Leonard Bloomfield1

Since the publication of Bloomfield's Language in 1933, according to Hockett's

foreword, most American linguistic investigation, and a good deal of that done
elsewhere, has borne the mark of Bloomfield's synthesis (BL xiii). It towers above all
earlier works of the sort and, to date, above all more recent ones (BL ix). It is considered
by many to be the most important general treatise on language ever written. It drew
together and unified all three of the earlier traditions of language study: historical-
comparative, philosophical-descriptive, and practical-descriptive (field research)
(BL xiii, ixf).
Like our other theorists, Bloomfield declares his deference to language, saluting
the strangeness, beauty, and import of human speech (BL xv) (cf. 2.8, 32; 3.1, 3; 6.2;
13.22). Language plays a great part in our life, though because of its familiarity, we
rarely observe it, taking it rather for granted, as we do breathing or walking (BL 3; cf.
3.1; 6.6; 12.9; 13.1). The effects of language are remarkable, and include much of what
distinguishes man from the animals (cf. 3.15; 7.35; 8.27; 13.12). Yet the study of
language is only in its beginnings.
Bloomfield also resembles our other theorists in criticizing previous approaches
to language (cf. 13.4). He was intensely bent on establishing linguistics as a science by
dissociating it from all that fell short of his standards. His book fostered in American
linguistics a spirit of confrontation not merely against rival approaches, but also against
prevailing philosophy, pedagogy, language teaching, and the humanities at large.
Two groups are the main targets of Bloomfield's censure. One group is the
philosophers,2 who indulged in speculations, as when they took it for granted that
the structure of their language embodies the universal forms of human thought or even
of the cosmic order; and looked for truths about the universe in what are really nothing
but formal features of one or another language (BL 3, 5f) (cf. 13.16, 18). If they made
grammatical observations, they confined these to one language and stated them in
philosophic terms (BL 5). In particular, they forced their description into the scheme of
Latin grammar, holding Latin to be the logically normal form of human speech and to
embody universally valid canons of logic (BL 8, 6) (cf. 2.5; 3.50; 5.24; 6.5; 8.5; 9.25;
12.20f). Bloomfield is far more impressed by early work on Sanskrit, notably because
the Hindus were excellent phoneticians and worked out a systematic arrangement of
grammar and lexicon (BL 296, 11) (cf. 8.4, 54, 74; 12.20f).3
The other censured group is the grammarians of our school tradition, who
followed suit by seeking to apply logical standards to language (BL 6) (cf. 8.5, 17;
13.16). Their pseudo-grammatical doctrine was to define categories of the English
language as philosophical truths and in philosophical terms (BL 500). They believed
that the grammarian, fortified by his powers of reasoning, can ascertain the logical basis
of language and prescribe how people ought to speak (BL 7) (cf. 4.86; 8.4; 13.50). They
thus felt free to ignore actual usage in favour of speculative notions (cf. 7.4). They
promulgated fanciful dogmas, doctrines, and rules, which still prevail in our
schools, e.g., about shall versus will (BL 500, 496, 7f).
Bloomfield's indignation has not only social and political motives, but
professional ones as well. He is annoyed that the knowledge gained by linguistics
has no place in our educational programme, which confines itself to handing on the
traditional notions (BL 3) (cf. 4.84). Despite their concentration on verbal discipline,
the schools remain utterly benighted in linguistic matters, as shown for instance by
their crassest ignorance of elementary phonetics and of the relation of writing to
speech (BL 499f) . He also fears that authoritarian views may discourage or delude
potential students of linguistics. The conventionally educated person discusses linguistic
matters by appealing to authority or by applying a kind of philosophical reasoning
that derives, at no great distance, from the speculations of ancient and medieval
philosophers (BL 3). Many people have difficulty at the beginning of language study
in stripping off the preconceptions that are forced on us by our popular -scholastic
doctrine (BL 3f) . Worse yet, informants who think their own forms are inferior
are ashamed to give them to the observer, who may thus record a language entirely
unrelated to the one he is looking for (BL 497; cf. 4.19, 86; 13.49).
Bloomfield now pleads for a linguistics that genuinely qualifies as a science, and,
to drive his point home (he favours teaching by constant repetition, 4.86), he refers to
it as such twenty-three times, especially when obstacles arise (cf. 4.15).4 It is time to
conduct careful and comprehensive observation, and to replace speculation with
scientific induction, which provides the only useful generalizations about language
(BL 3, 16, 20) (cf. 4.67, 76; 528; 6.16f; 7.6f; 12.8, 16, 95f; 13.45). At times, his faith in
science seems extravagant: science progresses cumulatively and with acceleration; as
we preserve more and more records of more and more speech-reactions of highly gifted
and highly specialized individuals, we approach, as an ideal limit, a condition where all
the events in the universe, past, present, and future, are reduced (in a symbolic form to
which any reader may react) to the dimensions of a large library (BL 40) (cf. Weiss
1925). We may feel reminded here that it was Bloomfield (1949) who contributed the
linguistics portion of the positivist Encylopedia of Unified Science, a favourite
collection for Pike as well (51).
Bloomfield's ideal model is clear: the methods of linguistics, in spite of their modest
scope, resemble those of a natural science, the domain in which science has been the most
successful (BL 509) (cf. 2.13; 4.18; 7.11; 9.112; 12.14, 49, 99; 13.11). To support this
assessment, he contrasts two theories about human conduct, including speech (BL 32).
The mentalist theory, which is by far the older and still prevails both in the popular view
and among men of science, supposes that the variability of human conduct is due to the
interference of some non-physical (later termed metaphysical) factor, a spirit or will
or mind that does not follow the patterns of succession (cause-and-effect sequences) of
the material world (BL 32f, 508). The materialistic or, better,mechanistic theory
supposes that the variability of human conduct, including speech, is due only to the fact
that the human body is a very complex system (BL 33). Here, human actions are
construed to be part of cause-and-effect sequences exactly like those we may observe,
say, in the study of physics and chemistry (cf. 2.82; 310; 4.10, 71; 5.28, 66; 7.16, 33, 36;
8.49; 13.11). Though he disavows a dependence on any one psychological doctrine
because the findings of the linguist should not be distorted by any prepossessions about
psychology
, Bloomfield ordains that mechanism is the necessary form of scientific discourse
(BL xv, 32). In all sciences like linguistics, which observe some specific type of human
activity, the worker must proceed exactly as if he held the materialist view (BL 38) (cf.
8.22, 24, 30, 821). This insistence on observation lands him in difficulties
when he realizes the data he addresses either cannot be observed or will become
explosively large if they are (4.17ff, 26, 29, 32, 50, 58, 61, 77f, 80; 5.80f; 13.45).
4.9 In such an ambience, mental images, feelings, thoughts, concepts,
ideas, or volitions are merely popular names for various bodily movements (BL
142). These movements can be roughly divided into three types: (1) large-scale
processes, which are much the same in different people and, having some social
importance, are represented by conventional speech-forms, such as I'm hungry; (2)
obscure and highly variable small-scale muscular contractions and glandular secretions,
which differ from person to person and therefore are not represented; and (3)
soundless movements of the vocal organs, taking the place of speech movements
(thinking) (BL 142f). Significantly, thinking is equated here with talking to
oneself and suppressing the sound-producing movements in favour of inaudible ones
(BL 28) (cf. 3.10, 37; 5.43; 817).
4.10 Along similar lines, Bloomfield borrows from the sciences of physiology and
physics to suggest a model of how the gap between the bodies of the speaker and the
hearer -- the discontinuity of the two nervous systems -- is bridged by the sound waves
(BL 25f, i.r.). He divides the speech-event into three parts. The speaker moves her
vocal chords to force the air into the form of sound waves. These sound waves set
the surrounding air into a similar wave motion. Finally, these sound waves strike the
hearer's ear-drums and set them vibrating, with an effect on the hearer's nerves; this
hearing acts as a stimulus. This account makes speech a set of substitute stimuli
alongside practical stimuli such as hunger. The mechanisms for responding to
speech-sounds are a phase of our general equipment for responding to stimuli (BL
32). The lesson is: language enables one person to make a reaction when another person
has the stimulus (BL 24, i.r.). Bloomfield concludes: the division of labour, and with it,
the whole working of human society, is due to language (cf. 3.1; 8.28; 9.7, 14; 13.22).
For demonstration, Bloomfield proposes to begin by observing an act of speech-
utterance under very simple circumstances (BL 22). He doesn't really observe anything,
but fabricates a story of Jack and Jill walking down a lane. Jill is hungry, sees an
apple, and makes a noise with her larynx, tongue, and lips. Jack vaults the fence,
climbs the tree, takes the apple, and brings it to Jill, who eats it. The act of speech
is thus shown between two sets of real or practical events (BL 26f). The speech-event,
worthless in itself, is a means to great ends (i.r.). The normal human being is
interested only in stimulus and response; though he uses speech and thrives by it, he pays
no attention to it, because it is only a way of getting one's fellow-men to help.5
Response and habit also figure in Bloomfield's account of language acquisition
(cf. 7.30; 8.9, 21ff). Due to an inherited trait and under various stimuli, the child utters
and repeats vocal sounds (BL 29). This results in a habit: whenever a similar sound
strikes his ear, he makes mouth-movements to imitate it (BL 30). Since the mother
uses her words when the appropriate stimulus is present, the child forms a new habit
of saying the word for the object in sight. Through further habits, the child embarks
upon abstract or displaced speech: he names a thing even when it is not present. This
scheme requires no creativity: Bloomfield denies that children ever
invent a word (cf. 33). Moreover, to the end of his life, the speaker keeps doing the
very things which make up infantile language-learning (BL 46).6
Such a mechanistic approach might foster a simple view of language, but
Bloomfield tends in the opposite direction. The human body and the mechanism which
governs speech are so complex that we usually cannot predict whether a speaker
will speak or what he will say (BL 32f). The possibilities are almost infinite (3.3; 5.25,
28; 8.42), and the chain of consequences is very complicated. Therefore, we do not
understand the mechanism which makes people say certain things in certain situations
and makes them respond appropriately (BL 31f). We could foretell a person's actions
only if we knew the exact structures of his body at the moment, or the exact make-up
of his organism at some early stage - say at birth or before - and then had a record of
every change and every stimulus that had ever affected it (BL 33). We would also have
to note the effects of private habits left over from the vicissitudes of education and other
experience (BL 143). Hence, the occurrence of speech and the practical events before
and after it depend upon the entire life-history of the speaker and the hearer (BL 23) (cf.
