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Article published In: Historiographia Linguistica
Vol. 26:3 (1999) ► pp.313–332

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Leonard bloomfield’s linguistic legacy

Later uses of some technical features

 | Diamond Bar, Calif.
Published online: 7 January 2000
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https://doi.org/10.1075/hl.26.3.08fou
Summary
Leonard Bloomfield’s system of linguistics was recast by his colleagues and students. His morphophonemic phonology influenced Chomsky’s early generative phonology. His version of Wundt’s psychologically based immediate constituent analysis was adopted by the distributionalists, and later also by the Chomskyans, each for different reasons. His descriptive semantics was left out of American linguistics except for some linguistic anthropologists who came back to it around 1955. Finally, despite the restraint of his descriptions and his principles, the sources of distributionalism can be found in Bloomfield’s denial of lexical synonymy and his use of zeros in morphology.
Résumé
Chacun des collègues et élèves de Leonard Bloomfield a refait son système linguistique. Sa (morpho)phonologie était une source importante de la phonologie générative de Chomsky. L’analyse syntaxique en constituents immédiats, qu’il avait prise de la psychologie de Wundt, fut adoptée d’abord par les distributionalistes et ensuite par la grammaire générative, pour des raisons différentes. La sémantique descriptive de Bloomfield, qui a peu changé au cours de sa carrière, demeurait exclu de la linguistique américaine, exception faite de quelques linguistes-anthropologues vers 1955. Enfin, malgré le caractère sobre de sa pratique et de ses principes, on peut trouver la source du distributionalisme chez Bloomfield, dans son refus de la synonymité lexique et dans son emploi de zéros morphologiques.
Zusammenfassung
Leonard Bloomfields sprachwissenschafliches System wurde von seinen Kollegen und Studenten für ihre eigenen Zwecke verändert. Seine morphophonemische Phonologie beeinflußte Chomskys frühere generative Phonologie. Bloomfields Adaptation von Wundts psychologisch begründeter Analyse der ‘unmittelbaren Konstituenten’ (immediate constituent analysis) wurde von den Distributionalisten übernommen und später auch von den Chomskianern, jeweils aus verschiedenen Gründen. Bloomfields deskriptive Semantik wurde größtenteils von den amerikanischen Linguisten beiseite gelassen, abgesehen von ein paar linguistischen Anthropologen, die um 1955 ihn wiederentdeckten. Abschließend ist festzuhalten, daß, trotz seiner Zurückhaltung sowohl in Sachen Deskription als auch Prinzipien wissenschaftlicher Analyse, die Quellen des Distributionalismus in Bloomfields Verleugnung lexikalischer Synonymien und seiner Verwendung der Nullstelle in der Morphologie zu finden sind.
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Barnhart, Cynthia A.
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2007. The influence of Bloomfield’s linguistics on Skinner. The Behavior Analyst 30:2 ► pp. 133 ff. DOI logo
Heitner, Reese M.
2006. From a Phono-Logical Point of View: Neutralizing Quine’s Argument Against Analyticity. Synthese 150:1 ► pp. 15 ff. DOI logo
Tomalin, Marcus
2004. Leonard Bloomfield. Historiographia Linguistica 31:1 ► pp. 105 ff. DOI logo
Koerner, E.F.K
2003. Remarks on the origins of morphophonemics in American structuralist linguistics. Language & Communication 23:1 ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo

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