Mengenal Leonard Bloomfield (1877 – 1949)

Leonard Bloomfield  (1877 – 1949)

Leonard Bloomfield was born on April 1, 1887 in Chicago. Bloomfield attended from Harvard University (B.A.1906), the University of Wisconsin (1906-08), the University of Chicago (Ph.D 1909), the University of Leipzig (1913-14), and the University of Göttingen (1914). Bloomfield was an instructor of German at the University of Cincinnati from 1909 to 1910 and at the University of Illinois from 1910 to 1913. He was an Assistant Professor for comparative linguistics and German at the University of Illinois from 1913 until 1921, and an Assistant Professor of German at Ohio State University, Columbus from 1921 to 1927. He was professor at the University of Chicago from 1927 to 1940 and became Chairman of the Department of Linguistics, which was started in 1933. He became Professor of Germanic Philology and Acting Chairman of the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures. In 1940 he resigned from the department and left for YALE School, where he had been offered a Sterling Professorship in Linguistics.

His specialty for years was Germanic languages, but later he became interested in languages from a scientific viewpoint. With Edward Sapir, Bloom can be considered one of the two most prominent American linguists of the first half of the twentieth century. In 1914 he wrote Introduction to the Study of Language, which was in later editions just called Language (1933). The book became the standard introduction to linguistics for thirty years. Bloomfield helped to start the Linguistic Society of America in 1924, and served as its president in 1935. He was a member of the International Committee of Linguists. Bloomfield married Alice Sayers in 1909. The couple had two sons.

Leonard Bloomfield died on April 18, 1949 in New Haven, Connecticut.

Leonard Bloomfield  was a prominent American expert on modern linguistic.Bloomfield is father of  linguistic because make autonomous linguistics as a science. He is also known as a pioneer of American structuralist linguistics in the 1950s. According to Bloomfield, some language has a different structure and distinctive. The main characteristic of the structuralism flow is rejected concept of mentalistic or diachronic study in view of the phenomenon language and in favor of behaviorism flow or synchronic study.

The special characteristics of Bloomfield's theory is the emphasis on the status of linguistics as a philosophy of science that alone. According to Bloomfield, language research on something that can be observed empirically by ignoring the meaning or significance. This flow is based on his thoughts on the psychology of behavior easier to observe. The view looking mind behaviorism or mechanism as an extension of the body stimuli and responses. The meaning of that statement is  the form of language is speech situation and talks of self-inflicted responses of the listener. The opinion language used defined by the formula​​ "stimulation and response",

which is described by the formula

“ R - t. . . r --- T ”
The point:

 A stimulating practical (R) made a person talk instead of reacting in practice: This is the replacement for another language of (t), for the listener, it was a replacement language stimuli (r) which caused him to give practical responses (T).  R and T are "practical events" seemed out of language; t and r is the language event (Samsuri, 1998: 57).

According to Bloomfield, the language consists of another signs such as vocal elements (sound) named linguistic forms and each form a unity gesture in the form of phonemes (Bloomfield, 1933: 158). Language is a set of utterances that appear in the speech community. Than speech reviews to know the parts of speech that contains pieces of behavior (character) in the linear stacking.

For example:

Eat is a form of speech

Eating is a form of speech

-Ing is not a form of speech.

The word of ‘eat’ consisted of three phonemes, / e/, / a /, and / t /.
From these examples it is concluded  about each speech is form, but not all forms of speech. According to Bloomfield, there are two types of forms:

(1)    Free Form is the word that can be uttered alone without additional stand-alone word.

(2)    Bound Form is the word that can not be uttered alone or never used stand-alone basis.

In addition, Bloomfield also has four ways to organize the forms of the language are: the order (sequence), modulation, phonetic modification and selection.

Based on the preceding, we will know about  some of the advantages and disadvantages the theory of structural linguistics Bloomfield among others:

I. Advantages from Structural Linguistics:

a) This stream has examined new ways of using the language with a synchronous manner.
b) Gramatical criteria is general nature so it can be easily accepted by the general public.

c) Based on the facts, not guessing the data

d) Using a drill and practice methods that form language skills based on habit.

e) Grouped grammatical categories, verbal, and pronouns pronouns.

II. Disadvantages Structural Linguistics:

a) The historical factor is not taken into account in the analysis.

b) The object of the study has a limited level of the sentence so it does not touch the communicative aspect.

c) The field of morphology and syntax strictly separated.

d) Gramatical based on common criteria, it is a rule that one can be true if it is common.

e) The speaking process is the process of excitatory - perceptive which is going on physical and mechanical in humans, but actually human are not machines.

While the difference between the flow of Bloomfield, structural linguistics with stream flow transformation is:

Structural Flow	Transformation Flow
Adopted is understood behaviorism (stimulus and respone)	Based from the familiar mentalistic philosophy runway mindset.
Language in the form of speech.	Language is innate.
Language in the form of a system of signifie and signifiant.	Language is inside  layers and layers of the surface
Language is a factor of custom drill and practice methods.	Language consists of competent and performance elements.
Kegramatikalan based generality.	The analysis is based on the language of sentences.
Levels of  grammar enforced neat from lowest to highest morpheme	Language is creative with many definitions
Pressure distinguishing morphological	Diffferentiate the field of core sentences and sentence transformation.