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Document Details :

Title: Roman Jakobson's Struggle in War-Time America
Subtitle: More Epistolary Testimonies
Author(s): SWIGGERS, Pierre
Journal: Orbis
Volume: 36    Date: 1991-1993   
Pages: 281-285
DOI: 10.2143/ORB.36.0.2012815

Abstract :
The Franz Boas Collection of the Library of the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia1 includes an extensive collection of letters written to, or by, scholars and administrators with whom Franz Boas (1857-1942) was in contact. During my work on the collection, and more particularly on the scholarly correspondence with linguists, I came across a letter of Zellig S. Harris (1909-1992) to Franz Boas, which constitutes an interesting document for the history of modern linguistics. The letter is the only extant one by Zellig Harris in the Boas collection; it is dated August 2, 1942, and is of special relevance for a correct view of Roman Jakobson’s settling in the U.S., in the summer of 1941.

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