Linguistic Anthropology statistics based on the full quantile regression process. Hyndman R J, Bashtannyk D M, Grunwald G K 1996 Es- There have been several proposals dealing with gener- timating and visualizing conditional densities. Journal of alizations of quantile regression to nonparametric Computational. and Graphical Statistics 5: 315–36 response functions involving both local polynomial Koenker R, Bassett G 1978 regression quantiles. Econometrica 46: 33–50 methods and splines. Extension of quantile regression Koenker R, Hallock K 2001 Quantile Regression. Journal of methods to multivariate response models is a par- Economic, Perspecties, forthcoming ticularly important challenge. Lehmann E 1974 Nonparametrics: Statistical Methods Based on Ranks. Holden-Day, San Francisco Manski C 1985 Semiparametric analysis of discrete response: 7. Conclusion asymptotic properties of the maximum score estimator. Journal of Econometrics 27: 313–34 Classical least squares regression may be viewed as a Portnoy S, Koenker R 1997 The Gaussian hare and the natural way of extending the idea of estimating an Laplacian tortoise: computability of squared-error vs. unconditional mean parameter to the problem of absolute-error estimators, with discussion. Statistical Science estimating conditional mean ‘functions,’ the crucial 12: 279–300 step is the formulation of an optimization problem Powell J L 1986 Censored regression quantiles. Journal of Econometrics 32 that encompasses both problems. Likewise, quantile : 143–55 regression offers an extension of univariate quantile R. Koenker estimation to estimation of conditional quantile func- tions via an optimization of a piecewise linear objective function in the residuals. Median regression minimizes the sum of absolute residuals, an idea introduced by Boscovich in the eighteenth century. The asymptotic theory of quantile regression closely Linguistic Anthropology parallels the theory of the univariate sample quantiles; computation of quantile regression estimators may be ‘Linguistic anthropology’ is an interdisciplinary field formulated as a linear programming problem and dedicated to the study of language as a cultural efficiently solved by simplex or barrier methods. A resource and speaking as a cultural practice. It assumes close link to rank based inference has been forged that the human language faculty is a cognitive and a from the theory of the dual regression quantile process, social achievement that provides the intellectual tools or regression rankscore process. for thinking and acting in the world. Its study must be Recent nontechnical introductions to quantile re- done by detailed documentation of what speakers say gression are provided by Buchinsky (1998) and as they engage in daily social activities. This docu- Koenker and Hallock (2001). Most of the major mentation relies on participant observation and other statistical computing languages now include some methods, including audiovisual recording, annotated capabilities for quantile regression estimation and transcription, and interviews with participants. inference. Quantile regression packages are available As an interdisciplinary field, linguistic anthropology for R and Splus from the R archives at http:\\ has often drawn from and participated in the de- lib.stat.cmu.edu\R\CRAN and Statlib at http:\\ velopment of other theoretical paradigms. Some of its lib.stat.cmu.edu\S, respectively. Stata’s central core own history is reflected in the oscillation often found provides quantile regression estimation and inference among a number of terms that are not always functions. SAS offers some, rather limited, facilities synonyms: linguistic anthropology, anthropological for quantile regression. linguistics, ethnolinguistics, and sociolinguistics. Its main areas of interest have changed over the years, from an almost exclusive interest in the documentation Bibliography of the grammars of aboriginal languages to the Barrodale I, Roberts F D K 1974 Solution of an overdetermined analysis of the uses of talk in everyday interaction and throughout the life span (Duranti 1997, Foley 1997). system of equations in the l" norm. Communications ACM 17: 319–20 This article provides a brief historical account of Buchinsky M 1998 Recent advances in quantile regression linguistic anthropology, and highlights important past models: a practical guide for empirical research. Journal of and present issues, theories, and methods. Human Resources 33: 88–126 Doksum K 1974 Empirical probability plots and statistical inference for nonlinear models in the two sample case. Annals of Statistics 2: 267–77 1. Linguistic Anthropology within the Boasian Gutenbrunner C, Jurec) kova! J 1992 Regression quantile and Tradition regression rank score process in the linear