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Linguist

Leonard Bloomfield

Structural and Theoretical Linguistics

Leonard Bloomfield was an American linguist whose 1933 textbook Language defined the methodology of American structural linguistics for a generation, insisting that grammatical analysis proceed from directly observable distributional evidence rather than from meaning or from inherited grammatical categories borrowed from Latin. In 1924 he joined George Bolling and Edgar Sturtevant in organizing the Linguistic Society of America, drafting the society's founding call and later serving as its president, and the society's journal Language, which he helped launch, remains one of the field's leading venues.

Facts
Birth Year
1887 1
Death Year
1949 1
Role
Linguist, Founder Of American Structural Linguistics 2
Birth Date
1887-04-01 2
Death Date
1949-04-18 2
Classification
Nationality
United States 1
Connections

Associated With

English, Languages
Source LanguageLeonard Bloomfield

Influenced

Hockett structuralist linguistics carried forward and systematized Bloomfield distributional method, representing the post-Bloomfieldian phase of American structuralism.

Eugene Nida, Linguists

Nida completed his 1943 Michigan PhD dissertation, A Synopsis of English Syntax, under Bloomfield's theory of immediate constituents; Bloomfield had a profound impact on Nida's thinking about language.

Sources
1. Wikipedia: Leonard Bloomfield
Wikipedia
  • Introduction
    He is considered to be the father of American distributionalism.
  • Nationality, Leonard Bloomfield entity page
    Leonard Bloomfield was an American linguist whose 1933 textbook Language defined the methodology of American structural linguistics for a generation, insisting that grammatical analysis proceed from directly observable distributional evidence rather than from meaning or from inherited grammatical categories borrowed from Latin.
View the Source
2. Encyclopaedia Britannica
Language
Leonard Bloomfield, 1933Associated With: English
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