A Life for Language
A biographical memoir of Leonard Bloomfield
Leonard Bloomfield (1887-1949) was one of the greatest linguists of the twentieth century. He devoted his entire life to a thorough-going study of language, its structure and its use, summed up in masterly fashion in his book Language (1933). After his premature death at the age of 62, his work was at first acclaimed as an exemplary application of the scientific method to linguistics, but then fell into unjustified neglect. Now that the centenary of his birth has passed, the time has come for the story of Bloomfield's life and work to be recounted in a biography. Accordingly, basing his discussion on all available materials (including some information not accessible until recently), Professor Hall has presented Bloomfield's life history in its intellectual and cultural setting. This book is not only a biography, but also a personal memoir, in which Hall draws on his contacts with Bloomfield, who was his teacher at Chicago and a senior colleague at Yale. There emerges from this study a fuller picture than we have had heretofore, presenting both Bloomfield's recognized achievement in establishing the study of language as a scientific discipline, and the less-known aspects of his character and of his personal life, which in certain respects was very tragic and sad.
[Studies in the History of the Language Sciences, 55] 1990. x, 129 pp.
Publishing status: Available
Published online on 3 October 2011
Published online on 3 October 2011
© John Benjamins Publishing Company
Table of Contents
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Preface | p. ix
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Biography of Leonard Bloomfield
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Chapter 1: The Early Years (1887-1909) | p. 3
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Chapter 2: Cincinnati and Illinois (1909-1921) | p. 13
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Chapter 3: Ohio State (1921-1927) | p. 23
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Chapter 4: Chicago (1927-1940) | p. 39
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Chapter 5: Yale (1940-1949) | p. 67
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Chapter 6: Posthumous Fortune | p. 87
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Notes to Chapters 1 to 6 | p. 95
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Indices
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A. Index of Biographical Names | p. 119
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B. Index of Subjects, Terms, and Languages | p. 125
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Location of Illustrations
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Leonard Bloomfield at age 57 | p. viii
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Leonard Bloomfield in front of “Hotel Schwartz”, Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin (c.1908) | p. 2
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Leonard Bloomfield playing a game of chess with a Dr Zinkin (c. 1908) | p. 2
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Facsimile of title page of Introduction to the Study of Language (1914) | p. 12
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Leonard Bloomfield in his thirties | p. 22
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Facsmile of title page of Language (1933) | p. 38
Cited by (11)
Cited by 11 other publications
Stanlaw, James
Mortensen, Peter
Passos, Maria de Lourdes R. da F. & Maria Amelia Matos
Hockett, Charles F.
Falk, Julia S.
1995. Roman Jakobson and the history of Saussurean concepts in North American Linguistics. Historiographia Linguistica 22:3 ► pp. 335 ff. 
Hall, Robert A.
1991. 165 Broadway – A crucial node in American Structural Linguistics. Historiographia Linguistica 18:1 ► pp. 153 ff. 
Murray, Stephen O.
Murray, Stephen O.
1991. The first quarter century of the Linguistic Society of America, 19240–1949. Historiographia Linguistica 18:1 ► pp. 1 ff. 
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Subjects
Linguistics
Main BIC Subject
CF: Linguistics
Main BISAC Subject
LAN009000: LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Linguistics / General