5.28).
Predictably, Bloomfield defines the meaning of a linguistic form not as a
mental event, but as the situation in which the speaker utters it and the response which
it calls forth in the hearer (BL 142, 139f; cf. BL 74, 143f, 151, 158). Since everyone
acts indifferently as a speaker and a hearer, the situation and the response are closely
co-ordinated (BL 139). Still, because the speaker's situation usually presents a simpler
aspect, we can be content to discuss and define meanings in terms of a speaker's
stimulus. Once again, however, Bloomfield's relentless reasoning leads to a projection
that is far from simple: the study of speakers situations and hearers responses is
equivalent to the sum total of all human knowledge (BL 74). The situations which
prompt people to utter speech include every object and happening in their universe (BL
139) (cf. 5.80; 13.45). Almost anything in the whole world may be involved, plus the
momentary state of the nervous system (BL 158). So to give a scientifically accurate
definition of meaning for every form in the language, we should have to have a
scientifically accurate knowledge of everything in the speaker's world -- far beyond the
actual extent of human knowledge (BL 139). Bloomfield apparently overlooks the
empirical significance of the fact that ordinary speakers handle meaning with fairly
modest stores of knowledge (cf. 12.60).
Bloomfield contends that the meaning of any given speech utterance could be
registered only if we had an accurate knowledge of every speaker's situation and of
every hearer's response, so the linguist would have to be omniscient (BL 74). This
argument spearheads the insistent warnings about the elusiveness of meaning -- repeated
twenty times in the book -- with the lesson that meaning cannot be analysed within the
scope of our science (BL 161; cf. BL 93, 162, 167, 266, 268). Only if some science
other than linguistics furnished us with definitions of the meanings could the meaning
of the utterance be fully analysed and defined (BL 77, 168; cf. BL 140, 145). Meanwhile,
the statement of meanings is the weak point in language study, and will remain so until
human knowledge advances far beyond its present state (BL 140).
Bloomfield gives a further reason why the practical situations that make up the
meaning of a speech-form are not strictly definable: since every practical situation is
in reality unprecedented, every utterance of a speech-form by a good
speaker'7involves a minute semantic innovation (BL 407, 443) (cf. 8.83; 13.39f).
Almost any utterance of a form is prompted by a novel situation, and the degree of
novelty is not subject to precise measurement (BL 435). Moreover, every person uses
speech-forms in a unique way (BL 75).
This line of reasoning seems convincing enough, but creates severe problems for
linguistic theorizing and entrains Bloomfield in contradictions. When he argues against
performing observations in the mass or resorting to statistics, his reasoning is
reversed. The linguist is in a fortunate position: in no other respect are the activities of a
group as rigidly standardized as in the forms of language (BL 37). Language is the
simplest and most fundamental of our social activities (BL 38). Every speaker's
language is a composite of what he has heard other people say, and a complex of
habits resulting from repeated situations in early life (BL 42, 37, 32; cf. 4.12; 8.21ff, 25,
53, 69). Large groups of people make up all their utterances out of the same stock of
lexical forms and grammatical constructions (BL 37). Moreover, to uphold the
Saussurian notion of system, Bloomfield assumes that each linguistic form has a constant
and definite meaning, different from the meaning of any other linguistic form in the same
language (BL 158; cf. 2.26ff; 4.23, 26, 50). How such claims could be reconciled with
universal innovation is nowhere explained.
Another perplexity is how observation, for Bloomfield the very foundation of
mechanism and of the natural sciences he says linguistics resembles (4.8f), could
proceed on the physiological basis he envisions (cf. 4.8, 10f, 28f, 32, 50, 58, 61, 77f,
80; 5.28; 6.7, 12, 54; 7.71; 8.19f, 22). Mental processes or internal bodily processes of
other people are known only from speech-utterances and other observable actions (BL
143). The working of the nervous system is capable of delicate and variable
adjustment, and is not accessible to observation from without, not even by one's own
sense-organs (BL 33f; cf. 8.21). Also, the fluctuating and contradictory results of the
search for speech centres indicate that the points of the cortex are surely not
correlated with specific socially significant features of speech, such as words or syntax
(BL 36) (cf. 7.31, 743; 817). And abnormal conditions in which speech is disturbed -- as
in stuttering or aphasia -- seem to reflect general maladjustments or lesions and to
throw no light on the particular mechanisms of language (BL 34f) (but cf. 820; 9.1).
Denied such recourses, Bloomfield develops rather abstruse notions of
observation. At one point, he says that the speaker can observe better than anyone else
the processes represented by conventional speech forms (BL 143). But not even
language enables a person to observe the workings of his own nervous system (BL
34). Besides, the normal speaker, who is not a linguist, does not describe his speech-
habits, and if we are foolish enough to ask him, fails utterly to make a correct formulation
(BL 406; cf. 4.54, 13.49). Nor can we trust educated persons, who have had training in
school grammar and the philosophical tradition (cf. 4.4ff, 86; 13.16). The speaker,
short of a specialized training, is incapable of describing his speech-habits (BL 406).
So all statements in linguistics describe the action of the speaker but do not imply
that the speaker himself could give a similar description (cf. 4.48; 13.49). Also ruled out
are appeals to common sense or to the structure of some other language or to
psychological theory (BL 38) (cf. 8.28; 9.7; 13.10f).
In effect, Bloomfield's scientific ambitions mix pessimism with optimism. The
dilemmas of complexity and variation in human behaviour and communication are said
to constitute an almost insuperable hindrance (BL 407) so that he can justify a strategic
withdrawal. Indeterminate and mutable phenomena, he argues, would resist or
compromise a scientific analysis (but cf. 13.59). So he proposes to limit the scope of
linguistics until such time as the sciences can fully determine meanings and hand them
over in rigorously compiled forms. Meanwhile, we can act as though science had
progressed far enough to identify all the situations and responses that make up the
meaning of speech-forms (BL 77).
In Bloomfield's eyes, the ideal use of language is in mathematics, where the
denotations are very precise (BL 29, 146; cf. 2.82; 3.73; 5.86; 8.31; 12.33ff; 13.15).
Mathematics is a specially accurate form of speech, indeed, the best that language
can do; whole series of forms, in the way of selection, inclusion, exclusion, or
numbering, elicit very uniform responses from different persons (BL 147, 512). The
use of numbers is speech activity at its best and the simplest and clearest case of the
usefulness of talking to oneself -- the latter being, as we saw, Bloomfield's designation
for thinking (BL 29, 512; cf. 4.9). His reverence for mathematics jars somewhat,
though, with his attack on grammarians for using logic (4.4f; cf. 13.17).
Less ideal, but still a shining example, are scientific terms, whose meanings
Bloomfield deems nearly free of connotative factors (BL 152; cf. SL 32f, 223f; 3.72).
He cites the terms of chemistry, mineralogy, botany, and zoology, and contemplates
getting practical help from a zoologist's definition of meanings (BL 139, 162).
Although the linguist cannot define meanings, but must appeal for this to the students of
other sciences, yet having obtained definitions for some forms, he can define the
meanings of other forms in terms of these first ones (BL 145f). Certain meanings, once
they are defined, can be recognized as recurring in whole series of forms (BL 147). This
effect is plain in mathematics, but appears also in many ordinary speech-forms (BL
146). Still, Bloomfield admits that meaning includes many things that have not been
mastered by science; and that the meanings of language do not agree with scientific
(that is, universally recognized and accurate) classification, witness the colour-
spectrum (BL 75, 139f, 174, 280) (cf. 5.68; 6.54; 7.31, 71; 12.60). If nothing but the
business-like denotations of scientific discourse were allowed, a great many forms in
almost every language would disappear (BL 387). And mathematics too retains a
verbal character (BL 507).
Alternately, since we have no way of defining most meanings and of
demonstrating their constancy, we have to take the specific and stable character of
language as a presupposition of linguistic study, just as we presuppose it in our everyday
dealings (BL 144). We may state this presupposition as the fundamental assumption of
linguistics: in certain communities, some speech-utterances are alike as to form and
meaning. This assumption is claimed to imply that each linguistic form has a constant
and specific meaning (BL 145; cf. 2.26; 4.17, 26, 50; 13.54). If the forms are different,
we suppose that their meanings are also different. Bloomfield thus has to infer that there
are no actual synonyms, but does admit homonyms, adding: our basic assumption is
true only within limits, even though its general truth is presupposed not only in linguistic
study, but by all our actual use of language. Yet to argue that some sameness lends
each form a constant meaning is premature and collides with the thesis of continual
innovation (4.16).
 4.24 Consider the ordinary tie-up of phonetic form with dictionary meaning (BL
148). Dictionary meanings show instability by having numerous variants, which
Bloomfield places in two main classes: normal (or central) meanings versus marginal,
(metaphoric or transferred)'8 meanings (later also called deviant meanings); our
assurance and agreement about which is which come from our knowledge of ideal
situations (BL 148f, 151, 431). We understand a form (that is, respond to it) in the
central meaning unless some feature of the practical situation forces us to look to a
transferred meaning (BL 149, 431) (cf. 5.66) . This link to the situation aids Bloomfield's
stipulation that when the linguist tries to state meanings, he safely ignores displaced
speech (in the sense of 4.12), but does his best to register all cases of transferred
meaning. The practical situation is also the guide for narrowed meanings (e.g. car
for streetcar) and widened meanings (e.g. fowl for any bird) (BL 151).
