Leonard Bloomfield: Founder of American Linguistic Science

Prepared by

Mariam Bedraoui and Jihad Bachiri

OutlineI- The Intellectual Scene in America in early 20th Century

1. Structuralism2. Behaviourism3. Structuralism

II- Bloomfield: A Behaviourist Theory and Empiricist Methods4. Academic Career5. A Behaviourist Approach to Language6. Empiricist Methods in Language study

III- Influence Areas7. Phonology8. Morphology

9. Post-Bloomfieldians’ Contributions

IV- Conclusion

I- The Intellectual Scene in America in Early 20th Century

Structuralism (De Saussure)

(Sapir)

Behaviourism

(Watson)

Anthropology

(Boas)(Sapir)

1- Structuralism American linguists like Bloomfield and Sapir spent a considerable

time in their early academic career in European universities, where they got acquainted with the seminal work of De Saussure.

De Saussure opposes Neogrammarians who assume that linguistics must necessarily be historical. He contrasted ‘langue’ with ‘parole’ to show the abstract system of structural relationships inherent in language.

De Saussure’s approach focuses on examining how the elements of language relate to one another in the present, that is, ‘synchronically’ rather than ‘diachronically’.

2- Anthropology Frantz Boas (1858- 1942), the founder of American

anthropology, made a breakthrough in the study of cultures and societies by applying scientific methods to the human phenomena, a field which was based largely on anecdotal knowledge.

Boas was credited with establishing the basis of what would become the distributional method for the analysis of languages, which is one of the core principles in structural linguistics.

Edward Sapir(1884- 1939) is considered as the greatest fieldworker in the history of linguistics and anthropology. He worked on the analysis of a number of American Indian languages.

3- Behaviourism

Behaviourism is a psychological theory that focuses on objectively observable behaviours and discounts mental activities.

Watson(1878-1958), a prominent behaviourist, was convinced that by investigating stimuli leading to responses, behaviorism would provide a basis for predicting human behaviour.

According to Watson, the integrated social responses are completely in no way the consequence of consciousness or mind or soul. “Order in the universe is merely a matter of conditioning.”

3- Behaviourism: Types of Conditioning

Experiments by behaviourists identify conditioning as a universal learning process.

There are two types of conditioning, each one leads to a different behavioural pattern.

Classic conditioning occurs when a natural reflex responds to a stimulus.

Operant conditioning occurs when a response to a stimulus is reinforced.

Conditioning

Classic Conditioning

Operant Conditioning

II- Bloomfield: A Behaviourist Theory and Empiricist Methods

Bloomfield: Academic Career

1887- 1949

1906 -1914

• 1909: He completed his doctoral dissertation on Germanic historical linguistics at Chicago University.

• 1909-1914: He undertook further studies on Indo- European languages at German universities.

1914 - 1933

• 1914: He turned to larger considerations of language science in An Introduction to Language Study.

• 1924: He was one of the founding members of the Linguistic Society of America.

• During this period, he pioneered descriptive studies of one of the Austronesia languages, and began his classic work on North American Indian languages.

1933-1949

• 1933: He published his influential textbook, Language, which became an essential reference for all specialists.

• 1935: He was President of the Society.

• 1938- 1941: He taught in the Society’s summer Linguistic Institute.

Language: Theoretical FrameworkThe book is a statement of principles that have become axiomatic in the structural linguistic tradition.

“The speech-utterance [...] is important because it has meaning: The meaning consists of the important things with which the speech- utterance is connected, namely the practical events.” [p. 27]

“The statement of meanings is [...] the weak point in language study and will remain so until human knowledge advances very far beyond its present state. In practice, we define the meaning of a linguistic form [...] in terms of other sciences. ”[p. 27]

“The only useful generalizations of meanings are inductive generalizations.” [p. 20]

“In order to describe a language, one needs no historical knowledge whatever; in fact, the observer who allows such knowledge to affect this description is bound to distort his data.”

[pp.21-22]

Bloomfield’s canonical textbook, Language, has a profound influence on modern linguistics. The book is referred to as ‘the Bible of American linguistics’.

1- Bloomfield: A Behaviourist Approach to Language

An act of speech is one form of bodily behaviour.

It is explained in terms of patterns of stimulus and response

Speech utterances are responses to external stimuli, and are also substitute stimuli for other substitute responses.

Jack and Jill’s Story

Jill is hungry; some of her muscles are contracting and some fluids are secreted. She sees a red apple on a tree(the light waves reflected from the red apple strike her eyes). She asks Jack to fetch the apple for her.

