LING THEO RESUME

LEONARD BLOOMFIELD

De Saussure introduced the possibility that through investigation of the linguistic sign and its relations the synchronic study of language could proceed in an exact manner. Sapir bridged the gap between the older and the newer conceptions of how to make the study of language a science. One difficulty to be solved was the central one of language—its meaning and the relation of linguistic form to meaning.

BEHAVIORISM—Leonard Bloomfield was the most concerned with making linguistics both autonomous and scientific. During the period when Bloomfield was writing his second version of Language, an empirical approach to psychology, called “behaviorism”, was being developed by J.B. Watson. Watson’s trust was most likely misplaced, whereas an account of his linguistic doctrines will show that Bloomfield’s work is valid apart from that background.

Watson explained that his aim as a psychologist was to find out, “given certain or situation, what will the individual do, when confronted with it: or, seeing someone doing something, to be able to predict what situation is calling forth that response.” Watson defined stimulus as any object in the general environment or any change in the psychological condition of the animal. A response is a system of organic activity that we see emphasized in any kind of activity. Watson assumed that some definite stimulus must call forth each of these response.

Language—Language, as Bloomfield conceived it, is a set of signals, and the structure of the set can be studied by the linguist without commitment to any theory about what there is to signal or how it is possible for human beings to signal.

The Study of Language—Bloomifeld concluded that all linguistic work prior to that of the historical linguists was misguided in one or more ways, principally because of the deductive or normative approach.

The Use of Lnguage—Bloomfield began by pointing out that the most difficult step in language study is the first-to view language as one form of bodily behavior. They have devoted their attention to manifestations of language, they have studied literature, philology, or correct speech, all of which are uses of language. In Bloomfield’s opinion the mechanics of speech production, represented by the broken lines in the diagram, are fairly well understood, whereas the symbolic process, represented by the arrows, is not. The speech utterance, trivial and unimportant in itself, is important because it has meaning: the meaning consists of the important things with which the speech-utterance is connected, namely the practical events.

Bloomfield was far from holding the position. At the same time his conclusion is also understandable, considering how he defined “meaning.” Science as Bloomfield understood it is a unifying and unified form of knowledge, so that the scientific treatment of language form and meaning would not betray the autonomy of linguistic. The meanings of linguistics forms can be successfully assigned when they are scientific meanings, devoid of connotation.

The mental images, feelings, and the like are merely popular terms for various bodily movements, which, so far as they concern language, can roughly be divided into three types. Bloomfield concluded that in practice there is little or no difference between them: “the mentalist in practice defines meanings exactly as does the mechanist, in terms of speech situations.” Bloomfield’s three divisions of linguistic and prelinguistic processes do not seem hopeful: (a) the large-scale processes are those that are, to some extent, known; (b) the obscure, highly variable processes are postulated; and (c) the obscure, soundless movements that are not perceptible to others are empirically unknowable. Bloomfield identified the prelinguistic processes with those the mentalists called “thought”.

Bloomfield defined a speech community as a group of people who interact by means of speech. Within speech communities there are differences in the density of communication. That is, we talk with some people more we talk with others. Bloomfield classified the main types of speech roughly as follows:

1.    The literary standard for formal speech and writing.

2.    The colloquial standard which is the informal style of the privileged class.

3.    The provincial standard, which will resemble to a greater degree.

4.    Sub-standard clearly differs from the first three.

5.    The local dialect would be that variety of language.

The Languages of the World—Bloomfield listed the languages of the world by their geographic distribution, the number of speakers they have, and the language family to which they belong.

The Phoneme—the study of language can be conducted “without special assumptions only as long as we pay no attention to the meaning of what is spoken.” Evidently the working of language is due to a resemblance between successive utterances. As long we pay no attention to the meanings, we cannot decide if two uttered forms are the ‘same’ or ‘different’.

The study of significant speech-sound is phonology or practical phonetics. Phonology involves the consideration of meaning. In the meantime, phonology rests on: the fundamental assumption of linguistics: we must assume that in every speech-community some utterances are alike in form and meaning. Simple primary is discovered in the experiment with pin. Compound phonemes are those made up of primary ones but which function as units. Secondary phonemes include the suprasegmental phonemes, stress and pitch.

Bloomfield cited some sound types that are frequently found as phonemes in familiar language. "noise-sounds" include stops, trills and spirants; "musical sounds" include nasal, lateral and vowel. Each language distinguishes at least several different vowels in articulatory terms, primarily on the basis of the difference in tongue position but also according to acoustic terms and the distribution of overtones.

In general, one finds in such combinations that a low vowel is more sonorous than a high one: stress and other factors being equal, one finds any vowel more sonorous than a consonant, and a nasal, trill, or lateral more sonorous than a spirant. In any succession, then, whether of vowels or of consonants and vowels, there will be an up and down of sonority and this sound features that, in a given environment, are more sonorous than those that precede or follow, will be a crest of sonority or a syllabic.

