Leonard Bloomfield American linguist Date of Birth: 01.04.1887 Country: USA

Biography of Leonard Bloomfield

Leonard Bloomfield was an American linguist born on April 1, 1887, in Chicago, Illinois. He studied at Harvard University from 1903 to 1906 and pursued further education at the University of Wisconsin from 1906 to 1908 and the University of Chicago from 1908 to 1909. Bloomfield began his teaching career at the University of Cincinnati from 1908 to 1909, followed by the University of Illinois from 1910 to 1913.

During his time at the University of Illinois, Bloomfield became interested in "exotic" languages, particularly Tagalog, which is now one of the official languages of the Philippines. He conducted direct recordings and analysis of Tagalog texts, which he published in his book "Tagalog Texts" in 1917. In 1921, Bloomfield joined Ohio State University, and in 1927, he moved to the University of Chicago. It was during this period that he began his studies of Native American languages, specifically the central Algonquian group, including languages like Cree, Menominee, Fox, and Ojibwe.

In 1933, Bloomfield published his second comprehensive exposition of linguistics titled "Language." This book covered various aspects of linguistics, including Indo-European languages, Native American languages, and general linguistics. He made significant contributions to the study of Philippine languages and applied linguistics, particularly in language teaching theory. His "Outline Guide for the Practical Study of Foreign Languages" published in 1942 and his work on reading instruction were widely used in classrooms.

In 1940, Bloomfield joined Yale University. During World War II, he played a crucial role in applying linguistics to language teaching, developing theoretical foundations and writing instructional texts for German and Russian languages. He also compiled an excellent reading book for beginners in the first and second grade, although it remained unpublished.

Bloomfield's greatest contribution to linguistics as a science was his rigor and methodology, which he applied to all branches of linguistics. Prior to his book "Language," linguistics was considered a humanities discipline that could be fruitful but lacked the experimentation and hypotheses of natural sciences. Bloomfield demonstrated the possibility and specific methods of a unified scientific approach at all levels of linguistic analysis: phonological, morphological, syntactic, descriptive, and historical. His works served as a starting point for further research in descriptive linguistics.

However, some of Bloomfield's positions and methods hindered their widespread acceptance. His desire to establish linguistics on a strictly scientific basis led him to abstract language analysis from what is commonly referred to as "thought" and develop a "mechanistic" or "non-mentalist" approach. Consequently, he focused on formal structure rather than meaning in linguistic analysis. Nevertheless, Bloomfield's original works and his systematic synthesis of knowledge about language remain significant contributions to 20th-century linguistics.