Editing Benjamin Lee Whorf (section)

=== Early studies in Mesoamerican linguistics ===
Whorf studied Biblical linguistics mainly at the Watkinson Library (now [[Hartford Public Library]]). This library had an extensive collection of materials about [[Indigenous languages of the Americas|Native American linguistics]] and [[folklore]], originally collected by [[James Hammond Trumbull]].<ref name="Carroll11">{{harvcoltxt|Carroll|1956|pp=10–11}}</ref> It was at the Watkinson library that Whorf became friends with a young boy, [[John Bissell Carroll|John B. Carroll]], who later went on to study psychology under [[B. F. Skinner]], and who in 1956 edited and published a selection of Whorf's essays as ''Language, Thought and Reality'' {{harvcoltxt|Carroll|1956b}}. The collection rekindled Whorf's interest in [[Mesoamerica]]n antiquity. He began studying the [[Nahuatl]] language in 1925, and later, beginning in 1928, he studied the collections of [[Maya script|Maya hieroglyphic texts]]. Quickly becoming conversant with the materials, he began a scholarly dialog with Mesoamericanists such as [[Alfred Tozzer]], the Maya archaeologist at [[Harvard University]], and [[Herbert Spinden]] of the [[Brooklyn Museum]].<ref name="Carroll11" />

In 1928, he first presented a paper at the International Congress of Americanists in which he presented his translation of a Nahuatl document held at the [[Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology|Peabody Museum]] at Harvard. He also began to study the comparative linguistics of the [[Uto-Aztecan languages|Uto-Aztecan language family]], which [[Edward Sapir]] had recently demonstrated to be a linguistic family. In addition to Nahuatl, Whorf studied the [[Piman languages|Piman]] and [[Tepecano language]]s, while in close correspondence with linguist [[J. Alden Mason]].<ref name="Carroll11" />