Deviant meanings are described as not natural or inevitable, but specific to particular
cultural traditions (BL 150f); though I suspect all meaning arises from cultural
traditions (cf. 3.1; 9.6ff, 18; 11.8, 30, 56, 66).
Another way in which meanings show instability is the presence of
supplementary values we call connotations (BL 151) (cf. 4.72, 82; 6.52ff; 9.77; 12.19,
. If the meaning of a form for any one speaker is nothing more than a result of the situations
in which he had heard this form, Bloomfield must surmise that connotations come from
hearing it under very unusual circumstances (BL 151f) (cf. 4.82). He lists social standing,
local provenience, and trade or craft; connotative forms might be technical, learned,
foreign, slang, improper, obscene, ominous, animated, infantile, or symbolic
(i.e., sound-symbolism in words like snip-snap) (BL 152-
(cf. 837). He imagines that the chief use of our dictionaries is to combat such personal
deviations, but concedes: the varieties of connotation are countless and indefinable and
cannot be clearly distinguished from denotative meaning (BL 152,

Despite all the problems he sees with meaning, Bloomfield declares that to study
language is to study the co-ordination of sounds with meanings (BL 27). A phonetic
form which has a meaning is a linguistic form (BL 138).9 Here too, he stipulates that in
human speech, different sounds have different meanings (BL 27; cf. 4.17, 23, 50). On
an ideal plane, linguistics would consist of two main investigations: phonetics, in
which we studied the speech-event without reference to its meaning; and semantics, in
which we studied the relation of the event to the features meaning (BL 74). In practice,
this scheme won't work for two reasons. One reason we have already encountered (4.14f):
our knowledge of the world is so imperfect that we can rarely make accurate statements
about the meaning of a speech-form. The other reason is that purely phonetic
observation cannot recognize the difference between distinctive and non-distinctive
features of a language; we can do that only when we know the meaning. To escape this
dilemma, Bloomfield counsels trusting to our everyday knowledge to tell us whether
speech-forms are the same or different (cf. 4.31; 5.14, 61, 65; 9.27).
Predictably, Bloomfield refers the issue to the distinctive features which are
common to all the situations that call forth the utterance of the linguistic form (BL 141;
cf. BL 74; 4.14). Hearing several utterances of some one linguistic form, we assume
that the situations of the several speakers contain some common features (BL 158).
The speech-sound is merely a means which enables us to respond to situations more
accurately (BL 74; cf. 4.11). Though the stimulus-response model is essentially causal
(witness the Jack and Jill story, 4.11; cf. 5.15), Bloomfield follows the Saussurian idea
that the connection between linguistic forms and their meanings is wholly arbitrary
and again illustrates it with words for the same thing (horse) in different languages (BL
145, 274f; cf. 2.28ff; 3.3; 9.13, 36; 11.86). Each combination of signaling-units is
arbitrarily assigned to some feature of the practical world (a claim from which graphic
symbols are later excluded, however) (BL 162, 500). And he agrees with Saussure that
form classes seem less arbitrary when languages identify them by markers, as in
Malayan or Chinese, and grumbles about the arbitrary form-classes in languages that
do not, like English (BL 270f, 165, 269, 280) (cf. 4.49; 13.27, 54).
The phase of language study in which we pay no attention to meaning is called
experimental or laboratory phonetics (BL 75). The phonetician can study either the
sound-producing movements of the speaker in physiological phonetics or the resulting
sound waves in acoustic phonetics; we have as yet, Bloomfield adds without detectable
irony, no means for studying the action of the hearer's ear-drum. Such devices as the
mechanical record, the laryngoscope, and the kymograph can be used (BL 85,
75f).10 This approach, however, reveals only the gross acoustic features; and identical
acoustic effects may be produced by very different actions of the vocal organs (BL
137, 108).
In general, observations of the basis of articulation are bound to be vague, hazy,
and inaccurate; we must wait for laboratory phonetics to give us precise, trustworthy
statements (BL 127f). Yet even a perfected knowledge of acoustics will not, by itself,
give us the phonetic structure of a language (BL 128) (cf. 2.68; 3.17; 4.29; 6.7). Viewed
without regard to their use in communication, speech-sounds are infinitely complex
and infinitely varied (BL 76) (cf. 3.19). The phonetician finds that no two utterances
are exactly alike. The importance of a phoneme therefore lies not in the actual
configuration of its sound-waves, but merely in the difference compared to all other
phonemes of the same language (BL 128) (cf. 2.69f; 4.33; 512; 12.89; 13.26). Each
phoneme must be a distinct unit, unmistakably different from all the others; the rest
of its acoustic character is irrelevant (BL 128, 137).
Accordingly, Bloomfield decides that only the phonemes of a language are relevant
to its structure (BL 129) (cf. 2.69; 5.42f; 6.43; 835; 12.80; 13.26). Gross or acoustic
features should not be confused with distinctive or phonemic features
(BL 77, 84) (cf. 3.20; 4.79; 5.42f). The study of significant speech-sounds is phonology
or practical phonetics'11; both presuppose a knowledge of meanings (BL 78, 137f).
For Bloomfield, the description of a language begins with phonology (BL 138) (cf.
2.17, 67, 70f; 3.18, 58f; 5.42, 44, 51; 7.46; 8.66f 12.80, 82; 13.27). Here, the practical
phonetician frankly accepts his everyday recognition of phonemic units (BL 137) (cf.
4.26).
4.31 Economy is decisive: because a workable system of signals, such as a language,
can contain only a small number of signalling units, whereas the things signalled about,
i.e., the entire content of the practical world, may be infinitely varied (cf. 3.3; 4.14ff;
5.25, 28; 8.42), linguistic study must always start from phonetic form and not from the
meaning (BL 162). Anyway, the use of meaning Bloomfield advocates is quite minimal:
to identify phonemic distinctions by telling which
utterances are alike in meaning, and which ones are different (BL 93, 128) (cf. 4.26).
Some circularity may be entailed here in view of the theses that each linguistic form has
a constant and definite meaning, different from the meaning of any other linguistic form
in the same language; and that if the forms are different, their meanings are also
different (4.17, 23; 13.54). Such theses suggest we need merely establish a difference in
form, and can then take the difference in meaning for granted.
4.32 If the scheme of units lies entirely in the habits of speakers, its description
entails a danger for linguistic work (BL 77, 84). As a listener, the phonetician's
equipment is personal and accidental; he is trained to hear those acoustic features which
are discriminated in the languages he has observed (BL 84). Confronting a strange
language, he has no way of knowing which features are significant (BL 93). So his
first attempts at recording contain irrelevant distinctions and omit essential ones. Even
the exact freehand notations of phonetic experts might tell us little or nothing about
the structure of a language (BL 128) (cf. 2.69; 8.75). Such admissions point toward the
central dilemma of linguists: only to the extent that they also understand the language can
they make worthwhile observations of it; and they must participate in creating the data
(1.8f; 2.9; 13.1). Bloomfield may have considered this problem temporary until some
future super-science explains all meanings exactly (4.21f), and refined physiological
observation will be able to corroborate descriptions made in terms of a speaker's
movements (BL 127). Meanwhile, the analysis and recording of languages will remain
an art or practical skill of little scientific value (BL 93, 127, 137). The extent of
observation is haphazard, its accuracy doubtful, and the terms in which it is reported are
vague (BL 127).
The linguist should proceed by making up a list or table of the phonemes of a
language (BL 90, 129). Bloomfield divides them into primary phonemes, the basic
stock, and secondary phonemes, appearing only in combinations -- such as stress
and pitch (BL 90ff). The phonemes are discovered by experimenting, namely by
altering any one of the parts of the word (BL 78). Each replaceable part must
constitute a phoneme, i.e., a minimum unit of distinctive sound-feature (BL 79, i.r.).
For example, pin is contrasted with sets like sin/tin/fin, pen/pan/pun,
and pig/pill/pit, to reveal exactly three phonemes (BL 78f). Such contrasts
impose a limit to the variability: each phoneme is kept distinct from all other
phonemes (BL 81; 4.27, 29f). Thus, we speak the vowel of a word like pen in a great
many ways, but not in any way that belongs to the vowel of pin (an awkward example,
since in the southeastern U.S., the two words are homophones for many speakers).
Like Firth, Bloomfield says the throat and mouth are not, in a physiological sense,
organs of speech, for they serve biologically earlier uses like breathing and eating,
but derives his terms for phonemes from the shape of the oral cavity and the
movements of the tongue and lips (BL 36, 93, 87) (8.6; but cf. 2.70; 3.11, 21; 13.26).
The division between voiced and unvoiced speech-sounds is aligned with one between
musical sounds and noises (BL 94f, 98). The typical actions of the vocal organs may
be subjected to various modifications, affecting length of time, loudness, and
musical pitch (BL 109, 114) (as we just saw, creating secondary phonemes). Also
important is the manner in which the vocal organs pass between inactivity and the
formation of a phoneme, or from the formation of one phoneme to that of the next (BL
118).
Finally, Bloomfield proposes two more ways to treat phonemes. One is to count
out the relative frequencies (BL 136). The other is to describe the phonetic structure of
a language by stating which phonemes appear in the three possible positions inside
the syllable: initial, medial, or final (BL 131, i.r.). He devises an elaborate listing
for English of what may be followed by what, or occurs only before it, or never comes
after it, and so on (BL 131ff). With those criteria, we can easily show that no two
phonemes play exactly the same part in the language (BL 130, 134).
Bloomfield goes so far as to suggest that a language can be replaced by any
system of sharply distinct signals (BL 128).Gestures might be an instance, but (like
Sapir, 3.10), he views them as a mere derivative of language (BL 144).12 Gesture
accompanies all speech and to a large extent it is governed by social convention (BL
39). But all complicated or not immediately intelligible gestures are based on the
conventions of ordinary speech and have lost all traces of independent character. And
vocal gestures serve an inferior type of communication (BL 147).
