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Early life and education

Bloomfield was born in Chicago, Illinois on April 1, 1887. His father Sigmund Bloomfield immigrated to the United States as a child in 1868; the original family name Blumenfeldwas changed to Bloomfield after their arrival in the United States. In 1896 his family moved to Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin, where he attended elementary school, but returned to Chicago for secondary school. His uncle Maurice Bloomfield was a prominent linguist at Johns Hopkins University, and his aunt Fannie Bloomfield Zeisler was a well-known concert pianist.

Bloomfield attended Harvard College from 1903 to 1906, graduating with the A.B. degree. He subsequently began graduate work at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, taking courses in German and Germanic philology, in addition to courses in other Indo-European languages. A meeting with Indo-Europeanist Eduard Prokosch, a faculty member at the University of Wisconsin, convinced Bloomfield to pursue a career in linguistics. In 1908 Bloomfield moved to the University of Chicago where he took courses in German and Indo-European philology with Frances A. Wood and Carl Darling Buck. His doctoral dissertation in Germanic historical linguistics was supervised by Wood, and he graduated in 1909. He undertook further studies at the University of Leipzig and the University of Göttingen in 1913 and 1914 with leading Indo-Europeanists August Leskien, Karl Brugmann, as well as Hermann Oldenberg, a specialist in Vedic Sanskrit. Bloomfield also studied at Göttingen with Sanskrit specialist Jacob Wackernagel, and considered both Wackernagel and the Sanskrit grammatical tradition of rigorous grammatical analysis associated with Pāṇini as important influences on both his historical and descriptive work. Further training in Europe was a condition for

promotion at the University of Illinois from Instructor to the rank of Assistant Professor.

After two years of work at Wisconsin, he went to the University of Chicago to continue his studies in comparative-historical linguistics and Germanics. He also

studied Sanskrit; his uncle was Maurice Bloomfield, a well-known professor of Sanskrit and comparative linguistics, from whom he possibly derived some of his interest.

Career

After obtaining his Ph.D. in 1909 at the age of 22, Bloomfield taught German at the University of Cincinnati and then the University of Illinois. In 1913 he was appointed Assistant Professor of Comparative Philology and German at the University of Illinois, and taught there until 1921. At that point he accepted a professorship at Ohio State, where he taught until 1927. In the summer of 1925, he became an Assistant Ethnologist in the Canadian Department of Mines in Ottawa, a position that allowed him to carry out fieldwork on native American languages. In 1927 he took a prestigious position as Professor of Germanic Philology at the University of Chicago. Bloomfield was one of the founding members of the Linguistic Society of America. In 1924, along with George M. Bolling (Ohio State University) and Edgar Sturtevant (Yale University) he formed a committee to organize the creation of the Society, and drafted the call for the Society's foundation. He contributed the lead article to the inaugural issue of the Society's journal Language, and was President of the Society in 1935. He taught in the Society's summer Linguistic Institute in 1938-1941, with the 1938-1940 Institutes being held in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and the 1941 Institute in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. In 1940 he accepted an endowed Sterling Professorship of Linguistics at Yale University, where he remained until his death in 1949.

Publications

In 1914, while a young instructor in Urbana-Champaign, Bloomfield published "An Introduction to the Study of Language", a scholarly yet popular book that went through many reprints. This book laid out his basic ideas about the nature of language, following on basic Boasian lines, which were becoming characteristic of Linguistics in the U.S.: a focus on spoken language as primary, written language as secondary; observation of language as a present-day reality to speakers, rather than from an external, historical point of view; and an interest in the variety of linguistic systems in the world and in drawing generalizations about human language in the process of observing them. In addition, he included two chapters on language change, illustrated with examples from many languages. The book ended with a chapter on the relation of Linguistics to other sciences, a topic that would increasingly concern him.

