Leonard Bloomfield

            Since the work of the 19^th century historical linguists we have seen a growing desire to make the study of language both scientific and autonomous. The accomplishments of the historical linguists in establishing the laws of sound change founded the hope their language could be studied scientifically, although such study was considered to be possible only on the diachronic place

Behaviorism

            Leonard Bloomfield was the most concerned with making linguistics both autonomous and scientific. As the term was understood in the 1930’s, “scientific” implied restricting evidence to empirical data. One reason for this approach was the lack of a persuasively presented and empirically based psychology. During the period when Bloomfield was writing his second version of language, an empirical approach to psychology called “behaviorism” was being developed by J.B. Watson the most characteristic and unsatisfactory feature of Bloomfield’s book was his acceptance of behaviorist psychology as one of the ways of stating meanings. This aspect of his classic work. However is peripheral and brought in only to illustrate how meanings could be empirically stated by another discipline.

Watson was convinced that by investigating stimuli leading to responses behaviorism would provide a basis form predicting human behaviorism. He defined “stimulus” as “any object in the general environment or any change in the psychological condition of the animal such as the change we get when we keep it from sexual activity, feeding or building a next,” which leads to some form of behavior.

Language

          The 1933 version of language was a prevision of an earlier work, introduction to the study of language, published in 1914. This version relief on the psychology of Wundt for the statement of meaning, while the later work illustrated meanings in behavioristic terms.

“The Study of Language” (chapter 1)

            Bloomfield’s conclusion is a good summary of his own point a view:

The only useful generalization about language are inductive generalization. Features which we thing ought to be universal maybe absent from the very next language that become accessible. Some features such as for instance the distinction of noun-like and verb-like words as separate parts of speech are common to many languages, but lacking in others.

“The use of Language” (chapter 2)  

            Main points that might be misunderstood:

1.      In two short paragraphs of about 120 words each Bloomfield summarized and dismissed approximately 25 centuries of thought on language study.

2.      Much of what is ascribed to a mentalist view of language study is derived from speculative philosophy or psychology.

3.      While Bloomfield also seems to have been convinced of mechanism as a valid philosophy.

4.      Bloomfield identified the paralinguistic processes with those the mentalists called “thought” and held that the traditional qualitative.

5.      Bloomfield pointed out clearly the insoluble difficulty for a behaviorist approach in his notion of displaced of speech.

“Speech Communities and The Languages of the world” (chapter 3 & 4)

            Bloomfield classified the main types of speech roughly as follows: (1) the literary standard for formal speech writing, (2) the colloquial standard, which is the informal style of the privileged class, (3) the provincial standard, which will reasonable, (4) sub-standard clearly differs from the first three, (5) the local dialect will be that variety of language. He also listed the languages of the world by their geographic distribution.

“The Phoneme and Type of Phoneme” (chapter 5 & 6)

            The phonemes of a language are not sounds but features of sounds, which the speakers have been trained to produce and recognize. Bloomfield then cited some sounds types that are frequently found as phonemes in familiar languages. “Noise-sounds” include stops, trills, and spirants: “musical sounds” include nasals, lateral, and vowels. Consonantal articulations are described by listing the organs involved, the place and manner of articulations, and specifying the degree of closure and friction. Vowels are defined as “modifications of the voice-sound that involves no closure, friction, or contact of the tongue or lips.”

“Modifications, Phonetic Structure, and Meaning” (chapter 7, 8, and 9)

            Vowels and sonant’s also combine into compound phonemes, which are called diphthongs or tripthongs, depending on the number of sounds involved. The phonemes as the smallest units which make a difference in meaning, and usually define each phoneme according to the part it plays in the structural pattern of the speech forms.

            There are two main features on dictionary meanings that we cannot ignore: (1) many linguistic forms are used for more than one typical situation and (2) the addition of supplementary values in linguistic forms, which we call connotations.

“Grammatical Forms, Sentence Types, and syntax” (chapter 10, 11, & 12)

            Four basic ways in which linguistic forms are arranged: (1) order, (2) modulation or use of secondary phonemes, (3) phonetic modification or change of the primary phonemes, and (4) selection or differing arrangements of the same constituents resulting in different meanings.

