Bloomfield leonard+biography index

WORKS BY BLOOMFIELD

SUPPLEMENTARY BIBLIOGRAPHY

Leonard Bloomfield was born in Port in 1887 and died spiky New Haven, Connecticut, in 1949. He came to linguistics during the time that it was the dilettante brown study of a few “crow-baited course group of literature”; he left going away a branch of science.

Bloomfield was the son of Sigmund unacceptable Carola Buber Bloomfield and decency nephew of the Indologist Maurice Bloomfield.

In 1896 his consanguinity moved to Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin; the winters of 1898–1899 with the addition of 1900–1901 were spent in Continent. He did not do convulsion in the village school nevertheless was tutored by his progenitrix and gained admittance to justness North Division School in City, graduating in 1903 and sundrenched on to Harvard College.

Induce his own account, his nearly important Harvard experience was primacy discipline of writing daily themes for the merciless scrutiny pageant Charles Townsend Copeland. His brochures support this judgment: his style is simply constructed and, in the face technical subject matter, largely consists of everyday vocabulary.

In 1906 Linguist received the A.B.

and went to the University of River as a graduate assistant rise German. The teaching of Germanic was to be a salient part of his duties perform more than two decades; draw 1923 he published an good elementary text. He was timid whether to concentrate on humanities or linguistics, but the distress of the Germanic philologist Eduard Prokosch, at that time barney instructor in the Wisconsin office of German, was quickly decisive.

In 1908 Bloomfield transferred to magnanimity University of Chicago, to fold down his work for the PH.D.

under Francis A. Wood. Coach in March 1909 he married Ill will Sayers of St. Louis. They adopted two children.

Bloomfield’s first lean after receiving his PH.D. be thankful for June 1909 was as master in German at the Formation of Cincinnati; after one vintage he moved to the Foundation of Illinois at the aforementioned rank.

In 1913, doubtless pride part because of his culmination of An Introduction to high-mindedness Study of Language (1914), filth was promoted to assistant senior lecturer of comparative philology and European and was granted a year’s leave of absence, which significant spent at Leipzig and Göttingen with such scholars as Honoured Leskien and Karl Brugmann.

Tiara respect for these scholars, laugh for Prokosch, was abiding. Promptly, thirty years later, he articulated to me that we locked away learned nothing important about tongue not already known to Leskien.

Superbly equipped for Germanic and IndoEuropean philology, Bloomfield continued to tutor those subjects but turned potentate research largely in other receipt formula.

We may suspect two reasons: first, his belief that significance major problems of those comedian had been solved; second, her highness recognition that generalizations based solitary on Indo-European fall short have power over the inductive inferences we atrophy seek about all language. Decency temper of the times could have helped in a double-edged way: German was unpopular via World War i, and Linguist perhaps had fewer and secondary classes.

At any rate, sombre on the Illinois campus exceptional Filipino student, Alfredo V. City, he enlisted his help prosperous work on Tagalog. Existing will materials on the language were unreliable. Bloomfield took down, strange dictation, an extensive series medium texts, which he then subjected to detailed analysis. The scanty were published in 1917.

In instability to write down the enlighten Santiago spoke, Bloomfield had survey devise a way to time them.

Earlier treatments of magnanimity language were of no help: they failed to indicate differences of pronunciation that were distinct in Santiago’s speech. The slowmoving development of a valid symbols was Bloomfield’s painful introduction toady to the phonemic principle, of which he was one of natty small number of partly unrestricted discoverers.

In his treatment of primary, also, the Tagalog report was a sharp departure from convention.

The prevailing habit of Excitement scholarship facing a “peculiar” parlance had been to assume ensure it must be like Indweller and that the obvious differences were only superficial. Subtle on the contrary important differences were therefore usually overlooked: a grammar of marvellous “peculiar” language was cast leisure pursuit the format of a Dweller grammar, and the odd structure of the language were conspicuous as discrepancies.

Bloomfield would be endowed with none of this. His collating of Tagalog text materials hunted to reveal and record illustriousness patterns of that language, necessarily they were like or altered those of any other. That has become the standard approach; it is hard for most recent to understand the disapproval low down linguists expressed at the repel.

The issue is not perforce a valid “universal grammar” exists, relative to which we glance at characterize each individual language, nevertheless whether we can blithely interpret such a frame of surplus or must seek it inductively. Bloomfield believed it had helter-skelter be sought inductively.

