, in Handbook of American In- dian Languages (BBAE 40 [pt. 2, 1912]: 1-296).
59. FRACHTENBERG, L. J. Coos (BBAE 40 [pt. a,
1914] : 297-429).
59a. Siuslawan (Lower Umpqua) (BBAE 40 [pt. 2, 1917] : 431-629).
VI. Comparative Linguistics
60. POWELL, J. W. Indian Linguistic Families of
America North of Mexico (RBAE 7 [1891] : i- 142).
61. HEWITT, J. N. B. Comparative Lexicology [of Seri
and Yuman] (RBAE 17 [1898] : 299*~344*).
62. SWANTON, J. R. Social Condition, Beliefs, and
Linguistic Relationship of the Tlingit Indians (Relationship between the Tlingit and Haida Languages, RBAE 26 [1908] : 472-485).
63. THOMAS, CYRUS; and SWANTON, J. R. Indian
Languages of Mexico and Central America, and their Geographical Distribution (BBAE 44 [1911] : 1-108).
64. MICHELSON; TRUMAN. Preliminary Report on the
Linguistic Classification of Algonquian Tribes (RBAE 28 [1912] : 221-290 b).
In brief, 370 pages are devoted to linguistic papers of a general nature, 1526 pages to linguistic bibliographies (not counting No. 7), 2612 pages to Indian text (including connected English translations), 3007 pages to lexical material, 2211 pages to grammatical studies, and 382 pages to comparative linguistics. Nor is this all, for a very considerable body of lexical and text material (chieflysongs and short ritual- istic texts) is scattered up and down various ethnological monographs (for example, in Miss Fletcher's "Hako Ceremony," Mrs. Stevenson's "Zuni Indians," J. P. Harring- ton's "Ethnogeography of the Tewa Indians," and elsewhere). Moreover, there is much unpublished manuscript of a linguistic nature in the hands of the Bureau, some of which has been drawn upon for the published papers. 1 As regards mere bulk, the linguistic
1 And let us not forget that not a few linguistic papers and monographs published in anthropological journals and in the anthropological series of other institutions were based on material obtained under the auspices of the Bureau.
��output of the Bureau is impressive enough, even when allowance is made for a consider- able share of material (such as Nos. 6-16) that is intended merely as a help for scientific re- search. Nor should we forget that lexical and text matter, the indispensable raw material of all linguistic studies, is necessarily a some- what forbidding item from the quantitative standpoint. The total readable volume of linguistic contributions (aside from transla- tions of texts) boils down, therefore, to hardly more than a fourth of the whole.
How about quality? It is a thankless, certainly a somewhat dangerous, proceeding to pronounce judgment right and left wise- acre-fashion, so much depending on personal bias and the peculiar circumstances attending each publication. Nevertheless it seems safe to say that in quality the Bureau linguistic publications run a very long gamut indeed, extending all the way from the distressing amateurishness of, say, No. 34, to work exemplified, say, in No. 57, of as high a standard of phonetic finish and morphological insight as one could hope to find anywhere in descriptive linguistic literature. As these examples indicate, the general standard has improved with time, as was indeed to be expected on general principles. Yet this is not unreservedly true, for I should consider it beyond dispute that, for instance, J. O. Dorsey's text material (Nos. 18 and 19) can more than hold its own in comparison with much that followed.
Any general criticism of the linguistics of the Bureau should be tempered by three considerations. In the first place, much of the output is the work of men who were either not trained in linguistic methods at all, or, at any rate, did not receive a training rigorous enough to set them the highest desirable standard of accomplishment. Under the circumstances in which the scientific activities of the Bureau were launched, this is perfectly excusable; for most of the trained linguists were and still largely are men devoted
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