 He initiated the application of linguistic methods to the formal analysis of kinship terminology and social organization.He also recorded the Oneida Creation myth in 1971 in Ontario, which was to result in a book, published posthumously by his student Bryan Gick, that included the creation myth and references to versions translated earlier, and linguistic analysis of various aspects of Iroquoian stories.His linguistics work also had a bearing on his anthropological studies - he used his knowledge of semantic fields to relate kin type to phones in the field of phonetics.