The strong focus on speech sounds puts writing too in the position of a mere
derivative, arisen from gestures of marking and drawing (BL 144, 40; cf. 4.44).
Bloomfield's deprecation is much like Saussure's: writing is not language, but merely a
way of recording language by means of visible marks (BL 21) (cf. 2.21f; 6.50; 8.72-75;
9.42f; 12.83; 13.33). For the linguist, writing is merely an external device, like the use
of a phonograph (BL 282). We do not need to know something about writing in
order to study language. Several arguments are deployed to marginalize writing, but
Bloomfield repeatedly stumbles into inconsistencies or difficulties -- just what we noticed
with Saussure (2.21-24).
One argument is that the conventions of writing are a poor guide for
representing phonemes, ostensibly because alphabetic writing does not carry out the
principle of a symbol for each phoneme, though a few languages are commended as
exceptions: Spanish, Bohemian (i.e. Czech), Polish, and Finnish (BL 79, 85f, 89, 501)
(cf. 2.22; 3.54; 6.50; 8.71). Philosophers and amateurs are chided for confusing the
sounds of speech, the phonemes, with the printed letters of the alphabet (BL 8, 137).
But in another passage, alphabetic writing is judged to work sufficiently well for
practical purposes, and its help is instrumental in listing phonemes (BL 128, 90), a
view shared by Sapir (3.19) and Firth (8.71). Bloomfield suggests listing phonemes
in alphabetical order and does so (BL 162, 81), which by his own argument ought to be
a category mistake. In language use, at least, he sees the influence going the other way:
the writer utters the speech-form before or during the act of writing and the hearer utters
it in the act of reading (BL 285).13 He seems annoyed at the alterations inflicted on
speech by orthography, and counsels us, on aesthetic grounds, to eliminate ugly
spelling-pronunciations (BL 501) (cf. 2.21; 8.75).
In any event, Bloomfield avers that the effect of writing upon the forms and
development of speech is very slight (BL 13). In principle, a language is the same,
whether written or not (BL 282; cf. BL 501). And the conventions of writing develop
independently of actual speech (BL 486). Yet he also avers that the written record exerts
a tremendous effect upon the standard language, at least in syntax and
vocabulary (BL 486). In German in fact, the spoken standard is largely derived from
the written (BL 487). A lesser contradiction appears when the conservatism of
writing is claimed, and then this very claim is termed superficial (BL 292, 488) (cf.
4.44).
Bloomfield's dim view of elitism in language (4.5, 87) is another factor. Because
until the days of printing, literacy was confined to a very few people, writing is
suspected of being the property of chosen few and hence a tool for the discrimination
of elegant or correct speech (BL 13, 22). The native speakers of the standard forms
are those born into homes of privilege (BL 48). All our writing is based on the
standard forms (BL 48) and on the literary standard in particular (BL 48, 52). Yet how
educational authorities and teachers can enforce standard forms is unclear if the
schoolteacher, coming usually from a humbler class, is unfamiliar with the upper-class
style (BL 500, 487). Another stumbling block is Bloomfield's unqualified praise for the
work of the Hindu grammarians (4.4), who described only the upper-caste official
and literary language, a patently artificial medium for writing on learned topics (BL
11, 63).
Still, Bloomfield shows far less concern for literature than Sapir did (3.68-71). He
sees it consisting of beautiful or otherwise noticeable utterances, in contrast to the
language of all persons alike, which is the concern of the linguist (BL 21f). His brittle
conjecture that a beautiful poem may make the hearer more sensitive to later stimuli
includes literature among the linguistic interaction for refining and intensifying
human response and promoting education or culture (BL 41). Also, poetic metaphor
is depicted as an outgrowth of the transferred uses of ordinary speech; language is not
a book of faded metaphors, but poetry is a blazoned book of language (BL 443).
Another argument against writing is that all languages were spoken through nearly
all of their history by people who did not read or write (BL 21). To most of the
languages spoken today, writing has been applied recently or not at all. Yet if, as
Bloomfield claims, writing and printing are instrumental for the analysis of linguistic
forms into words and if words are linguistic units that are first symbolized in writing
(BL 178, 285), the implication might be that unwritten languages lacked the notion of the
word, which seems implausible.14
Still another argument is that written records are misleading, giving an imperfect
and often distorted picture of past speech, and telling us little or nothing about the
issues of concern to the linguist (BL 481, 293, 69, 486). The use of such records is a
handicap; we should always prefer to have the audible word (BL 21). Besides, they
acquaint us with only an infinitesimal part of the speech-forms of the past (BL 60, 441)
(though I don't see how we can determine what proportion of speech forms were not
written down). Elsewhere, however, Bloomfield says that written records give direct
information about the speech-habits of the past; and we get such information largely
from them (BL 282, 21). Also, his survey of languages of the world (BL 57-73)
continually refers us to written records, manuscripts, and inscriptions.
So writing needs to be studied at least in regard to issues of history (BL 21).
Bloomfield starts from the idea of language being our way of communicating the kind
of things that do not lend themselves to drawing; if meaning is defined as the
speaker's situation (4.14), this idea implies that most situations contain features that do
not lend themselves to picturing (BL 284f). Although we can only guess at the steps
that came later, the origin of systems of writing was in conventional but realistic
pictures, and many of them actually denoted the name of the object which they
represented (BL 283, 285). This resemblance assumed secondary importance as
people developed the habit of responding to a uniform mark or set of marks (BL
284). Then came the device of representing unpicturable words by phonetically similar
picturable words (BL 287). The symbols in this way came to stand not for linguistic
forms, but for phonetic forms.15 The syllabary had a small number of symbols, each
representative of some one syllable (BL 288). Finally, alphabetic writing used one
symbol for each phoneme, though some actual systems were inadequate because of
the conservatism of the people who write like their predecessors after the speech-
forms have undergone linguistic change (BL 291f).
4.45 In sum, writing is admitted as a domain for gathering evidence, but debarred from
the theoretical conception, which rests on the more auspicious base of the system of
sound-units (cf. 13.33). It's reassuring to envision every language consisting of a number
of signals, linguistic forms, each of these being a fixed combination of signalling-units,
the phonemes (BL 158). Bloomfield goes on to draw up a more elaborate taxonomy for
the meaningful features of linguistic signalling (BL 264) (Table 5.1).
Meaningful units, whether simple or complex, are divided into lexical forms
(built from phonemes) and grammatical forms (built from tagmemes, i.e., features
of arrangement). The smallest and meaningless units are the phememes, comprising
lexical phonemes plus grammatical taxemes. The smallest meaningful units are the
glossemes, whose meanings are noemes and which comprise lexical morphemes,
whose meanings are sememes, plus grammatical tagmemes, whose meanings are
episememes. In most of the book, though, several of these terms (like phememes,
glossemes, and noemes) are scarcely used or illustrated -- a neglect even more
pronounced in Hjelmslev's theorizing (6.4, 59).16 Both linguists take it for granted that
classifications should be based on the smallest units, but neither gives any exhaustive
analysis of real language samples to show how or where we find these units, and when
we stop. Therefore, aside from the well-known phonemes, the units have an
indeterminate quality; even the division between meaningless and meaningful would
not be simple to maintain.
4.46 Bloomfield's two top categories, grammar and lexicon, are complementary.
If we knew the lexicon of a language, we would notice that every utterance contains
some significant features that are not accounted for by the lexicon (BL 162). This
residual aspect, the meaningful arrangements of forms in a language, constitutes its
grammar (BL 163). Yet the two top categories are also connected in several ways. One
connection is that the lexicon is the total stock of morphemes in a language, and
grammar is the arrangement of morphemes in the complex form (BL 162f).
Another connection arises by grouping grammar and lexicon together as divisions
of semantics, i.e., of the description telling what meanings are attached to phonetic
forms (BL 138, 513), though this scheme is not pursued very far.17
4.47 Lexical form is further connected in two directions with grammatical form:
taken by itself in the abstract, it exhibits a meaningful grammatical structure; and
in any actual utterance, it has a grammatical function defined by its privileges of
occurrence, i.e., by the positions in which a form can appear in any actual utterance
(BL 264f, 185) (cf. 7.63). The functions appear as a very complex system, which
Bloomfield traces back to a complex set of habits (BL 265f; cf. 4.12, 32). To describe
the grammar of a language, we have to state the form-class of each lexical form, and to
determine what characteristics make the speakers assign it to these form-classes (BL
266).
Bloomfield strongly recommends that form-classes, like other linguistic
phenomena, be defined only in terms of linguistic (that is, lexical or grammatical)
features (BL 268) (cf. 7.69, 71-76). More specifically, the form-class of a lexical form
is determined for the speakers, and consequently for the relevant description of a
language, by the structure and constituents of the form, or by the inclusion of a special
constituent or marker, or by the identity of a form itself (BL 268). Large form-classes
that subdivide the whole lexicon or some major part of it into form-classes of
approximately equal size are called categories (BL 270). The petty form-classes are
more irregular.
Though he claims every lexical form is used only in certain conventional functions,
Bloomfield concedes that different functions may create overlapping form-classes; and
particular lexical forms may, by class-cleavage, exhibit unusual combinations of
function (BL 265, i.r.) (cf. 3.16, 22, 24, 33; 7.63; 8.25, 27; 12.25, 27; 13.54). Moreover,
he allows for a class of lexical forms that belong arbitrarily or irregularly to a form-
class that is indicated neither by their structure nor by a marker; these will have to be
given as a list of every form in the lexicon (BL 269) (cf. 4.52, 59). From here, he
comes to perceive the lexicon as an appendix of grammar and a list of basic
irregularities (BL 274; cf. 4.52, 59; 7.70f; 13.59).