His next major publication was "Tagalog Texts with Grammatical Analysis" in 1917, which showed how much he was extending his interests beyond the traditional Indo-European orbit. In 1922 he reviewed Sapir's book "Language" approvingly, finding it to be in accord with the theoretical principles of Ferdinand de Saussure, whose posthumous book he referred to in the review (and finally reviewed himself a few years later). It is clear that Bloomfield saw a new kind of Linguistics emerging, distinct from the comparative-historical tradition in which he was trained; a Linguistics which had a strong empirical focus, particularly on hitherto undescribed languages. We think of this field now as the field of modern descriptive Linguistics, which would come into its heyday under Bloomfield and his disciples.

Bloomfield worked to develop the new field in various ways. He was instrumental in the founding of the Linguistic Society of America, writing the "Call for the Organization Meeting" for the organizing committee which called the LSA into being, which was published in revised form as "Why a Linguistic Society?" in the first issue of the LSA's new journal, "Language" (Bloomfield 1925). Second, he began systematizing axioms or postulates for Linguistics as a science, publishing "A Set of Postulates for the Science of Language" (in "Language" 2, 153-164, 1926). In this work he sought to place Linguistics on a scientific footing as firm as those of the natural sciences.

In his years at Ohio State in particular, Bloomfield came more and more under the influence of logical positivism and of its allied psychological movement, behaviorism, both directly in the main current of 20th century materialism. In the process, he cast off the earlier influence of the 19th century pioneer of psychology Wilhelm Wundt which was prominent in his 1914 book, because of its incompatibility with the new paradigm. In the early 1930s he decided to completely revamp his book and to incorporate behaviorist ideas centrally into it, particularly in the chapters on language use and meaning. The result, appearing in 1933 under the simplified title "Language", became a classic in its own right and was used for a generation as a textbook in Linguistics.

Bloomfield was deeply concerned with the advancement of Linguistics as a science. He further developed in his fieldwork the methodologies of linguistic data collection and analysis pioneered by Boas. He used each of the language families he studied as a source of material for the development of linguistic theory, taking it in a rather different direction from Sapir, who assumed the possibility of analyzing semantics and conceptual structure generally. It was Bloomfield who took the new generation of linguists with him, becoming in effect the leader of the field.

Indo-European linguistics

Bloomfield's earliest work was in historical Germanic studies, beginning with his dissertation, and continuing with a number of papers on Indo-European and Germanic phonology and morphology. His post-doctoral studies in Germany further strengthened his expertise in the Neogrammarian tradition, which still dominated Indo-European historical studies. Bloomfield throughout his career, but particularly during his early career, emphasized the Neogrammarian principle of regular sound change as a foundational concept in historical linguistics.

Bloomfield's work in Indo-European beyond his dissertation was limited to an article on palatal consonants in Sanskrit and one article on the Sanskrit grammatical tradition associated with Pāṇini, in addition to a number of book reviews. Bloomfield made extensive use of Indo-European materials to explain historical and comparative principles in both of his textbooks, An introduction to language (1914), and his seminal Language (1933). In his textbooks he selected Indo-European examples that supported the key Neogrammarian hypothesis of the regularity of sound change, and emphasized a sequence of steps essential to success in comparative work: (a) appropriate data in the form of texts which must be studied intensively and analyzed; (b) application of the comparative method; (c) reconstruction of proto-forms. He further emphasized the importance of dialect studies where appropriate, and noted the significance of sociological factors such as prestige, and the impact of meaning. In addition to regular linguistic change, Bloomfield also allowed for borrowing and analogy.

It is argued that Bloomfield's Indo-European work had two broad implications: "He stated clearly the theoretical bases for Indo-European linguistics..."; and "...he established the study of Indo-European languages firmly within general linguistics...."

Sanskrit studies

As part of his training with leading Indo-Europeanists in Germany in 1913-1914 Bloomfield studied the Sanskrit grammatical tradition originating with Pāṇini, who lived in northwestern India during the sixth century B.C. Pāṇini's grammar is characterized by its extreme thoroughness and explicitness in accounting for Sanskrit linguistic forms. Bloomfield noted that "Pāṇini gives the formation of every inflected, compounded, or derived word, with an exact statement of the sound-variations (including accent) and of the meaning." In a letter to Algonquianist Truman Michelson, Bloomfield noted "My models are Pāṇini and the kind of work done in Indo-European by my teacher, Professor Wackernagel of Basle."