Vowels and sonants also combine into compound phonemes, which are called diphthongs or triphthongs, depending on the number of sounds involved. Since syllabicity is a matter of the relative loudness of the phonemes, it is subject to the support or modification of stress adjustments. These stress adjustments can create stress crests of sonority, which are independent of the "natural" sonority of the phonemes.

Phonetic structure

Bloomfield concluded that the grouping of phonemes merely according to their phonetic characteristics is insulficient.

Meaning

Bloomfield assumed that linguistic meanings are more specific than nonlinguistic acts and that each linguistic from has a constant and specific meaning. As a consequence he did not believe that there are true synonyms. An interesting conclusion he drew from these facts is that the most accurate use of language is that peculiar type called mathematics.

Despite Bloomfield’s conviction that we are unable to give scientific statements of many meanings, he found that there are two main features of dictionary meanings that we cannot ignore: many linguistic forms are used for more than one typical situation and the addition of supplementary values in linguistic forms which we call connotations.

Bloomfield agreed with de Saussure that linguist should study language as it is actually spoken at the time of the study and assumed that the forms of the language have constant and definable meanings.

Bloomfield discussed four basic ways in which linguistic forms are arranged: order, modulation or use of secondary phonemes and selection or differing arrangements of the same constituents resulting in different meanings.

The taxeme is to grmmar what the phoneme is to lexicon, the smallest unit of form, which has no meaning itself. For Bloomfield the need for distinguishing the four taxeme exemplifies the pronciple (more strictly, the assumption).

“sentence type”-- Bloomfield pointed to the impersonal expressions in German as an exception for example: Mir its kalt “I am cool”.

“Syntax”-- For Bloomfield syntax is the study of grmmatical constructions that are different from those treated in morphology; it is traditionally, a separate division of grammar. “

“Morphology”-- Bloomfield described morphology as the study that deals with “the constructions in which bound forms appear among the constituents. It includes the constructions of phrases”. For English the process would lead to the following classification of words:

A.  Secondary Words: Compound Words and Derived Secondary Words

B.  Primary Words not containing a free form: derived primary words and morpheme-words.

“Morphological Types”-- Bloomfield listed three main morphologic tyoes composition, secondary derivation, and primary derivation. 

“Substitution”

Substitution are the type of grammatically meaningful arrangment distinct from sentences tyoes and constructions. Bloomfield defined “substitute” as “a linguistic form or grammatical feature which, under certain conventional circumtances, replaces any one of a class of lingistic forms”. Bloomfield considered that almost all languages have a pronominal form, although the pronominals are found in the most varied subtitution types. Bloomfield then indicated as an example how the linguistic meaning of a subtitute in English would be explained. The example are:

A.  Class-Meaning: Definable in terms of form-classes and creating an otherwise unestablished form-class

B.  Substitution Types: Anaphora and limitation

“Form classes and Lexicon”

The simplistic term “meaning”:

1)   Smallest and meaningless unit of linguistic signaling: phoneme consist of lexical phoneme and grammatical lexeme.

2)   Smallest meanigful unit of linguistic signaling: glosseme

3)   Meaningful unit of linguistic signaling smallest of complex: a linguistic meaning consist of lexical and grammatical.

Bloomfield then explained that the traditional criterion for describing and classifying lexical forms and their combination is through class meaning, such as the familiar definition of a “noun” as the name of a person, place or thing”.

Bloomfield said that the traditional criterion for describing and classifying lexical forms and their combination is trough class meaning. Class meanings are merely composites, greatest common factors, of the grammatical meanings which accompany the forms. The form class of lexical item is determined by (1) the structure and constituents form, (2) the inclusion of a special constituent or (3) the identity of the form itself. That is, one of the forms involved determines the classification dealing with complex form; that is why speaker don’t have to consider each phrase. (2) Sometimes markers determine the class. (3) There are many irregularities, such that a given form can be known only to belong to a given class trough knowledge of language. Categories of one’s language or those of familiar languages are universal. Bloomfield defined a “category” as a grammatical classification…which always accompanies some grammatical features. Any function is not determined for a form its constituents is called irregular. The regular functions are those that are so determined. Bloomfield concludes that the power and wealth of language is in the nature of its morphemes and tagmemes. The number of word in a language is definite, really expanded and difficult to establish, since words are formed analogically.

Writing Records

Bloomfield believed was made only once in human history. Bloomfield assumed that phonemic principles is applicable to any language and that the present inadequacy of writing stems from the conservatism of writers, which first freezes the written form into an authoritative norm and then proceeds to invent reasons for pseudo-archaic spelling.

