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The article presents a literature review that discusses the importance of American Indian linguistics. It also presents a summary of the state of description and comparative work for each linguistics family. It presents a classification of American Indian linguistics as well as the role of various language families and the interrelationships among postulated families. Though space limitations have dictated a narrowly linguistic concern in this literature and the ethnographic semantics are omitted, possible wider relationships of the families and classifications were still discussed.

The article presents a literature review of the different epistemological and philosophical discussions aimed at revealing the basis of analogy between anthropology and linguistics. This anthropological literature explains the similarity between the goals and the subject-matter of both anthropology and linguistics. Furthermore, it describes linguistic models that have been used in cultural anthropology as well as highlights the various degrees of success in the use of the models. Finally, it suggests the overall impact of the use of the linguistic model in anthropology.