Another problem is the prospect that although a morpheme can be described
phonetically as a set of one or more phonemes in a certain arrangement (5.36, 45; 7.46,
61; 13.27), a proper analysis is one which takes account of the meanings (BL 161,
167) -- just the aspect of language Bloomfield mistrusts the most. School grammar is
scolded for trying to define the form-classes by the class-meanings, which, like all
other meanings, elude the linguist's power of definition and do not coincide with the
meanings of strictly defined technical terms (BL 266). If the meaning of a morpheme
is a sememe (4.45), Bloomfield, to be consistent, must assume that each sememe is a
constant and definite unit of meaning different from all others in the language (BL
162) (cf. 4.17, 23, 26, 31; 12.66). Consistent too is the idea that sememes could be
analysed or systematically listed only by a well-nigh omniscient observer (cf. 4.15).
Besides, the meaning of each morpheme belongs to it by an arbitrary tradition (BL 274f)
(cf. 4.27). So no matter how refined our method, the elusive nature of meanings will
always cause difficulties, especially when doubtful relations of meaning are accompanied
by formal irregularities (BL 208). For instance, some affixes are vague in meaning,
whereas for others, the meaning is more palpable and concrete; the roots of words
are relatively clear-cut as to denotation, because they are very numerous (BL 240f)
(cf. 3.27).
These problems give Bloomfield one more occasion to voice his refrain: because we
cannot gauge meanings accurately enough, the meaning of a morpheme cannot be
analysed within the scope of our science (BL 227, 161) (cf. 4.15). To
accept makeshift definitions of meaning in place of formal terms is to abandon
scientific discourse (BL 266) . We are similarly cautioned against using philosophical
terms, as was done in the traditional parts of speech system devised by the mistaken
method of school grammar (BL 5, 196, 201, 268, 271) (4.4ff; cf. 4.19, 38, 72, 42; 13.7).
Due to such factors as overlap and overdifferentiation, a fully satisfactory and
consistent system cannot be set up (BL 196, 269f).
How the discovery of morphemes might proceed in a formal way is an intricate
question. They are designated the ultimate constituents or components of every
complex form (BL 160f, i.r.). Each morpheme is a linguistic form which bears no
partial phonetic-semantic resemblance to any other form (befitting the idea of the
lexicon being a list of irregularities, 4.49, 59). Therefore, we must look for partial
resemblance of forms larger than morphemes, e.g., in John ran versus John fell'
(BL 159) (cf. 5.46).
Morphemes come in two types: a free form can be spoken alone, whereas a
bound form cannot (BL 160). So only free forms can be isolated in actual speech;
the speaker cannot isolate bound forms by speaking them alone (BL 178, 208). Yet here
too, methods of discovery are problematic. If we are lucky, we may hear someone utter
the form without any accompaniment, but we may also wait in vain for the isolated
form (BL 159f).
Bloomfield again has reservations about consulting native speakers (cf. 4.19;
13.49). Though he depicts the categories of language which affect morphology as
being so pervasive that anyone who reflects upon language at all is sure to notice them,
yet as a practical matter, observing languages in the field, it is unwise to elicit such
forms (BL 270, 160). One cannot look to the speakers for an answer, since they are
usually unable to describe the structure of words; they do not practise morphological
analysis, and would make false admissions or give inconsistent or silly answers (BL
208, 160) (cf. 5.46, 48; 915).
Bloomfield has no patent solutions either. Despite his own postulate of strict
form-meaning correspondence (4.17, 23), he grants that defining linguistic categories
in formal terms will always leave a great difficulty in defining their meaning (BL 271)
(cf. 13.54). Class-meanings are merely composites, or greatest common factors, of the
grammatical meanings which accompany the forms (BL 266f). Alternately, class-
meanings are only vague situational features, undefinable in terms of our science (BL
268). Some linguistic categories may agree with classes of real things, such as
objects, actions, and relations, but other languages may not recognize these classes
in their part-of-speech system (BL 271) (cf. 2.65; 3.23; 13.24). Number, gender,
case, tense, and aspect are cited as categories that do not conform to the practical
world (BL 271f). Also, in every language, many complex forms carry specialized
meanings which cannot figure in a purely linguistic description, but are practically of
great importance (BL 276). Some forms and features are so elusive and variable that
the definer can only resort to a demonstration by examples (BL 280) (cf. 8.82; 9.27).
Others have no formal characteristic by which we could define them and must be
classified by purely practical features of meaning (BL 215).
And so Bloomfield too proceeds in a makeshift fashion. He invokes such class-
meanings as action, strong stimulus,18 and the qualitative, variable, or
identificational character of specimens (BL 166, 267, 202f). The class-meaning of
verbs is said to be action, and that of English finite verb expressions to be action
performed by actor. Particularly obtuse is the suggestion that infinitive expressions,
when spoken with exclamatory final pitch, have the meaning of a command (BL 164ff,
172). Despite its different function, the imperative is called infinitive because the two
forms happen to coincide in English and not to require a subject (cf. 9.58, 91).
A set of related inflected forms is said to constitute a paradigm (BL 223) (cf.
5.74; 6.34; 7.75f; 8.57; 9.31, 917; 12.71; 13.27). Some are regular, whereas others are
defective (with missing forms) or over-differentiated (with too many forms) (BL
223f). Yet in saying even a single over-differentiated paradigm implies homonomy in
the regular paradigms, Bloomfield hints that linguistic description should start from the
most complex case, however isolated; if be has was, were, and been, then
a form like played would be actually three forms that happen to sound alike (cf. BL
224). By that reasoning, the pronoun system (with I/me, he/him, etc.) might suggest
that nouns have different cases for subject and object which sound the same. Such
conclusions hardly fit Our aim is to get, in the long run, the simplest possible set of
statements that will describe the facts of English (BL 213) (cf. 5.9, 38; 6.13, 21, 40;
7.36f, 50f).
What holds the paradigm together is its derivational unity (BL 224). An English
paradigm consists of an underlying word and some secondary derivatives containing
it. In many other languages having a more complex morphology, none of the forms in
a paradigm can conveniently be viewed as underlying the others (BL 225). For such
cases, Bloomfield postulates a kernel or a theoretical underlying form as a stem (BL
225f, 267) (cf. 4.69; 7.95).
A morphological set of forms is regular if it can be covered by a general
statement and its members can be formed by a speaker who has not heard them (BL
213f).19 This idea suggests each separate morpheme of a language is an irregularity
in respect to the others, so that the lexicon, i.e., the stock of morphemes, would again
be a list of basic irregularities (4.49, 52), the more so if meanings are taken into
consideration (BL 162, 274). Because in morphology, any inconsistency of procedure
is likely to create confusion, the principle of immediate constituents must be applied
in all observation of word-structure (BL 209, 221) (cf. 5.21, 50, 62; 7.37f, 63; 9.33;
13.26). Any complex form can be fully described (apart from its meaning) in terms of
the immediate constituent forms and the grammatical features whereby these are
arranged (BL 167).
Although a syllable or phoneme can be a linguistic form, the word constitutes
the smallest unit of free form, and for purposes of ordinary life, the smallest unit of
speech (BL 138, 183, 178) (cf. 13.29). The principle that a word cannot be interrupted
by other forms, holds good almost universally (BL 180). In the few languages with no
bound forms, the word is also the smallest unit of linguistic form in general (BL 183)
(a case that could confuse the taxonomy in 4.45). Bloomfield contrasts primary words,
which do not contain a free form (they either consist of a single free morpheme or
contain more than one bound form), against secondary words, which do contain one
or more free forms (BL 209, 240ff). This prospect of the word having immediate
constituents raises a familiar problem: it is impossible to
distinguish consistently, on the one hand, between phrases and words and, on the other
hand, between words and bound forms (BL 209, 179) (cf. 2.55; 3.26, 34f; 5.51, 53f;
8.57; 9.75, 917; 11.40; 12.75; 13.28). The distinction rests on grammatical features of
selection, which are the commonest, but also the most varied and difficult to observe
(BL 229). Many words lie on the border (BL 180f). This border region includes
phrase-words (jack-in-the-pulpit) and compound words (blackbird) (BL 207, 180,
184, 234f, 276) (cf. 2.61; 5.32, 54; 9.93; 13.28).
In grammar (as in morphology), most speech forms are regular in the sense that
the speaker who knows the constituents and the grammatical pattern can utter them
without ever having heard them by using analogies and habits of substitution (BL
275f).20 Here, the observer cannot hope to list all the forms, since the possibilities of
combination are practically infinite, and many may never before have been uttered (cf.
4.16; 7.95; 8.42; 13.26, 39f, 45). So although the number of words in any language is
practically infinite, the real wealth of a language lies in its morphemes, sentence-
types, constructions, and substitutions (BL 276f). The grammar lists only the kind of
irregularities that are not present in all the morphemes of a language (BL 274). Any
form which a speaker can utter only after he has heard it from other speakers, is irregular.
Yet the criterion is not too reliable: when a speaker utters a complex form, we are in
most cases unable to tell whether he has heard it before or created it by analogy (BL
276).
Bloomfield proposes to organize linguistic description for grammar into two parts:
morphology for the construction of words, and syntax for the construction of
phrases (BL 183f, 207) (cf. 2.55; 5.54; 6.49; 8.57; 9.31; 11.35). To support the division,
Bloomfield reverses his position about borders (in 4.60): the constructions in which free
forms appear in phrases differ very decidedly from the constructions in which free or
bound forms appear in words (BL 183).21 Syntactic constructions are those in which
none of the immediate constituents is a bound form (BL 184). Morphological
constructions are those in which bound forms appear among the constituents (BL
207). In general, morphological ones are the more elaborate (BL 207). The features
of modification and modulation are more numerous and often irregular, i.e., confined
to particular cases rather than covered by a general statement (BL 207, 213; cf. 4.49).