1- Language: A Behaviourist Approach

Hunger= S

Speech utterance= r

Speech utterance= s

Jack fetches the apple= R

Jill is hungry=

Stimulus

Jill fetches the apple

=Response

1- Language: A Behaviourist Approach Language enables one person to make a reaction in response to

another person’ s stimulus.

The speech event has the meaning it has by virtue of its connection

with the surrounding practical events.

To study the meaning of utterances entails a scientific analysis of all the external events that are involved in the situation of speech production.

On the basis that human knowledge is still limited, Bloomfield discards the domain of meaning as lying beyond human knowledge at present.

For Bloomfield, language is a set of signals whose structure can be studied without commitment to any theory about what there is to signal, or how it is possible for human beings to signal.

2- Empiricist Methods in Language Study

meanings of language can not be studied because they are

interrelated with external factors.

The inner structure of language can be

observed, described and analysed.

2- Empiricist Methods in Language Study

•is based on direct observation of the linguistic phenomena under investigation, and

•employs a set of mechanical procedures to come up with inductive generalisations about the observable linguistic data.

Linguistics is a science

that

•is a richly patterned category of observable output and input.

•is patterned along different levels: Phonology, morphology, and syntax.

Linguistics is the study of

speech, which

III- Influence Areas

2- Areas of influence: Phonology/Phoneme

In his Language Bloomfield defines:

Phonology as “ the study of significant speech sounds.” p. 78 The phoneme as “ a minimum unit of distinctive sound- features.” p.79

Bloomfield distinguishes two kinds of phonemes:

Primary phonemes : segmental sounds ( the basic stock). Secondary phonemes : stress and tone ( appear only in combinations).

2- Areas of influence: Phonology/Phoneme

Bloomfield considers the phonemes of a language as the

only relevant elements to its structure.

According to Bloomfield the linguist should proceed by “making up a list or table of the phonemes of a language.”

The phonemes are discovered by experimenting, namely by altering any one of the parts of the word. Each replacable part must constitute a phoneme.

1- Phonology: Minimal Pair Test

/pɪn/ /pɪn/

/fɪn/ begin with different sounds /pɪg/ end with different sounds /sɪn/ /pɪl/ /tɪn/ /pɪt/

/pɪn/ /pɪn/ /mæn/ end with the same sound /pæt/ begin with the same sound and

end /sʌn/ /pʊʃ/ with different sounds

/hen/ /peg/

/pɪn/ /pɪn/ /pen/ the middle part is different /dɪg/ the middle part is the same /pæn/ /mɪl/ /pʌn/ /fɪʃ/

1- Phonology: Distinctive Features Bloomfield made the difference between two types of

features:

Distinctive features: When a feature distinguishes one phoneme from another.

eg: seal/zeal

bat/mat

rack/rock

The distinctive feature [voice] tells [s] from [z]. The two are

contrasting phonemes. The only difference is the distinctive

feature [voicing].

1- Phonology: Non-distinctive Features:

Non-distinctive features are identical phonemes, no different meanings, but just allophones.

Allophones are the members of the phone classes, which are actual phonetic segments produced by a speaker.

Example 1: nasality bean/ bead

Example 2: aspiration

pill/ till/ kill

2- Areas of Influence: Morphology Bloomfield defines morphology

as the study which deals with “the constructions in which bound forms appear among the constituents.”

He thinks that the study of morphology is complex and not conclusive.

Bloomfield devised a detailed analytical taxonomy to separate out and categorise the elements that make up words (discovery tools).

Derivational/ inflectional morphemes

Bound/free morphemes

Morpheme/morphs/allomorphs

2- Morphology: Morpheme A morpheme: A recurrent meaningful form

which can not be analysed into smaller recurrent forms.

It is the minimal unit of linguistic meaning: Examples:watched= 2 morphemes watch + simple

pastPens= 2 morphemes pen+ pluralUnhelpful=3 morphemes negative+ help+

adjective

2- Morphology: Morphemes/ Morphs

Negative, plural and adjective morphemes are abstract categories that are represented by real forms.

Morphs are physical forms representing a morpheme in a language.

words morphs morphemes

watched Watch- ed watch+ past tense

pens Pen- s pen+ plural

unhelpful Un-help-ful negative+ help+ adjective

2-Morphology: Morphs/Allomorphs Sometimes different morphs represent the same

morpheme. They are called allomorphs of that morpheme.

The negative morpheme in English has different morphs/ allomorphso In-capableo Il-logicalo Ir-relevanto Im-probable

Allomorphs are morphs in complementary distribution; i.e. they are never found in identical contexts.

The choice of allomorph used in a given context is normally based on the properties of the neighboring sounds.