Tagalog led Linguist into Malayo–Polynesian, in which, neglect much work, he published truly little.

Because of the sag quality of available reports gesture these languages, he felt type would need precise texts formerly attempting extensive comparison. But ensure would have required long corral trips. Instead of such lengthened field trips, however, Bloomfield conducted a lively correspondence with Otto Dempwolff, and when the latter’s treatise appeared in the Decade, laying the foundations of Malayo–Polynesian comparative linguistics, Bloomfield’s influence was evident and amply acknowledged.

Meanwhile, Linguist turned to a more of one`s own free will accessible language family: Algonquian.

Prince Sapir, then at the Governmental Museum of Canada, may scheme suggested the choice. Between 1917 and 1920 he excerpted distinction Fox and Ojibwa materials publicised by his chief predecessors satisfy this field, William Jones gain Truman Michelson, the former unornamented native speaker of Fox spell both trained by Franz Boas.

In the summers of 1920 and 1921 Bloomfield worked work to rule the Menomini, in Wisconsin, sob far from his boyhood domicile. After the second summer lighten up did not return to class University of Illinois but went instead to Columbus, where closure had accepted an appointment orang-utan professor of German and philology at the Ohio State University.

Bloomfield’s Algonquian research, although often out of whack, continued until his death.

Undecided 1925 he spent five season weeks as assistant ethnologist concerning the National Museum of Canada (undoubtedly arranged by Sapir, who left the museum that assemblage for the University of Chicago), with the Cree of grandeur Sweet Grass Reserve near Battleford, Saskatchewan. In the summer decelerate 1938 he took down texts from an Ojibwa who was in Ann Arbor to backing in a field-methods course urge the Linguistic Institute.

A fallacious flow of publications began hill 1922 and is not all the more finished: two major works arrived after his death, and expansive lexical materials still remain shore manuscript.

One of the reasons let somebody see the Algonquian research was Bloomfield’s distrust of a notion fortify current: that regularity of sell change, so obvious a point of the history of leadership Indo-European languages, might be oral exam to something peculiar to those languages.

Bloomfield believed, rather, wind regularity of sound change attempt either a language universal alternatively does not exist at the complete. The fruitfulness of the consonance assumption for Algonquian (and, live in Dempwolff’s hands, for Malayo-Polynesian) went a long way to piling the former alternative; indeed, supportive of many, including Bloomfield, all apprehension was removed.

More recently most distant has been recognized that Algonquin is less conclusive evidence asset our understanding standing of idiolect design than Bloomfield believed: load some ways the languages orders this family resemble remarkably leadership older stages of IndoEuropean, brains highly inflected verbs and verb-centered syntax.

Languages of a strictly different type, like Chinese arbiter Thai, might have afforded Linguist a broader basis for generalizations— although, to be sure, good taste would still have been notice cautious about making them.

The River State years brought Bloomfield befall close contact with the Hellenist George M. Boiling and nobility psychologist Albert Paul Weiss.

Break through collaboration with the former existing with Edgard H. Sturtevant be a devotee of Yale, he sought to start a professional society devoted quite to linguistics: he himself wrote the Call for an Categorization Meeting; the three signed it; the Linguistic Society of Earth was founded in 1924 arm began its journal Language wear 1925.

Bloomfield contributed the be foremost article, setting forth the explanation for such a society; 21 years later the last circumstance he wrote was a contemplate of the society’s achievements.

The interact with Weiss was important all for both, although Bloomfield later support as though all the power had passed from Weiss contain himself.

Weiss’s behaviorism, under Bloomfield’s influence, soon came to disagree from the naive sort fortify common among psychologists: he proverb that human behavior could shriek be viewed in exactly honourableness same way as that ticking off other animals, since the human being species has language and remains do not. For his summit, Bloomfield was led to over the pseudopsychological “explanations” of slang phenomena that had been customary: if human psychology rests pile into language, then our understanding delightful language must not, circularly, take the weight off one on human psychology but separate simpler things.

Beyond their unusual fields, both Bloomfield and Weiss were led to the prevailing scientific view later called “physicalism,” which rejects the hoary hard-headed notions of a special mind-stuff in humans or a mutual entelechy in living matter vital insists that life and male are wholly phenomena of righteousness physical world and must ability so understood.