Features of selection can be minute, arbitrary, and whimsical (BL 207, 165). The
order of the constituents is almost always rigidly fixed, though this criterion may apply
to some phrases as well (BL 207, 229). Due to all these peculiarities, languages differ
more in morphology than in syntax, and no simple scheme can classify all languages
(BL 207; cf. 3.47; 4.72). Such schemes as the one with analytic versus synthetic,
and the one with isolating, agglutinative, polysynthetic, and inflecting are criticized
because the classes were relative and never clearly defined (BL 207f) (cf. 3.54f).
Notwithstanding these guidelines, the border between syntax and morphology
remains fuzzy, with the word caught in between. Bloomfield envisions a grey area of
compounds ranging from syntactic to semi-syntactic to asyntactic (BL 207, 233ff)
(4.60). Moreover, its status as a free form (BL 178, 181, 183) does not fully identify the
word, because we do not mark off those segments of our speech which could be spoken
alone (BL 181). Bloomfield is forced to turn to writing: the analysis of linguistic forms
into words is familiar to us because we have the custom of leaving
spaces between words in our writing and printing (BL 178) (cf. 4.38). Printed form must
be the reason why he himself considers door-knob to be English, but not door knob
(BL 233).
Grammar is assigned four kinds of meaningful arrangements: (1) order is
the succession of constituents; 22 (2)modulation is the use of secondary phonemes
like pitch (4.33); (3) phonetic modification is a change in the primary phonemes; and
(4) selection of forms is controlled by certain classes (BL 163f) (cf. 3.25-30). Yet
discovering arrangements, as Bloomfield admits, is not as easy as discovering
phonemes, which we can pronounce or transcribe, and many students of language have
been misled (BL 168). A similar difficulty applies to the parallel whereby a taxeme,
being a simple feature of grammatical arrangement, is in grammar what a phoneme is
in the lexicon -- the smallest unit of form (BL 167; cf. 4.45; 526; 6.42). Bloomfield
warns that taxemes can be very complex and elaborate, involving many
peculiarities (BL 266, 210). And his examples of taxemes suggest as much, for
instance, the selections which delimit form-classes, assign certain finite verb
expressions to certain nominative expressions, or make certain forms become
favourite sentence-forms (BL 190, 166f, 171f). I see here nothing simple or small;
taxeme seems to be a name for any group of information the linguist needs to describe
some aspect of an arrangement, witness Bloomfield's remark about one case: all these
facts, taken together, may be viewed as a single taxeme (BL 167f).
Syntax is said to consist largely of taxemes of selection stating under
what circumstances various form-classes appear in syntactic constructions (BL 190).
Every construction shows us two (or sometimes more) free forms combined in a
resultant phrase (BL 194). Bloomfield's breakdown of constructions hinges on a
certain use of recursion: whether a phrase belongs to the same form-class as one or
more of its immediate constituents. If not, the construction is exocentric (like John
ran); if so, it is endocentric (like poor John, where both the whole and John
are proper-noun expressions and have the same functions). The endocentric ones,
which include most of those in any language, are of two kinds: in co-ordinative
(orserial) ones (e.g., boys and girls), the phrase belongs to the same form-class as
two or more of the constituents (e.g. nouns); in subordinative (or attributive) ones (e.g.,
very fresh milk), only one of the constituents -- the head or centre (e.g., the noun)
-- meets this requirement (BL 195). This scheme has a vaguely transformational flavor
in the sense that a part is construed as being, for syntactic purposes, of the same class
as the whole (cf. 13.54). But Bloomfield limits his ideas about kernels or underlying
forms to morphology (4.59), where the structural order of constituents may differ from
their actual sequence, and the descriptive order of grammatical features is a fiction
serving our method of describing the forms (BL 210, 213).
The formation of a phrase is usually determined, at bottom, by the form-class
of one or more of the included words (BL 268). For this reason, the speaker (and the
grammarian) need not deal separately with each phrase; the form-class of almost any
phrase is known if we know the syntactic constructions and the form-classes of words
(cf. 7.95). Phrases are also held together by government: a selection stipulating the
syntactic position of one form with respect to another (BL 192) (cf. 612). Agreement
is a narrower type; the simplest kind is concord or congruence e.g., between actor
and action (BL 191) (cf. 8.61; 920).
The sentence is defined as a linguistic form occurring in absolute position,
i.e., as an independent form not included in any larger form (BL 170). This definition
places the sentence at the end-point of recursion: it includes but cannot be included (but
cf. 7.52). As a result, isolation -- the inability to be in a structure -- becomes a decisive
aspect for describing structures. Even a word or two (like John! or Poor John!)
can be a sentence; only the bound form is never used (BL 170, 177; cf. 4.53, 61f;
5.58; 8.55; 12.77). Of course, a form which in one utterance figures as a sentence, may
in another utterance appear in included position (BL 170). Moreover, an utterance may
consist of more than one sentence if it contains several linguistic forms which are not
united by any meaningful grammatical arrangement (cf. 9.86). These cases collide
with the criterion, mentioned later, that a sentence be spoken alone (BL 179). The
criterion wouldn't be decisive anyway: the linguist cannot wait indefinitely for the
chance of hearing a given form used as a sentence, and inquiry or experiment may call
forth very different responses. Bloomfield remarks here that aside from far-fetched
situations, the general structure of language may make one classification more convenient
than another for our purpose (cf. 13.40, 43).
Bloomfield postulates various taxemes marking off the sentence and
distinguishing different types of sentences in most, or possibly all languages (BL 170;
cf. 13.28). Sentence-pitch can mark the end of sentences or their emphatic parts, or
can unite two forms in parataxis, the latter including juxtaposition, parenthesis,
and apposition (BL 171). Taxemes of selection distinguish full from minor
sentences, or decide which are favourites -- in English, say, actor-action phrases and
commands (BL 171f) (cf. 9.46). The meaning of the full sentence type (its
episememe, cf. 4.45) is expounded as complete and novel utterance or full-sized
instruction for altering the hearer's situation; but we are warned again that it is a
serious mistake to try to use this meaning (or any meanings) as a starting point for
linguistic discussion, because we cannot define them exactly (BL 172; cf. 4.16; 5.65).
The predication is presented as a bipartite favourite sentence form
composed of subject and predicate (BL 173) -- like the definition of the sentence
used by school grammarians as well as linguists (cf. 3.36, 39; 5.55; 8.55; 12.78f). The
interrogative is identified both by special pitch and selection; it stimulates the
hearer to supply a speech-form (BL 171, 248, 204) (cf. 9.58).23 The minor (i.e., not
favourite) sentence-types are completive (supplements a situation, as in Gladly, if
I can) or exclamatory (occur under a violent stimulus, as in Damn it) (BL 176f).
What a traditional grammar might call sentence fragments are thereby subsumed under
minor sentence types (cf. 9.85).24 In return, the structural status of the sentence is made
almost as elusive as that of the word and depends on some indefinitely large and
variegated set of taxemes (cf. 4.64f).
Alongside constructions and sentence-types, substitution is the third type
of meaningful grammatical arrangement (BL 247, i.r.) (cf. 5.32; 7.73; 9.92).
A substitute is a linguistic form or grammatical feature which, under certain
conventional circumstances, replaces one of a class of linguistic forms in its domain.
Substitutes are often short words, atonic, and of irregular inflection and
derivation. They have great usefulness and economy; their meanings are more
inclusive, abstract, simple, and constant than the meanings of ordinary linguistic
forms (BL 250). Being one step farther removed from practical reality and having
grammatically definable domains, substitutes raise fewer practical questions of
meaning (BL 250, 247). They fit such simple features of the situation that they could
be replaced by gestures (BL 249f; cf. 4.36). Bloomfield cites the closed system of
personal-definite substitutes (i.e., pronouns), which represent elementary
circumstances of the act of speech-utterance, such as the speaker-hearer relation (BL
256, 248) (cf. 9.89). 25 For example, we may say you with no practical knowledge
of the hearer (though this applies only to languages like English with a single pronoun
of address). Also, Bloomfield is impressed by the forms for numerative and
identificational relations (like all, some, any, etc.), because they remind him of
the language of science and mathematics (BL 249; cf. 4.21f).
Bloomfield's belief in the reality or universality of the descriptive concepts reviewed
so far is signalled when he remarks: such features as phonemes, morphemes, words,
sentences, constructions, and substitution-types appear in every language, because
they are inherent in the nature of human speech (BL 297) (cf. 2.10, 30; 7.45;
13.27). Other features, such as noun-like and verb-like form-classes, or categories
of number, person, case, and tense, or grammatical positions of actor, verbal goal,
and possessor, are not universal, but still so widespread that better knowledge will
doubtless someday connect them with universal characters of languages (but cf.
3.36). Such features could exist as realities either of physics or of human
psychology (BL 198f, (cf. 5.68; 6.12; 1316).
Yet the danger always impends, even for linguists, of mistaking the
categories of one's native language for universal forms of speech or of human
thought, or of the universe itself (BL 233, 270; cf. 3.5, 50; 4.4; 8.14). A good deal of
what passes for logic or metaphysics is merely an incompetent restating of the chief
categories of the philosopher's language (BL 270) (cf. 13.16). So linguistics of the
future will have to compare the categories of different languages and see which features
are universal or at least widespread. Meanwhile, we are told that at least in some areas
like compound words, the differences are great enough to prevent our setting up any
scheme that would fit all languages (BL 233; cf. 3.47; 4.62).
Of course, much comparing had already been done by earlier linguists (cf. 2.5,
10, 52, 63; 3.19f; 4.1; 12.90f). But although he extols philology as one of the most
successful enterprises of European science in the nineteenth century, he has some
reservations about comparative methods (BL 12). It shows us the ancestry of languages
in the form of a family tree, yet the family tree diagram was merely a statement of the
method rather than of historical realities (BL 311). Each branch of the tree was
assumed to bear independent witness to the forms of the parent language (BL 310).
Identities or correspondences, especially in the commonest constructions and form-
classes, or in intimate basic vocabulary of everyday speech, should reveal features
of the parent speech (BL 298, 310). Differences which follow a system might also
indicate that forms are historically connected (BL 300).
Yet appearances can be unreliable. Universals may create deceptive
resemblances among wholly unrelated languages (BL 297; cf. 2.10; 7.20). Or,
confusion may result from some accident or borrowing of speech-forms (BL 298f,
361f). Moreover, the comparative method makes a risky assumption that the parent
language was completely uniform until it got split suddenly and sharply into two or
more languages (BL 310, 318). Actually, the parent might have been dialectally
differentiated, and its offshoots might remain in communication; clear-cut splitting
is not usual (BL 321, 314). In actual observation, no speech-community is ever quite
uniform (BL 311; cf. 2.43; 3.66; 4.17, 82; 7.12, 96).
Pursuing this train of thought with his usual relentlessness leads Bloomfield to
acknowledge the problems in determining what constitutes or belongs to a language. The
language of any speech-community appears to an observer, at any one moment, as a
stable structure of lexical and grammatical habits (BL 281). This, however, is an
illusion: every language is undergoing, at all times, a process of linguistic change
(2.44-54; 3.58-63). At any one stage of a language, certain features are relatively stable
and others relatively unstable (BL 409). The systematic study of how speech-forms
change may offer the key to most linguistic problems (BL 5) (cf. 3.58). Whereas
Bloomfield had previously said that in order to describe a language one needs no
historical knowledge whatever, he now says that change offers the only possibility of
explaining the phenomena of language (BL 19, 281). After all, our speech depends
entirely on the speech of the past (BL 47). Speakers acquire their habits from earlier
speakers (BL 281). Thus, the explanation of our present-day habit consists in the
existence of the earlier habit plus any intervening change (BL 282). Bloomfield
surmises that linguistic change is far more rapid than biological change, but probably
slower than the changes in other human institutions. Every speaker is constantly
adapting his speech-habits to interlocutors; he gives up forms, adopts new ones, or
changes the frequency (BL 327f) (cf. 13.39).
Bloomfield is pleased to report how, in the later 19th century,26 studies of
language change replaced the speculation of earlier times with scientific induction
(BL 16; cf. 4.7, 73, 79; 13.4). When no one had the key, the results of linguistic change
seemed chaotic (BL 346). But now we have a method which brings order into the
confusion of linguistic resemblances (BL 346). The observed facts resisted all
comprehension until our method came upon the scene (BL 347).
What these observed facts tell us is less clear than Bloomfield's confident tone
suggests (cf. 4.8, 17ff). The process of linguistic change has never been directly
observed; observation, with our present facilities, is inconceivable (BL 347). Even
mass-observation made by recording every form we can find can tell us nothing
about the changes; we would need a genuinely statistical observation through a
considerable period of time (BL 38) (cf. 2.45).27 Bloomfield also sees observed facts
in the results of linguistic change as they show themselves in etymologies, i.e., in the
history of speech-forms (BL 347, 15). Yet if every word has its own history (BL 328,
335, i.r.),28 language change would be a diffuse amalgamation of minute trends, and
observation could scarcely claim generality anyway.
In the section on semantic change, the student is counselled to observe very
closely the meanings of the form in all older occurrences and to find the context in
which the new meaning first appears (BL 440). Evidence includes contexts and phrasal
combinations, comparisons of related languages, and the structural analysis of forms
(BL 425). Though he seems uneasy about the attempts of earlier students to describe
classes of logical relations that connect successive meanings -- narrowing,
widening, metaphor, metonymy, and so on (BL 426f) -- Bloomfield offers no scheme
of his own. Nor does he explain how genuine semantic change differs from the semantic
innovation he attributes to every utterance of a speech-form by a good speaker (4.16).
He predictably suggests that a change in meaning is merely the result of change in use
(BL 426) (cf. 8.47; 12.42, 66). An expansion of a form into new meanings entails a
special rise in frequency; but for fluctuations in the frequency of forms to be
accurately observed, we would need a record of every utterance that was made in a
speech-community in a given period of time (BL 435, 394) (cf. 4.14, 16f). And ritual
warnings are sounded again: any fluctuation depending on meaning escapes a purely
linguistic investigation; in the spread of linguistic features, the factor of meaning
(including connotation) cuts off our hope for a scientifically usable analysis (BL 399,
345).
Again like Saussure, Bloomfield prefers to focus on phonetic change and
declares it independent of non-phonetic factors, such as the meaning (BL 353f; cf. 2.74).
The beginning of our science was made by a procedure which implied the regularity of
phonetic change and thereby enabled linguists to find order in the factual data (BL 355,
364) (cf. 8.67; 13.27). Saussurian too is the reluctance to see such change following
laws (BL 348, 354) (2.14f, 38). At most, the change of phonemes was fairly regular,
although the actual data may be extremely irregular and may include deviant or
residual (or relic) forms (BL 351, 352f, 360ff, 331). Phonetic change could be
observed only by means of an enormous mass of mechanical records through several
generations (BL 365; cf. BL 38). Moreover, changing phonemes would have to be
carefully filtered out from the non-distinctive acoustic features of a language, which
are at all times highly variable (BL 365).
Since a sound-change is a historical happening, its cause cannot be found in
universal considerations or by observing speakers at other times and places or in a
laboratory; we have no guarantee of its happening again (BL 388f, 368). Like Saussure
and Sapir once more, Bloomfield is sceptical about seeing the cause of sound-change
in race, climate, topographic conditions, diet, occupation, and general mode of life
(BL 386; cf. 2.76; 32). He is also unconvinced by appeals to rapidity of speech, culture
and general intelligence, or imperfections in children's learning, and above all by elitist
contentions that changes are due to ignorance and carelessness and corruptions of the
vulgar (BL 490, 8; cf. BL 469, 476) (cf. 2.46, 49). Psychological explanations are also
ruled out, on the grounds that they merely paraphrase the outcome of the change (BL
435) (cf. 3.62; 13.14). The effects of a substratum language formerly spoken in an
occupied territory, are discounted too, as well as the notion that forms of weak meaning
are slurred in pronunciation and lost (BL 386ff, 469) (cf. 3.63).
Bloomfield believes the general processes of change are the same in all
languages, but no permanent factor can account for specific changes (BL 20, 386).
Instead, he attributes the change of language partly to linguistically definable
characteristics, such as shortness of words, avoidance of homonymy, patterning of
recurrent phonemes, simplification of sound clusters, dissimilation of sounds, or
preservation of semantically important features; and partly to historical change in
human affairs or shifts in the practical world, including the mechanism of receiving a
strong stimulus or making a good response to a situation (BL 509, 395f, 372, 390,
363, 435, 389, 399, 426, 396, 440, 401). Some new forms may be individual creations
of one speaker that were congenial to the general formal patterns and habits of the
community; but usually it is useless to ask what person made the start (BL 421, 424,
443, 480) (cf. 2.45; 3.57, 64; 46).
Though we may ignore the lack of uniformity when we describe a language
by confining ourselves to some arbitrarily chosen type of speech, we cannot do this
when studying linguistic change, because all changes are sure to appear at first in the
shape of variant features (BL 311f; cf. BL 365, 480). We need to probe the social
conditions for the spread of features in space as well as in time (BL 345) (cf. 2.43;
3.65). The most important kind of social group is the speech-community, because
society, i.e. the close adjustment among individuals, is based on language (BL 42)
(cf. 3.1; 4.10, 74f; 7.12; 8.13). Every person belongs to more than one minor speech-
group and acts as a mediator between groups, as an imitator and a model, responding
to the density of communication and the relative prestige of different social groups (BL
476f, 345) (cf. 8.77). Rival forms differ in connotation, according to the
circumstances where a speaker has heard them (BL 394) (cf. 4.25).
Dialect is a complex notion in this regard, since there is no absolute distinction
between dialect and language boundaries, or between dialect borrowing and cultural
borrowing (BL 444f, i.r.) (cf. 3.66; 4.74). Dialects are for the most part mutually
intelligible, whereas languages are not; yet there are all kinds of gradations between
understanding and failing to understand (BL 57, 44, 52f). Also, dialect geography
reveals no sharp lines of linguistic demarcation between dialect areas, but only more
gradations (BL 51, i.r.). In sum, we see that the term speech-community has only
a relative value (BL 54). Still, dialect study is useful in making atlases and maps of
distribution for lexical or grammatical differences (BL 323f).29 This work refuted
earlier doctrines that the literary and upper-class standard language was older and more
true to reason than the local speech-forms, which were due to the ignorance and
carelessness of the common people (BL 321) (cf. 2.24; 3.69; 4.40). The standard
language may arise from local dialects, or these may preserve some ancient
feature lost in the standard.
4.84 Of course, we can still try to distinguish between the upper or dominant
language of the more privileged group, and thelower language of the subject people
(BL 461). In all cases, it is the lower language which borrows from the upper; each
speech-group imitates people of highest social standing (BL 464, 476).30
Bloomfield's upper side includes conquerors, masters, officials, merchants,
lecturers, and educated persons; his lower side includes working men, rustics,
proletarians, peasants, poorest people, street-sweepers, tramps, law-breakers,
criminals, Gipsies, Negro slaves,31 and -- in the United States -- humble
immigrants (BL 461, 474, 330, 47, 441, 50).
4.85 Bloomfield's concern for social differences in language is most urgently reflected
in his insistent connection between language and educational policy: society deals with
linguistic matters through the school system (BL 499) (cf. 4.5f; 8.7; 9.17; 13.60, 64). A
few generations ago, practical matters seemed simple enough for the child to learn
without the help of the school, which needed to train him only in the three R's (reading,
'riting, 'rithmetic) . Schools have clung to this pattern and concentrated on verbal
discipline. The chief aim is literacy, but the ignorance and
confusion of educators lead to primers and first reading books that present the
graphic forms in a mere hodgepodge, with no rational progression (BL 500) (cf. 9.16).