2- Morphology: Bound/Free Morphemes

Morpheme

Bound: It can not stand alone

(in- ly- ness)

Prefixes: un-happy re-write

pre- view

Infixes: affixes that occur within the

base

Suffixes: writ-ing

quick-ly, Care-ful

Free: It can stand alone

(love, write, play)

root/base/stem

2- Morphology: Derivation/ Inflection

Bound morphemes can be derivational or inflectional.

Derivational morphemes derive new words from other words. e.g., unhappy un + happy; happiness happy + ness They change part of speech or the meaning of a word.

Inflectional morphemes, on the other hand, do not change meanings or parts of speech, but simply make minor grammatical changes necessary for agreement with other words. e.g., cats cat + s; cooler cool + er There are only eight inflectional morphemes: -s, -ed, -ing, -

en, -s, -'s, -er, -est.

3- Areas of Influence: Post- Bloomfieldians’ Contributions

Bloomfield disseminated his teachings among a group of enthusiastic linguists, who came to be known as Post- Bloomfieldians. He lectured in the Summer Institute of American Society of Linguistics from 1938 to 1941, and inspired these linguists by his empiricist approach to language study.

This went along with a general tendency among American scholars to advance social sciences to the level of pure sciences. They were still unaware of the ethical issues that would be raised by the atomic bomb.

Post- Bloomfieldian structural school was dominant in America in the 1940s and 1950s. Leading Members included:

CharlesHokett Zellig Harris GeorgeTrager Henry Lee Smith

They developed ideas derived from Bloomfield’s work. They were committed to reconstitute linguistic theory along strict empiricist lines.

3- Post- Bloomfieldians’ Contributions Post- Bloomfieldians are also called descriptivist

because they thought of general linguistics more as body of techniques of description than a body of beliefs about the nature of language.

Since the physical record of the flow of speech was the only data considered objective enough to serve as a starting point, it followed that the levels of a grammatical description had to be arrived at in the following order:

1. Phonemics 2. Morphemics3. Syntax4. Discourse

3- Post-Bloomfieldians: Operational Procedures

Stage ThreeStage Two

Stage One

• To group morphemes into syntactic categories.

• To group the phonemes into morphemes, the recurrent sequences of phonemes.• To divide the speech flow into a series of phonemes, the basic units of sounds.

3- Post- Bloomfieldians: Limitations

This approach failed to present a convincing account of suprasegmental phenomena: Stress, pitch and juncture.

Operational analytical procedures may not work for all types of linguistic phenomena. To assign juncture correctly, one has to mix the levels, to do at least part of the grammatical analysis.Even Hocket, a prominent post- Bloomfieldian, had to agree that one could not do an analysis of a language objectively without empathizing with the informants.

IV- Conclusion The downfall of post-Bloomfieldian linguistics was brought about by

dramatic changes in the philosophy of science.

Philosophers of science have realized that even the ‘hardest’ of science contains much that is neither logic nor purely objective observations and data.

Chomsky has come into the scene late 1960s and made some radical

claims.

He believes that the behaviourist rejection of the mind is misguided, and that common sense intuitions about the mind were not necessarily unscientific.

Chomsky’s transformational structuralism was an attempt to bring De Saussure and Bloomfield ideas into a working framework. He adopts De Saussure’s mentalist philosophy and employs Bloomfield’s rigorous methods to come up with a revolutionary linguistic theory.

VI- Conclusion

However, this tremendous analytical work has a very

concrete purpose: To aid the conversion of unbelievers by translating the Bible into their mother- tongues.

The Summer Institute of linguistics provides linguistic training for missionaries of Wycliffe Bible Translators Incorporation, who are working with every vernacular languages of Central and South America.

References

Bloomfield, L. (1914). An Introduction to the Study of Language, by Leonard Bloomfield. London, G. Bell and sons.

Bloomfield, L. (1933). Language. New York, Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Dinneen, F. P. (1967). An Introduction to General Linguistics. New York, Holt, Rinehart

and Winston. Joseph, J. E. (2002). From Whitney to Chomsky: Essays in the History of American

Linguistics. Amsterdam; Philadelphia, PA, John Benjamins Pub. Lepschy, G. C. (1970). A survey of structural linguistics. London: Faber. Malmkjær, K. and J. M. Anderson (1991). The Linguistics Encyclopedia. London; New

York, Routledge. Newmeyer, F. J. (1986). Linguistic Theory in America. Orlando, Academic Press. Sampson, G. (1980). Schools of Linguistics: Competition and Evolution. London,

Hutchinson.

Web References http://www.jastor.org/pss/30157319 http://www.ielanguages.com/linguist.html  http://dingo.sbs.arizona.edu/~langendoen/Bloomfield.pdf  http://www.hbcse.tifr.res.in/jrmcont/notespart1/node107.html