Leonard Bloomfield

Leonard Bloomfield
Born(1887-04-01)April 1, 1887
DiedApril 18, 1949(1949-04-18) (aged 62)
Alma materHarvard College, University of Wisconsin, University of Chicago, University of Leipzig, University of Göttingen
SpouseAlice Sayers
Scientific career
FieldsLinguistics, Ethnolinguistics
InstitutionsUniversity of Cincinnati, University of Illinois, Ohio State University, University of Chicago, Yale University

Leonard Bloomfield (April 1, 1887 – April 18, 1949) was an American linguist who led the development of structural linguistics in the United States during the 1930s and the 1940s. He is considered to be the father of American distributionalism.[1][2] His influential textbook Language, published in 1933, presented a comprehensive description of American structural linguistics.[3] He made significant contributions to Indo-European historical linguistics, the description of Austronesian languages, and description of languages of the Algonquian family.

Bloomfield's approach to linguistics was characterized by its emphasis on the scientific basis of linguistics and emphasis on formal procedures for the analysis of linguistic data.[4] The influence of Bloomfieldian structural linguistics declined in the late 1950s and 1960s as the theory of generative grammar developed by Noam Chomsky came to predominate.[5]

  1. ^ Flack, Patrick (2016). "Roman Jakobson and the Transition of German Thought to the Structuralist Paradigm". Acta Structuralica. 1: 1–15. doi:10.17613/M6BX9Z.
  2. ^ "Harrisian distributionalism is usually represented as a prime exemplar of the alleged striving of 'Bloomfieldians' to eliminate meaning from linguistics. In fact, it explicates Leonard Bloomfield's affirmation that the form of an utterance and the meaning that it conveys are two aspects of the same thing. It has a deep connection with the search for configuration and pattern in language data exemplified by Edward Sapir, who regarded Harris as his intellectual heir." Zellig Harris, Description
  3. ^ Bloomfield, Leonard, 1933
  4. ^ de Lourdes R. da F. Passos, Maria; Matos, Maria Amelia (2007). "The Influence of Bloomfield's Linguistics on Skinner". The Behavior Analyst. 30 (2): 133–151. doi:10.1007/BF03392151. ISSN 0738-6729. PMC 2203636. PMID 22478493.
  5. ^ "Structuralism | Definition, Characteristics, & Facts | Britannica". www.britannica.com. Retrieved 2023-03-31.

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