Bloomfield as an Austronesianist

Summary

Bloomfield’s contribution to Austronesian linguistics was quantitatively small, but qualitatively of high importance. He published only one book and one article on Philippine languages. His gigantic Tagálog Texts with Grammatical Analysis (1917) is still, after seventy years, the best single source of information in existence for an Austronesian language. It exemplified a successful application of descriptive analytical method to material dictated by an informant, and as such was an important step in the development of Bloomfield’s principles of linguistic analysis. As such, it represents a major advance over his 1914 Introduction to the Study of Language. The importance and value of his Tagálog Texts have never been given fully adequate recognition. His other contribution, the short “Outline of Ilocano Syntax” (1942) is a tour de force in demonstrating the possibility of making so economical statement as to cover in less than seven pages the entire taxonomic syntax of a language.

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References

Blake, Frank R.
1919Review of Tagálog Texts with Grammatical Analysis . American Journal of Philology 40.86–93. (Repr. in Hockett 1970:81–83.) DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bloomfield, Leonard
1914An Introduction to the Study of Language. New York: Henry Holt & Co.Google Scholar
1917Tagálog Texts with Grammatical Analysis. University of Illinois Studies in Language and Literature, vol. 111.2–4. Reprinted by the Johnson Reprint Corporation 1967.Google Scholar
1933Language. New York: Henry Holt & Co.Google Scholar
1938 “On Laves’ Review of Dempwolff”. Lg. 12.52–53.Google Scholar
1942 “Outline of Ilocano Syntax”. Lg. 18.193–200.Google Scholar
Hockett, Charles F.
(ed.) 1970A Leonard Bloomfield Anthology. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar