lingustics

1. Leonard Bloomfield
• Leonard Bloomfield was an American linguistic and philologist, one of the most important
representatives of American structuralism and can be regarded as the representative of
Descriptivist school, who is best known for his influential book “Language” appeared in 1933.
• Bloomfield had a major influence in the shift of linguistics from the historical and comparative
study of languages prevalent during the 19th century to the description of the structure of
languages in the 20th century. He defined himself as a behaviorist.
• However, to talk about his “concept” of meaning, or even “meaning” itself, may immediately sound
a-Bloomfieldan, since Bloomfield’s abandonment of mentalism went to such extremes that he was
opposed to using terms like ‘concept’, ‘idea’, ‘notion’ etc. (Bloomfield, 1936)

2. • BEHAVIORISM theory of language rejects the existence of all mentalist constructs, Bloomfield also
rejects the classical view that the structure of language reflects the structure of thought. For Bloomfield,
the structure of language was the central object of linguistic study.
• The main principle of the theory was mainly on analyzing human behaviors in observable stimulus -
respond within interaction.
• In the study of language, he marginalizes the semantic aspect. Leonard Bloomfield left his mark on the
fields of morphology and syntax.
• Bloomfield’s notion of science can be summed up in some points.
• First, the object of scientific study is physically accessible observables.
• Second, scientific inquiry is carried out by “definite handling operations”, i.e. observation, collecting of
specimens, experiment.
• Thirdly, materialistic or mechanistic terms rather than mental ones are to be used to achieve rigorous
discussion of science.
• Bloomfield rejects the application of all date that was not measurable and “directly observable” for
linguistic analysis;