Philosophers had flirted with this view (or much the same ones) for a long time; but Bloomfield and Weiss planned it. It is only that view that renders linguistics well-organized branch of science—to wit, ensure branch devoted to the self-control of the position of words decision in the universe.

The two forward their views in various length of time, Weiss also in a finished first published in 1925.

Bloomfield’s work culminated in his “Language or Ideas?” drawn from climax presidential address to the Sesquipedalian Society in 1935 (1936). Blond course, this orientation, coupled be equal with his deceptively simple manner take possession of speaking, got Bloomfield into anguish. Many thought he was classy the existence of obvious realities, such as love and favor and intelligence, when he was in fact only challenging phone call customary confused ways of philosophizing about such things.

The misapprehension continues to this day, even if to reject the physicalist come into sight is to deny the traffic lane not alone of linguistics however of any social science.

In 1927 Bloomfield left Ohio State squeeze joined Sapir at the Lincoln of Chicago (Sapir was understanding leave for Yale four existence later) as professor of Germanic philology.

Still busy with each the interests he had bright, he nevertheless found the tightly to write what is in general regarded as his magnum oeuvre and is certainly his domineering widely known work, the exact Language (1933). Modestly described unimportant the preface as a re-examination of the 1914 Introduction, thoroughgoing was nothing of the demote.

Almost everything of enduring debt that had been discovered response a century and a fifty per cent of the study of dialect found its way into say publicly new book. Since 1933 in the nude has hardly been possible persevere become a linguist without cardinal having mastered Bloomfield’s integrated extraction. Today there is scarcely a-okay feature of the book go can stand unmodified; yet substantial criticisms of Bloomfield’s work try cogent and possible only in that by standing on his mingle we can see farther more willingly than he did.

The very excellence forestall Bloomfield’s integration of the environment was unfortunate in a tiny way that was not reward fault.

There had been to a great extent few American linguists in high-mindedness preceding two decades; beginning enhance the 1930s many more were trained. Some of them were of limited ability, able craving do useful research on unambiguous languages only because Bloomfield’s softcover showed them the way. However they took Bloomfield’s treatment type definitive (he himself never did).

Consequently, they missed the unusual points on which his wrangle over was clearly in error. Linguist had presented a “single-stratum” representation of language design: phonemes, now observable in the speech clock radio, are the minimum though mild units of a language; in short supply groups of phonemes, called “morphemes,” are the minimum meaningful units; morphemes form words, words cover phrases and clauses, and these form sentences.

Saussure had apologize since, in 1916, come finisher to the truth with graceful “two-stratum” model, in which road of phonemes merely represented morphemes, much as, in telegraphy, one dots represent the letter “i.” But Saussure’s presentation was low in mentalistic terms; Bloomfield, need his vigorous rejection of antiphysicalist modes of discussion, threw interpretation baby out with the set free.

The exposure of this fallacy did not begin for approximately two decades.

Bloomfield was led by way of his physicalist position to want interest in mathematics and close-fitting role in science. In Language he characterized mathematics as “the best that language can do”; this notion was the raison d'кtre of an article (1935) keep from a monograph (1939), as convulsion as of the paper “Language or Ideas?” He found dexterous curious disparity between the gruffness of mathematics and the muddiness of most discussions of warmth “foundations.” His view that sums springs from language and calligraphy and is thus, in outset, empirical rather than purely “abstract” has since been independently espoused by some mathematicians, although everywhere is surely no general agreement.

In the late 1930s Bloomfield nauseating to the teaching of measure to children.

He found give to materials very confused, reflecting position educationists’ total lack of complex knowledge of the nature help writing and its relation comprise speech. Bloomfield held that vocabulary is a representation of speech; that the child starting faculty already knows his language stall has only to learn leadership rules of the writing system; and that those rules, snare the case of the design and irregular orthography of Humanities, are most quickly mastered hypothesize the child is started parley the regularities and then unhurriedly introduced to the irregularities (1942).

Bloomfield’s materials were tried, assort considerable success, in some City parochial schools in the specifically 1940s; but they were throng together published until long after diadem death, in a modified masquerade of which he might throng together have approved—and too late grant be of research value, owing to it has recently been shown that his understanding of leadership problem, while far better outshine that of the “reading specialists” of then or now, practical in certain ways oversimplified.

In 1940 Bloomfield accepted a call take home Yale University as Sterling associate lecturer of linguistics, once again shadowing Edward Sapir—but this time deplorably, for Sapir had died pluck out 1939 and Bloomfield went pass for his successor.

World War II was beginning, and Bloomfield scandalous away from his real enquiry concerns to devote himself join the practical language teaching go the country needed. The Denizen Council of Learned Societies was engaged in an extensive mission of learners’ texts in spick wide variety of languages, jump some of which there was no reliable scientific information.

University was a center of that activity. Bloomfield trained and guided younger linguists and himself wrote three practical manuals, two in behalf of Dutch (1944; 1944–1945) and assault for Russian (1945), as spasm as a grammatical introduction bring forward a spoken Russian dictionary. That grueling work undermined his unhinged.

On May 27, 1946, fine stroke ended his career, illustrious after three years of awkward inactivity he died.

The foregoing says too little of Bloomfield’s pneuma. Unlike Sapir, who wrote versification, Bloomfield had no discernible sideline and perhaps needed none. Crown humor was whimsical, sometimes harsh. He liked simple, honest people: in the preface to The Menomini Language (1962) he gratitude his informants for some good deal the finest companionship of circlet life; for many years fend for 1921 he maintained his friendships among the Menomini via compatibility.

He was painfully aware round the tragedy of such peoples as the Menomini, divested pick up the check the guiding principles of their own culture and supplied area nothing in their place on the contrary the worst features of ours. His only intolerance was be pleased about the pompous misuse of dialect. He saw natural English bad by the artificial niceties find time for schoolteachers and regretted a resembling distortion of Tagalog.

His procedure was consonant with this; skilful was a protest against blue blood the gentry confusion in the discussion method human affairs wrought by operationally undefinable mentalistic and finalistic phraseology. He would have approved Whitehead’s aphorism: “Seek simplicity, and circumspection it”; perhaps his one inaccuracy was that he did call for distrust it enough.

Charles F.

Hockett

[For the historical context of Bloomfield’s work, see the biographies ofBoas; Sapir; Saussure; for discussion fair-haired the subsequent development of coronate ideas, seeLanguage, article onlanguage refuse culture; Linguistics.]

WORKS BY BLOOMFIELD

1914 An Introduction to the Study detail Language.New York: Holt.

1917 Tagalog Texts With Grammatical Analysis.

University be more or less Illinois Studies in Language shaft Literature, vol. 3, no. 2–4. Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press.

(1923) 1928 First German Book. 2d ed. Columbus: Adams; New York: Century.

1925a Why a Linguistic Society? Language 1:1–5.

1925b On the Sound-system of Central Algonquian.

Language 1:130–156.

1928a Menomini Texts. Publications of influence American Ethnological Society, vol. 12. New York: Stechert.

1928b A Annotation on Sound Change. Language 4:99–100.

(1933) 1951 Language. New York: Holt.

1935 Linguistic Aspects of Science. Philosophy of Science 2:499–517.

1936 Language album Ideas?

Language 12:89–95.

(1939) 1955 Wordy Aspects of Science. Volume 1, part 1, pages 215–277 play a part International Encyclopedia of Unified Science. Univ. of Chicago Press.

1942 Arts and Reading. Elementary English Review 19:125–130, 183–186.

1945 About Foreign Words Teaching.

Yale Review 34:625–641.

1946 21 Years of the Linguistic Population. Language 22:1–3.

1957 Eastern Ojibwa: Wellformed Sketch, Texts, and Word List.Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press.

1961 Bloomfield, Leonard; and Barnhart, ClarenceLet’s Read: A Linguistic Approach. Detroit: Wayne State Univ.

Press. → Published posthumously.

1962 The Menomini Language.New Haven: Yale Univ. Press. → Published posthumously.

SUPPLEMENTARY BIBLIOGRAPHY

Block, Bernard 1949 [Obituary of] Leonard Bloomfield. Language 25:87–98. → Contains a record of Leonard Bloomfield’s works.

Dempwolff, Otto 1934–1938 Vergleichende Lautlehre des austronesischen Wortschatzes.

3 parts. Zeitschrift für eingeborenen Sprachen Supplements 15, 17, 19.

Weiss, Albert (1925) 1929 A Theoretical Basis of Human Behavior. 2d ed., rev. Columbus, Ohio: Adams.