Bloomfield, Leonard

Bloomfield, Leonard
born April 1, 1887, Chicago, Ill., U.S.
died April 18, 1949, New Haven, Conn.

U.S. linguist.

He began his career as a philologist trained in Indo-European, especially Germanic languages. He taught Germanic philology at the University of Chicago (1927–40) and linguistics at Yale (1940–49). In Language (1933), one of the clearest 20th-century presentations of linguistics, he advocated the study of linguistic phenomena in isolation from their nonlinguistic environment and emphasized the need for empirical description. His thinking was influenced by his work on non-Indo-European languages, particularly the Algonquian family; The Menomini Language (1962) is a paragon of linguistic description and American Indian linguistic scholarship.

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▪ American linguist
born April 1, 1887, Chicago, Ill., U.S.
died April 18, 1949, New Haven, Conn.

      American linguist whose book Language (1933) was one of the most important general treatments of linguistic (linguistics) science in the first half of the 20th century and almost alone determined the subsequent course of linguistics in the United States.

      Bloomfield was educated at Harvard University and the universities of Wisconsin and Chicago. He taught from 1909 to 1927 at several universities before becoming professor of Germanic philology at the University of Chicago (1927–40) and professor of linguistics at Yale University (1940–49).

      Concerned at first with the details of Indo-European—particularly Germanic—speech sounds and word formation, Bloomfield turned to larger, more general, and wider ranging considerations of language science in An Introduction to the Study of Language (1914). He then began (1917) pioneer studies of the Malayo-Polynesian (Austronesian) languages, especially Tagalog. In the early 1920s he began his classic work on North American Indian languages, contributing the first of many descriptive and comparative studies of the Algonquian family.

      In the writing of Language, Bloomfield claimed that linguistic phenomena could properly and successfully be studied when isolated from their nonlinguistic environment. Adhering to behaviourist principles, he avoided all but empirical description.

      A Leonard Bloomfield Anthology (1970) was edited by Charles F. Hackett.

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Universalium. 2010.

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  • BLOOMFIELD, LEONARD — (1887–1949), American linguist. Bloomfield, chiefly through his book Language, became the most influential individual in guiding the development of American descriptive linguistics. He taught at various American universities and from 1940 to 1949 …   Encyclopedia of Judaism

  • Bloomfield,Leonard — Bloomfield, Leonard. 1887 1949. American linguist who introduced a behavioristic approach to linguistics in his text Language (1933). * * * …   Universalium

  • Bloomfield, Leonard — ► (1887 1949) Lingüista estadounidense. Defendió la concepción psicologista del mentalismo como metodología de la descripción lingüística, únicamente basada en hechos lingüísticamente determinables. Sus concepciones de tipo behaviorista han… …   Enciclopedia Universal

  • Bloomfield — Bloomfield, Leonard …   Enciclopedia Universal

  • Leonard Bloomfield — (* 2. April 1887 Chicago; † 18. April 1949 New Haven) war ein US amerikanischer Linguist und der maßgebliche Vertreter des amerikanischen Strukturalismus in der Sprachwissenschaft. Sein Hauptwerk Language gilt als das bedeutendste… …   Deutsch Wikipedia

  • BLOOMFIELD (L.) — BLOOMFIELD LEONARD (1887 1949) Homme réservé, à la personnalité austère et entière, L. Bloomfield marqua de façon déterminante le développement de la linguistique aux États Unis et dans le monde. Né à Chicago, il étudia la grammaire et la… …   Encyclopédie Universelle

  • Léonard — Leonard oder Léonard ist eine Form des Namens Leonhard. Inhaltsverzeichnis 1 Bekannte Namensträger 1.1 Vorname 1.2 Familienname 1.3 Künstlername // …   Deutsch Wikipedia

  • Bloomfield — (Leonard) (1887 1949) linguiste américain; chef de file de l école distributionnelle: Introduction à l étude du langage (1914), le Langage (1933). (V. encycl. linguistique.) …   Encyclopédie Universelle

  • Leonard Bloomfield — Traduction à relire Leonard Bloomfield → …   Wikipédia en Français

  • Leonard — /len euhrd/, n. 1. William Ellery (Channing) /el euh ree/, 1876 1944, U.S. poet, essayist, and teacher. 2. a male given name: from Germanic words meaning lion and hardy. * * * (as used in expressions) Baskin Leonard Bernstein Leonard Bloomfield… …   Universalium

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