The Comparative Method

The resemblances could be due to several factors, such as universal, natural and features of language as such.  Languages also resemblance each other as a result of borrowing. Comparative method explains relations among languages by making inferences similar to those obtained by tracing the attested historical development. The comparative method assumes that both the resemblances and the differences among related language are an indication of the structure of the parent language.

Dialect Geography

Dialect geography gives the information about the actual complexity in the forms of living languages that are obscured by the methodological assumption of uniform patent language.  It is realistic to take a standard form of a language as the oldest type and indicates that the standard form is the result of developed local dialects. Different linguistics change covers different portions of an area. Isoglosses defined as lines between places which differ as to any feature of language. Through dialect geography, relic forms of an older state of language are found and have a better chance of surviving in remote areas. Bloomfield thought that the general disappointment with these result might have been due to the mistakes idea that all isoglosses are equally significant.

Phonetic Change

 Some IE phonetics change were easy to found because (1) voiceless stops of the earlier languages parallel Germanic voiceless spirants, (2) voiced stop in the earlier languages are paralleled by Germanic voiceless stop, (3) certain aspirates and spirants in the earlier language were paralleled in Germanic by voiced stops and spirants. Bloomfield saw phonetic change as the gradual favoring of some non-distinctive features over other.

Types of Phonetic Change

One general characteristic of sound change is a simplification of movements that make up the pronunciation of a given form. Assimilation, in which the position of the vocal organs for the production of one phoneme is altered to a position like that employed in producing another; more common is regressive assimilation, where the preceding phoneme is affected. Progressive assimilation the following consonant is altered.  Bloomfield rejected the suggestion that some forms have more “semantic weight” than others. He pointed out that phonetics change demonstrably alter features that are semantically important.

Fluctuation in the Frequency of Forms

Forms drop out of use for a number of reasons- aesthetic: the preference for long or short words at various periods of time: and the avoidance of taboo forms. More important are factor of meaning that contribute to the avoidance of expression. As an example Bloomfield cited the use of the falconry terminology in Othello.

Analogic Change

Analogic change is a process of linguistic coinage that is similar to that of regular analogic change on the grammatical level.  Analogic formation is not limited to complex forms, and the creation of a shorter, underlying form is called black formation. Analogic formations in phrases are common when a particular word is affected, by reason of its position in the phrase. Adaptive new formations are those that have no apparent model and these are often what Bloomfield called a facetious type, whose appeal lies in the unusual shape of the word.

Analogic formation is not limited to complex forms, and the creation of a shorter, underlying form is called back formation. Similarity of meaning is a powerful factor in word formation, as can be seen in our endlees –er formations: such a type is said to be a living analogy. Occasionally a relatively independent compounding form is reduced to an affix status, as in the case of –ly from like.Adaptive new formations are those that have no apparent model, and these are often what Bloomfield called a facetious type, whose appeal lies in the unusual shape of the word.

“Semantic Change” (Chapter 24)

When innovations lead to an alteration of lexical meaning, rather than to new grammatical functions of form, semantic change is discussed. These changes can be established on the basis of (1) written records. (2) comparison with related languages, or (3) structural analysis of the forms. In linguistic terms, Bloomfield said, semantic change is “merely the result of a change in the use of it and other, semantically related speech-forms” (p.426). an older tradition assumes that there is a root meaning wich remains unaltered despite the effect of certain processes on it.

Semantic change of the forms indicates the alterations to be expected when the medium of exchange or values alter. Herman paul held that semantic change consists princpally in expansion and obsolescene. Bloomfield considered that Paul’s approach described is basically a change in frequency, but Bloomfild did not believe that meaning shift intelligible unless it is also correlated with changes in the environment.

“Cultural Borrowing” (Chapter 25)

            Cultural borrowing projects on a grand scale what is characteristic of the learning experience for individuals. One form borrowing is the literal analysis and transliteration of foreign expression. The nature of foreign borrowings tells us a good deal about the relations of cultures to each other.

“Intimate Borrowing” ( Chapter 26)

Intimate borrowing, unlike cultural borrowing, can take place only when two cultures share the same geographic area and are in a dominant to inferior position. In such circumstance it is more generally the lower culture that borrows from the superior.

“Dialect Borrowing” (Chapter 27)

Every speaker acts as both an imitator and a model for others. There is no need for a single model: whether in the speech of a single person or a single locale, a great deal of leveling takes place through the neutral meeting grounds of people varied dialectal backgrounds.

BLOOMFIELD INFLUENCE

            Bloomfield’s influence on American and European linguistics has been considerable. Bloomfield’s phonetics was restricted largerly to the srudy of single words, and later workers advanced beyond this level to the examination of more extensive data. What he called “secondary phonemes” were dealt with later as “suprasegmental phonemes” and his brief discussion of transition has been workd out more carefully in the study junctures