model and derived statistics. Annals of Statistics 20: 305–30 In the holistic tradition established by Franz Boas Ha! jek J, Sida! k Z 1967 Theory of Rank Tests. Academia, Prague, (1858–1942) in the USA at the beginning of the Czech Republic twentieth century, anthropology was conceived as 8899 Linguistic Anthropology comprising four subfields: archaeology, physical (now later became known as ‘salvage anthropology,’ that is ‘biological’) anthropology, linguistics (now ‘linguistic the documentation of languages and cultural tra- anthropology’), and ethnology (now ‘sociocultural ditions that seemed on the verge of disappearing. This anthropology’). This vision of anthropology differs enterprise—a struggle against time due to the great from the one found in the European tradition, where damage already done, by the end of the nineteenth linguistics and social anthropology remained rigidly century, to the indigenous cultures of the Americas by separate disciplines for most of the twentieth century, European colonizers—produced valuable information despite the emphasis on the use of native languages in on Native American traditions, but it had its method- fieldwork among UK anthropologists, and the theor- ological and theoretical drawbacks, the most flagrant etical and methodological influence of Bronislaw of which was the inability to see or accept the effects of Malinowski (1884–1942), who wrote about the im- cultural contact and colonization. portance of linguistic research for an anthropological Through his writing and teaching, Boas brought understanding of human societies. In the 1950s, the scientific rigor to linguistic description and helped adoption of the term ‘ethnolinguistics’ (reflecting the demolish a number of unfounded stereotypes about European preference for ‘ethnology’ over ‘(cultural) the languages that were then called ‘primitive.’ In an anthropology’) for those studies that merged linguistic 1889 article entitled ‘On alternating sounds,’ Boas and anthropological interests signaled the intellectual argued that the commonly held view that speakers of recognition, at least in some European academic American Indian languages were less accurate in their circles, of the importance of an ‘ethnological side’ of pronunciation than speakers of Indo-European linguistic studies (Cardona 1976), but the institutional languages was false and probably due to the lack of recognition of such a discipline within European linguistic sophistication of those who had first tried anthropology has been slow to come. European to describe indigenous languages. Consistent with his scholars with research interests similar to those of cultural relativism, Boas believed that each language North American linguistic anthropologists are thus should be studied on its own terms rather than more likely to be found in departments of linguistics, according to some preset categories based on the study foreign languages and literatures, folklore, communi- of other, genetically unrelated languages (e.g., Latin). cation, sociology, or psychology. In his ‘Introduction’ to the Handbook (1911), Boas To understand the special role given to the study of provided an overview of the grammatical categories languages in the Boasian tradition, we must go back to and linguistic units necessary for the analysis of the time when anthropology became a profession in American Indian languages and argued against over- the USA, in the period between the last decades of the generalizations that would obscure differences across nineteenth and the first decades of the twentieth languages. He identified the sentence (as opposed to century. In that time, the study of American Indian the word) as the unit for the expression of ideas, and languages emerged as an essential part of anthro- listed a number of grammatical categories that are pological research. John Wesley Powell (1834–1902), likely to be found in all languages, while pointing out the founder of the Bureau of Ethnology, later renamed that the material content of words (the meaning of Bureau of American Ethnology (BAE), supported, lexical items) is language-specific and that languages through grants from the US government, linguistic classify reality differently. One language might express fieldwork, in the belief that by collecting vocabularies the semantic connections among words pertaining to and texts from American Indian languages, it would the same semantic field by modifying one basic stem, be possible to reconstruct their genetic relations and whereas another language might have words that are thus help in the classification of American Indian etymologically completely unrelated. As examples of tribes. Boas himself had become fascinated by the the latter type, Boas (1911) mentioned the different grammatical