User:Jomeara421/Blfld

Linguistic thought
Bloomfield notes

Need to address:

'mentalism' – behaviorism / 'mechanism'

influence of deSaussure.

Note Taking
Bloch, 1949 obit (completed)

Hall, 1990. (Last note from Hall 1990 p. 48 Note about post-Blfldians Harris, Trager, Bloch. "For these and their disciples, descriptive linguistics was in theory (but only in theory) limited to the enumeration of patterns of distribution of phonemes and sequences of phonemes, with meaning taken into consideration only as a factor to differentiate between sequences.

General
Bloch 49 p. 89 His absorbing interest in linguistics as a science did not prevent him..." [section on applied, including army program]

Bloch 49 p. 92 There can be no doubt that Bloomfield's greatest contribution to the study of language was to make a science of it. Others before him had worked scientifically in linguistics; but no one had so uncompromisingly rejected all prescientific methods, or had been so consistently careful, in writing about language, to use terms that imply no tacit reliance on factors beyond the range of observation. To some readers, unaware of the danger that lies in a common-sense view of the world, Bloomfield's avoidance of everyday expressions may have sounded like pedantry, his rigorous definitions like jargon. But to the majority of linguistics, the simple clarity of B's diction first revealed in full the possibilities of scientific discourse about language.

Bloch 49 p. 90. Trained as an Indo-Europeanist in the great tradition of the neo-grammarians, he had also a specialist's knowledge of at least four groups within the general field: Germanic, Indic, Slavic, and Greek. ... he appreciated not only the value of comparative and historical grammar but that of descriptive grammar as well.

Bloch 49 p. 91. Few anecdotes are more often told in support of the neo-grammarian hypothesis than Bloomfield's use of it to predict the discovery of a previously unattested consonant cluster in a Central Algonquian dialect. ... it will be enough to point out the characteristic union of old and new in Blfld's work: the application of an established technique, developed in the comparison of Indo-European languages, to a linguistic family without written records—a family that many Indo-Europeanists have never heard of.

Behaviorism / Mentalism
Bloch 49 p. 89 "In 1914 Blfd had viewed language from the position of Wilhelm Wundt, whos 'Volkerpsychologie' is accordingly reflected in the earlier book. By 1933, partly as a result of his association with the psychologist Albert Paul Weiss, he had become a behaviorist. But what is more important, he had convinced himself, as he was later to convince so many others, that it does not matter what particular brand of psychology a linguist finds attractive , so long as he keeps it out of his linguistic writings."

Bloch 49 p. 93. In his long campaign to make a science of linguistics, the chief enemy that B met was that habit of thought which is called mentalism: the habit of appealing to mind and will as ready-made explanations of all possible problems. Most men regard this habit as obvious common sense; but in B's view, as in that of other scientists, it is mere superstition, unfruitful at best and deadly when carried over into scientific research. In the opposite approach — known as positivism, determinism, or mechanism-B saw the main hope of the world; for heas convinced that only the knowledge gained by a strictly objective study of human behavior, including language, would one day make it possible for men to live at peace with each other. [followed by paragraph deprecating non-positivistic approaches]

NB: See Secondary and tertiary for defense of positivism, second half of article, Lg. 20, 1994, pp. 51-55.

Impact of Language
Bloch 49 p. 88  "Bloomfield's masterpiece is unquestionably his book Language, published in 1933: a work without an equal as an exposition and synthesis of linguistic science."

Hall, 1990.p. 44 '… with the the book that virtually all commentators consider Bloomfield's supreme masterpiece, his Language of 1933…

Hall 1990 p. 46 The crowning merits of Bloomfield's 1933 Language were, as Charles Hockett has suggested, two: first of all his equation of the phonemic principle, on the synchronic plane, with that of regularity of sound change in that of diachronic development; and, secondly, his integration of material gathered at first hand from work on the field with information derived from secondary sources.

Bloch 49 p. 91. That his teaching has nevertheless changed the course of linguistics in this country, that his approach and his method have come to be almost matters of orthodoxy to many students, is due to the tremendous impact of his book Language and of his other writings. To appreciate that impact it is enough to recall the state of our linguistic methods before the appearance of Language. It was a shocking book: so far in advance of current theory and practice that many //p. 92// readers, even among the well-disposed, were outraged by what they thought a needless flouting of tradition; yet so obviously superior to all other treatments of the subject that its unfamilir plan could not be dismissed as mere eccentricity. ... not only did the book summarize and clarify the main results of our science up to the time of its publication, it also pointed the direction that linguistics was to take in the immediate future.

===Analysis - Form --> Meaning / Meaning Hall 1990, p. 47 "… his emphasis on the necessity of beginning one's analysis starting from form rather rather than from meaning, was interpreted as a denial that meaning existed or was relevant to linguistics at all. The same misinterpretation was placed on his insistence that the meaning of a [p. 48] form had no influence on its phonological development. …throughout his work B regarded meaning as an essential part of human behavior, and that he devoted a whole chapter to it in his 1933 Language.

Publications

 * 1911: "The Indo-European Palatals in Sanskrit". in: The American Journal of Philology 32/1: 36-57.
 * 1914: Introduction to the Study of Language. New York: Henry Holt and Co. ISBN 90-272-1892-7.
 * 1914: "Sentence and Word". in: Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association 45: 65-75.
 * 1916: "Subject and Predicate". in: Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association 47: 13-22.
 * 1917: (with Alfredo Viola Santiago) Tagalog texts with grammatical analysis. University of Illinois studies in language and literature, 3.2-4. Urbana, Illinois.
 * 1924: "Notes on the Fox language". in: International Journal of American Linguistics 3, pp. 219-232.
 * 1926: "A set of postulates for the science of language". in: Language 2: 153-164 (reprinted in: Martin Joos (ed.), Readings in Linguistics I, Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press 1957, pp. 26-31).
 * 1927: "Literate and illiterate speech". in: American Speech 2: 432-441.
 * 1927: "On Some Rules of Pāṇini". in: Journal of the American Oriental Society 47: 61-70.
 * 1928: Menomini Texts. American Ethnological Society Publications 12. New York. ISBN 0-404-58162-5.
 * 1930: Sacred stories of the Sweet Grass Cree. National Museum of Canada Bulletin, 60 (Anthropological Series 11). Ottawa. ISBN 0-404-11821-6.
 * 1933: Language. New York: Henry Holt and Co. ISBN 0-226-06067-5, ISBN 90-272-1892-7. [His magnum opus]
 * 1935: "Linguistic aspects of science". in: Philosophy of Science 2/4: 499-517.
 * 1939: "Menomini morphophonemics". in: Travaux du Cercle Linguistique de Prague 8: 105-115.
 * 1939: Linguistic aspects of science. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
 * 1942: Outline guide for the practical study of foreign languages. Baltimore.
 * 1958: Eastern Ojibwa. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. [posthumous; Charles F. Hockett (ed.)]
 * 1962: The Menomini language. New Haven: Yale University Press. [posthumous; Charles F. Hockett (ed.)]
 * 1970: Charles F. Hockett (ed.), A Leonard Bloomfield Anthology. Indiana University Press. ISBN 0-226-06071-3.