Pāṇini's systematic approach to analysis includes components for: (a) forming grammatical rules, (b) an inventory of sounds, (c) a list of verbal roots organized into sublists, and (d) a list of classes of morphs. Bloomfield's approach to key linguistic ideas in his textbook Language reflect the influence of Pāṇini in his treatment of basic concepts such as linguistic form, free form, and others. Similarly, Pāṇini is the source for Bloomfield's use of the terms exocentric and endocentric used to describe compound words. Concepts from Pāṇini are found in Eastern Ojibwa, published posthumously in 1958, in particular his use of the concept of a morphological zero, a morpheme that has no overt realization. Pāṇini's influence is also present in Bloomfield's approach to determining parts of speech (Bloomfield uses the term 'form-classes') in both Eastern Ojibwa and in the later Menomini language, published posthumously in 1962.

Austronesian linguistics

While at the University of Illinois Bloomfield undertook research on Tagalog, an Austronesian language spoken in the Philippines. He carried out linguistic field work with Alfredo Viola Santiago, who was an engineering student at the university from 1914-1917. The results were published as Tagalog texts with grammatical analysis, which includes a series of texts dictated by Santiago in addition to an extensive grammatical description and analysis of every word in the texts. Bloomfield’s work on Tagalog, from the beginning of field research to publication, took no more than two years. His study of Tagalog has been described as “…the best treatment of any Austronesian language…The result is a description of Tagalog which has never been surpassed for completeness, accuracy, and wealth of exemplification.”

Bloomfield's only other publication on an Austronesian language was an article on the syntax of Ilocano, based upon research undertaken with a native speaker of Ilocano who was a student at Yale University. This article has been described as a "…tour de force, for it covers in less than seven pages the entire taxonomic syntax of Ilocano."

Sources and References

Despres, Leon M. 1987. “My recollections of Leonard Bloomfield.” Robert A. Hall, Jr., ed., Leonard Bloomfield: Essays on his life and work, 3-14. Philadelphia: John Benjamins. ISBN 90-272-4530-4

Fought, John G. 1999 "Leonard Bloomfield’s linguistic legacy: Later uses of some technical features." Historiographica linguistica 26/3: 313-332. [1]

Goddard, Ives. 1987. “Leonard Bloomfield's descriptive and comparative studies of Algonquian.” Robert A. Hall, Jr., ed., Leonard Bloomfield: Essays on his life and work, 179-217. Philadelphia: John Benjamins. ISBN 90-272-4530-4

Hall, Robert A. Jr. 1987. Leonard Bloomfield: Essays on his life and work. Amsterdam: Benjamins. ISBN 90-272-4530-4

Hall, Robert A. 1987. “Bloomfield and semantics.” Robert A. Hall, Jr., ed., Leonard Bloomfield: Essays on his life and work, 155-160. Philadelphia: John Benjamins. ISBN 90-272-4530-4

Hall, Robert A. Jr. 1990. A life for language: A biographical memoir of Leonard Bloomfield. Philadelphia: John Benjamins. ISBN 1-55619-350-5

Hockett, Charles F., ed., 1970. A Leonard Bloomfield Anthology. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. ISBN 0-226-06071-3

Hockett, Charles F. 1987. “Letters from Bloomfield to Michelson and Sapir.” Robert A. Hall, Jr., ed., Leonard Bloomfield: Essays on his life and work, 39-60. Philadelphia: John Benjamins. ISBN 90-272-4530-4

Jones, William. 1907. "Fox texts." American Ethnological Society Publications 1. Leiden. [reprinted 1974, New York: AMS Press]

Lehmann, Winfred P. 1987. “Bloomfield as an Indo-Europeanists.” Robert A. Hall, Jr., ed., Leonard Bloomfield: Essays on his life and work, 163-172. Philadelphia: John Benjamins. ISBN 90-272-4530-4

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