Michael Silverstein’s scientific contributions

1. Of course, one perennial focus of such tension is exemplified in linguistics; and even today we have the opposition of structuralist, systemic ('competence'-oriented) theories of language vs. variationist, '-lectal' ('performance'-oriented) theories. 2. Kulturkreislehre formulations (cf. Graebner 1911) come at once to mind, though the notion of integration into a functional and ecological whole is not quite the same here. Similarly, within linguistics, certain aspects of the Wellentheorie associated with J. Schmidt (1871) can be taken as explaining the systematicity of comparative grammar in geographical perspective. 3. Sherzer attempts to characterize Boas' concern as of the former, rather than the latter type (2-3); but I think this is a confusion between the requirements of adequate description and the uses to which such description is to be put, all adequately distinguished in Boas' writings from an early period. Indeed, Boas' concern with 'sui generis' description amounted precisely to the discovery that the very facts of language (and of culture more generally) are facts of what Saussure was to call 'valeur'; their explanation was still to be historical and particularistic.