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An Introduction to the Study of Language LEONARD BLOOMFIELD

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An Introduction to the Study of Language LEONARD BLOOMFIELD INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE AMSTERDAM STUDIES IN THE THEORY AND HISTORY OF LINGUISTIC SCIENCE General Editor E.F. KONRAD KOERNER (University of Ottawa) Series II - CLASSICS IN PSYCHOLINGUISTICS Advisory Editorial Board Ursula Bellugi (San Diego);John B. Carroll Chapel Hill, N.C.) Robert Grieve (Perth, W.Australia);Hans Hormann (Bochum) John C. Marshall (Oxford);Tatiana Slama-Cazacu (Bucharest) Dan I. Slobin (Berkeley) Volume 3 Leonard Bloomfield An Introduction to the Study of Language LEONARD BLOOMFIELD AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE New edition with an introduction by JOSEPH F. KESS University of Victoria Victoria, British Columbia JOHN BENJAMINS PUBLISHING COMPANY AMSTERDAM/PHILADELPHIA 1983 FOR CHARLES F. HOCKETT © Copyright 1983 - John Benjamins B.V. ISSN 0165 716X ISBN 90 272 1892 7 (Pp.) / ISBN 90 272 1891 9(Hb.) No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm or any other means, without written permission from the publisher. ACKNOWLEDGMENT For permission to reprint Leonard Bloomfield's book, An Introduction to the Study of Language (New York, 1914) I would like to thank the publisher Holt, Rinehart & Winston, and Ms Mary McGowan, Manager, Rights and Permissions Department.* Thanks are also due to my colleague and friend Joseph F. Kess for having con• tributed an introductory article to the present reprinting of Bloomfield's first book, and to Charles F. Hockett of Cornell University, for commenting on an earlier draft of my Foreword, suggesting substantial revisions of content and form. It is in recognition of his important contribution to a re-evaluation of Bloomfield's oeuvre that the present volume is dedicated to him. Ottawa, Easter 1981 Konrad Koerner * Contrary to my earlier observation (see footnote 10 of the Foreword), I was lucky enough, during my sojourn at the Newberry Library in Fall 1982, to locate a photograph of Leonard Bloomfield as a man in his thirties at the University of Chicago. I would like to express my thanks to Mr. Daniel Meyer - of the Library Archives for having provided me with a copy on which the present picture is based. - Prof. C.F. Hockett kindly furnished the photocopy for the reproduction of Bloomfield's signature. CONTENTS Foreword by the Editor ix Introduction by Joseph F. Kess xvii Leonard Bloomfield: AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE v, 1 FOREWORD In the foreword to the first volume of ''Classics in Psycholinguistics" writ• ten four years ago,1 I remarked that research in the history of psycholinguis• tics demands not only dual expertise in psychology and linguistics but also mastery of German, since the bulk of the classic material that should be made available again is in that language, which in matters of science held a position until the First World War comparable to English today. Currently, specialists with that particular combination of skills seem fairly rare, something which may explain the slow growth of the present series in comparison to all the four others combined under the umbrella title of "Amsterdam Studies in the Theory and History of Linguistic Science". Because of this situation, it was a stroke of good fortune that I was able to persuade Professor Joseph F. Kess to supply the historical background to the volume here reprinted, and to indicate the importance of certain intellectual traditions to present-day research. In addition to the skills already men• tioned , Professor Kess approaches the subj ect free from bias — he has no ax to grind, but is concerned solely with keeping the record accurate; and this he has done, in my opinion, not just competently but with a certain charm. We all owe him a debt of gratitude. It is entirely compatible with that gratitude for me to hold certain views differing from Professor Kess's on a few points of detail. Thus, it seems to me quite well established that Albert Paul Weiss (1879- 1931) had a profound influence on Leonard Bloomfield during the 1920s, when both were at the Ohio State University (1921-27). We have Bloomfield's own extensive testimony for this, and we can trace the influence in the sort of psychology Bloomfield admitted into his later linguistic thinking. In sharp contrast, although the works of Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913) and Emile Durkheim (1858-1917) show certain superficial similarities, there is not a 1) See Albert Thumb & Karl Marbe, Experimentelle Untersuchungen iiber die psychologischen Grundlagen der sprachlichen Analogiebildang, new ed., with an introduction by David J. Murray (Amsterdam: J. Benjamins, 1978), v-viii. (Please note that on page v of that book, end of the sec• ond paragraph, "2 vols." is a misprint for "20 vols."). X FOREWORD single reference to Durkheim in Saussure's known writings (published or un• published) , and thus no evidence that Durkheim was in any way the instigator of Saussure's theory of language.2 Instead, when mentioning the social nature of language, Saussure often explicitly cites William Dwight Whitney (1827- 1894). One might also have reservations about Professor Kess's characteriza• tion of Hermann Paul's (1846-1921) Prinzipien der Sprachgeschichte (Halle: Niemeyer, 1880; 5th rev. ed., 1920) as codifying 'historical linguistics', even though that was Paul's avowed intention. Already a century ago, in reviewing the first edition of Paul's book, Franz Misteli (1841-1903),3 a follower and long-time collaborator of Heymann Steinthal (1823-99), whose Vdl- kerpsychologie Paul had attacked, proposed that its title should speak of 'Sprachwissenschaft' "linguistic science", rather than of 'Sprachgeschichte', "language history". Furthermore, said Misteli, Paul frequently contradicts himself when dealing with the relation between what Paul called 'Sprachge• schichte' and 'descriptive Grammatik'.4 In 1879 Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920) founded, in Leipzig, the first insti• tute for experimental psychology ever established in the field. The centennial of that important event has given rise to a number of individual studies of Wundt's work (Danziger 1979, Leary 1979, Mueller 1979); they are already mentioned in Professor Kess's introductory article. In addition to these pa• pers we should now7 list two symposium volumes,5 from which may be gleaned valuable information on the 'master psychologist (Blumenthal) himself and on the impact of his work in the last quarter of the 19th and the first decades of 2) This fable convenue of Durkheinms influence on Durkheim was, interestingly enough, al• ready contradicted in 1931, when Witold Doroszeski (1899-1976) had first proposed it, and this by no lesser scholar than Antoine Meillet (1866-1936), who had himself collaborated with Durkheim and corresponded with Saussure regularly. Cf. Koerner, Ferdinand de Saussure (Braunschweig: F. Vieweg, 1973), 226-27, for details. 3) Zeitschrift fur Volkerpsychologie und Sprachwissenschaft 13.376-409 (1882), especially pp.380ff. 4) Cf. E. F. K. Koerner, '"Hermann Paul and Synchronic Linguistics", Lingua 29.274-307 (1972), repr. in Koerner, Toward a Historiography of Linguistics (Amsterdam: J. Benjamins, 1978), 73-106. 5) Wolfgang G. Bringmann & Ryan D. Tweney, eds., Wundt Studies: A centennial collection (Toronto: C. J. Hogrefe, 1980), x, 445 pp., a very informative volume indeed; and Robert W. Rieber (in collaboration with Arthur L. Blumenthal, Kurt Danziger, and Solomon Diamond), ed., Wilhelm Wundt and the Making of Scientific Psychology (New York: Plenum Press, 1980). FOREWORD xi the 20th century. In addition, they provide background material for the un• derstanding of the Zeitgeist. However, neither of the volumes contains much specifically on Wundt's psychology of language. But that there should be so little on Wundt's indeed important contribu• tion to psycholinguistic and linguistic theory in general is symptomatic. Apart from a few passages in Blumenthal's book of 1970 (pp.20-31) from Wundt's discussion of syntax and selections from volume one of his voluminous Vol- kerpsychologie entitled "Die Sprache" (Leipzig, 1900; 3rd rev. ed., 2 vols., 1911-12) pertaining to the language of gestures (The Hague: Mouton, 1973),6 we have nothing on Wundt's (psycho-) linguistic writings in English transla• tion.7 That is very regrettable: Wundt's two-volume Die Sprache contains numerous insights into language, only a few of which have been taken up in re• cent years. One of the neglected subjects is Wundt's discussion of word order, seemingly known to no contemporary specialist on that topic.8 In short, a selection of his writings on child language, language change, word formation, and many other topics of linguistic interest remains a desideratum.9 Despite the importance of Leonard Bloomfield (1887-1949) in the de• velopment of structural linguistics in North America, much less information 6) "Die Satzfiigung" (selections from chap.7 of Book 2) and "Die Gebardensprache" from chap.2 of Book 1 of Die Sprache, 3rdrev. ed. (1911), respectively. 7) By contrast, many other works by Wundt were translated into English, e.g., his Grundriss der Psychologie of 1896 (transl. by his former student C. H. Judd in the following year); Grundziige der physiologischen Psychologie of 1874, reviewed by no lesser scholar than William James (1842- 1910) in North American Review No.121, 195-201 (1875), repr. in both volumes on Wundt men• tioned in footnote 5 (pp. 114-20 and 199-206, respectively), and transl. by another American pupil of Wundt's, E. B. Titchener in 1904. Others include Rudolf Pintner's (1884-1942) transl. (1912) of Wundt's Einfiihrung in die Psychologie, and Edward Leroy Schaub's translation (1916) of Wundt's Elemente der Völkerpsychologie of 1912, which was reviewed by Herman K(arl) Haeberlin (1890- c.1955) in Psychological Review 23.279-302 (1916). This review has been reprinted in the Wundt volume ed. by Rieber (cf. footnote 5 above), pp.229-49. 8) Cf. Winfred P. Lehmann, ed., Syntactic Typology (Austin & London: Univ.
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