            Two position can be distinguish in the discussion of sentences types: absolute position, when forms are used alone, and included position, when forms occur as parts of other forms. A syntactic construction is defined as a recurrent set of taxemes of modulation, phonetic modification, selection, and order. Phrases can be made up of more than one syntactic construction. A sequence for syntax would be that in languages with fewer distinct word classes, the phrase, rather than the word, is the logical basic element of grammatical arrangements.

“Morphology and Morphology Types” (chapter 13 & 14 )

            Morphology as the study that deals with “the constructions in which bound forms appear among the constituent … includes the constructions of words and parts of words, while syntax includes the constructions of phrases.” Another problem is met when a single morpheme expresses more than one meaning. Since such morphological constructions in various languages often fall into different ranks a complex form can be described as though the various compositions, modifications, and affixations take place in a determined order.

            Bloomfield found two main lines of classification: (1) the relation among members and (2) the relation of the whole to its members. Secondary derivatives have one free form, a phrase or a word as an immediate constituent.

“Substitution” (chapter 15)

Bloomfield concluded that (1) the entire meaning of substitutes = class meaning + substitution types, (2) this meaning is more abstract and inclusive, but more constant than that of ordinary linguistic forms, since they designate classes of grammatical forms, and not things so that, (3) they can be considered linguistic forms of the second degree still. (4) they more primitive than most forms and (5) occur more frequently than any of the forms of their domain that they replace.

“Form-classes and Lexicon” (chapter 16)

Bloomfield suggested and explained some terms we can use to split up the simplistic term “meaning”:

(1)   Smallest and meaningless unit of linguistic signaling: phoneme:

(a)    Lexical: phoneme

(b)   Grammatical: taxeme

(2)   Smallest meaningful unit of linguistic signaling glosseme; the meaning glosseme is a noeme;

(a)    Lexical: morpheme; the meaning of a morpheme is a semene

(b)   Grammatical: togmeme; the meaning of togmeme is an epismeme

(3)   Meaningful unit of linguistic signaling smallest or complex’s linguistic form; the meaning of a linguistic form is a linguistic meaning

(a)    Lexical: lexical form; the meaning of a lexical form is a lexical meaning

(b)   Grammatical: grammatical form; the meaning of grammatical form is a grammatical meaning.

 “Written records, The Comparative Method, and Dialect Geography” (chapter 17, 18, and 19)

An explanation different from the family tree image concerning how changes occur in related languages was proposed by Johannes Schmidt (1843 – 1901) which came to be called the “wave theory.” The theory assumes that tribes spread from a geographical center in all directions and that we can picture the relations in a single direction by representing contiguous dialects by a string letters. Dialect could be defined more precisely in geographic terms.

“Phonetic Change, Types of Phonetic Change, Fluctuation in the Frequency of Forms, and Analogic Change” (chapter 20, 21, 22, 23)

One of the clearest examples of linguistic change is phonetic change. The neogrammarians held that sound change is independent of semantic features and is merely a matter of articulatory habits. A common type of change is assimilation in which the position of the vocal organs for the production of one phoneme is altered to a position more like that employed in producing another; more common is regressive assimilation, where the preceding phoneme is affected.

 “Semantic Change, Cultural Borrowing, Intimate Borrowing” (chapter 24, 25, 26)

            Semantic changes can be established on the basis of (1) written records, (2) comparison with related languages, or (3) structural analysis of the forms. Semantic change is merely the result of change in the use of it and other semantically related speech-forms. Herman Paul held that semantic change consists principally in expansion and obsolescence. Cultural borrowing projects on a grand scale what is characteristic of the learning experience for individuals.

 “Dialect Borrowing” (chapter 27)

Every speaker acts as both an imitator and a model for others. our present standard languages developed from provincial dialects prevailing among the upper middle class of the urban centers that became capitals London and Paris for English and French.

“Applications and Outlook” (chapter 28)

He concluded language with these words:

The methods and results of linguistic in spite of their modest scope resemble those of natural science, the domain in which science has been most successful. It is only a prospect, but not hopelessly remote that the study of language may helps us toward the understanding and control of human events.

Bloomfield’s Influence

Bloomfield’s influence on American and European linguistics has been considerable. For quite a few years after the publication of language Bloomfield’s was the predominant approach to language study in American and European.

He was successful in inculcating a scientific attitude toward linguistic work. The results of these attitudes which often embodied a naïve mechanism. Mentalism was an opprobrious label, one that linguists avoided for a considerable period. This attitude led to an emphasis on classification and description as the sole or at least as the principal work of scientific linguists.