Compared to the European system, our eight years of grammar-school represents a
waste of something like four years of every child's time (BL 504). To get a general
education, the American must still go through a four years college course. In all
respects except formal education, he is too mature for general and elementary studies
and turns instead to the snobberies and imbecilities which make a by-word of the
American college. Selection is made not by the pupil's aptitude, but by his parents
economic means, combined with chance or whim.
The delay of professional study works most adversely upon the
effectiveness of foreign-language study (BL 504). The work in high schools and
colleges is an appalling waste of effort: not one pupil in a hundred learns to speak and
understand, or even to read, a foreign language (BL 503). Bloomfield blames the
prevalence of analysis and puzzle-solving translation, and incompetent teachers who
talk about the foreign language instead of using it (BL 505). He recommends constant
repetition as the only way to master the thousands of morphemes and tagmemes of
the foreign language -- an idea that later became the backbone of the audio-lingual
method, due in part to Bloomfield's (1942) own design of instructional methods for
strategic languages during World War II. Since the meaning of foreign forms is hard to
convey, instruction should focus on practical objects and situations -- say, of the
classroom or of pictures. The content should have practical bearing by showing the
life and history of the foreign nation (BL 506). Grammatical doctrine should be
accepted only where it passes a test of usefulness and has been re-shaped to suit the
actual need. The memorizing of paradigms bears so little relation to actual speech as
to be nearly worthless (cf. 911).
Bloomfield assails the schools even more fiercely for their authoritarian
attitude about speech, whereby the non-standard speaker is injured in childhood
by the unequal distribution of privilege (BL 499f; cf. 4.5). Grammarians pretend that
one way of speaking is inherently right, the other inherently wrong (BL 3) (2.5f, 32;
3.4; 4.40; 8.26). Labelling undesirable variants as incorrect or bad English or even
not English makes the speaker grow diffident and ready to suspect almost any
speech-form of incorrectness (BL 496, 48). It would not have been possible for
grammarians to bluff a large part of our speech-community if the public had not been
ready for the deception: worrying about whose type of language has a higher prestige
makes people easy prey to the authoritarian (BL 497). They struggle to revise their
speech to fit the model of printed books or the minor variations and snobbery of
modish cliques or of a small minority of over-literate persons (BL 497, 502). The
result is unnatural speech, a mix of non-current forms and outlandish hyperforms
(BL 497f). The non-standard speaker should rather take pride in simplicity of speech
and view it as an advantage; and should substitute without embarrassment standard
forms for his own (BL 499).
And so Bloomfield's classic book concludes with an appeal for a linguistics able
to ameliorate social and educational policy though enlightenment about language.
Although lexical and grammatical analysis are not powerful enough to reveal the truth
or falsity of a doctrine, linguistics can make us critical of verbal response habits and
injurious practices rationalized by appeal to a higher sanction (BL
507f, i.r.) (cf. 87). Ultimately, the investigation of the languages of the world may
provide the basis for a sound knowledge of communal forms of human behaviour. It is
only a prospect, but not hopelessly remote, that the study of language may help us toward
the understanding and control of human events (BL 509).

NOTES ON BLOOMFIELD

The key for Bloomfield citations is BL: Language (Bloomfield 1933). An earlier (1914)
edition was much smaller and based on the psychological system of Wilhelm
Wundt, which Bloomfield now abjures in favour of mechanism (4.8). As of the 1984
reprint, the reverent editors have still not ventured to make corrections in the 1933
version (see Hockett's foreword, BL xiiif).
The whole logic and dialectic of ancient and medieval times is designated a mistaken
effort (BL 507), though Bloomfield borrows from it, for instance, for defining the
predication (4.69; cf. 13.17f). Hockett's belief that Bloomfield had integrated the
philosophical-descriptive tradition (4.1) apparently refers to the latter's reliance on
commonsense examples and his own intuitive judgments about them. Compare 4.19,
38, 51, 72; 7.9ff; 13.1.
Thanks to the grammar of Panini, no other language, to this day, has been so perfectly
described as Sanskrit (BL 11) (cf. 7.3; 8.5). Perhaps to accentuate his turn against
school grammar, Bloomfield expropriates from the terminology of the ancient Hindu
grammarians: sandhi, samprasarana, karmadharaya, davanda, tatpurshana,
amredita, bahuvrihi, dvigu, and avyayibhava, accrediting them as technical
terms of linguistics (BL 186, 384, 235, 237). He also commends the Hindus for the
apparently artificial but eminently serviceable device of the zero element, which he
equates with nothing at all (BL 209); but surely the difference between zero and
nothing is precisely the point -- that we can view absence as a positive characteristic
(BL 264f) (cf. 226; 512; 616; 13.28)?
The passages are found on BL xv, 3, 12, 16, 21, 32, 38, 45, 77, 140, 145, 161f, 167, 347,
355, and 508f. The usual obstacle to science is meaning (BL 93, 139, 161f, 167f,
174, 266), whose elucidation is consigned to some other science (BL 77, 140, 145,
508). Compare 4.15.
Fellow-men indeed. As if the story weren't sexist enough, Bloomfield remarks: the lone
Jill is in much the same position as the speechless animal; if she gets the food, she
has far better chances of surviving and populating the earth (BL 24). The traditional
pail of water was apparently dropped because it was a mentally conceived goal for
going up the hill, rather than a chance reaction to the countryside.
Yet, we are told, any speaker is free to invent nonsense-forms with vague or no
denotation at all; in fact, any form he invents is a nonsense-form, unless he succeeds
in the almost hopeless task of getting fellow-speakers to accept it as a signal for some
meaning (BL 157) (cf. 2.45; 3.57; 4.81). But advertisers succeed rather often.
This referral to good (or gifted, 4.7) speakers is a bit awkward, since Bloomfield
champions simplicity of speech and suspects that the drive to use apt and agreeable
forms may foster stilted, unnatural speech (BL 498f).
The structure of the language recognizes the transferred meaning if the latter is
linguistically determined by an accompanying form (BL 150). This condition fits
Bloomfield's stipulation that language can convey only such meanings as are attached
to some formal feature (BL 168) (cf. 13.54). But metaphor is a strong counter-example
(cf. 5.66f; 9.97ff; 11.86; 12.11, 31, 33, 83).
This definition covers any English sentence, phrase, word, meaningful syllable, or
phoneme, though the phoneme is later called a meaningless unit (BL 138, 264,
354) (cf. 6.43).
The laryngoscope is a mirror device for seeing another person's (or his own) vocal
chords; the kymograph transforms the movement of the vocal organs into an ink
line on a strip of paper (BL 75). Such devices often interfere with normal speech and
can serve only for very limited phases of observation. Compare 833.
These two diverge in that phonology pays no heed to the acoustic nature of the
phonemes (BL 137). Compare Saussure's assessment (2.70).
But surely gestures differ from language in the nature of, and constraints upon, their
arbitrariness, as in pointing back over one's shoulder to indicate past time (BL 39).
Current research is divided about whether readers recode words into a phonological
representation (cf. 415 and 1035; 13.34).
Bloomfield says: people who have not learned to read and write have some difficulty
when called upon to make word-divisions (BL 178). But Sapir's experiences with
native speakers he was teaching to write found them determining the words with
complete and spontaneous accuracy (SL 34n) (cf. 3.31).
Real writing is said to require the association of the characters with linguistic forms
(BL 284). Bloomfield of course rebukes the metaphysical doctrine that connects the
graphic symbols directly with thoughts or ideas (BL 500) (cf. 4.9). That rebuke
might be aimed at Sapir, who said: the written forms are secondary symbols of the
spoken ones, yet so close is the correspondence that they may, in certain types of
thinking, be entirely substituted for the spoken ones (SL 20).
Hjelmslev doesn't give even one example of glossemes, the minimal forms and
irreducible invariants of glossematics and the highest-degree invariants within a
semiotic (PT 99f, 80; RTL 100) (6.42). To demonstrate that the glossemes of different
languages differ in practical value, Bloomfield contrasts not smallest units, but
whole words (BL 278f). He also oddly imagines pupils learning the arbitrary
glossemes of a foreign language (BL 503).
However, the tendency of American linguists to treat semantic as the converse of
formal is foreshadowed by Bloomfield (BL 395, 399) (cf. 13.54).
Strong stimulus is also given as the episememe of the tagmeme of exclamatory
final-pitch (BL 166) -- a picturesque admixture of behaviourism with grammar.
Compare the sketch of innovation (BL 408) (4.16). Earlier, however, Bloomfield's
account of language acquisition suggested that every speaker's language is a
 composite of what he has heard other people say (BL 46; 4.12). And distaste is
expressed for adopting written forms one has not heard (BL 498).
Bloomfield compares this act to the solving of a proportional equation with an
indefinitely large set of ratios on the left-hand side (BL 276). He likes using formulas
to embody our observations (cf. 2.85; 3.2, 49, 59, 73; 5.40, 51f, 62; 7.48), because
with them, our inability to define meanings need give us no pause (BL 302f, 408).
He waves aside the objections of psychologists to a formula -- that the speaker is
not capable of the reasoning -- on the grounds that the normal speaker is also
incapable of describing his speech-habits in any other way (BL 406) (cf. 4.19, 54;
13.49).
Debate as to the usefulness of the division is deflected with the argument that the
meanings are definable in terms of syntax rather than of practical life (BL 184).
The hope that semantic difference might be defined in terms of syntactic
construction would also pervade American linguistic research (cf. 7.59, 95).
Another standard tactic is introduced here: showing the significance of order with an
ungrammatical example (*Bill John hit), pressing into service the asterisk
normally reserved for speech forms of the past known to us only by inference (BL
163, 299). English is contrasted against Latin, where the words appear in all possible
orders with differences only of emphasis and liveliness (BL 197) (cf. 3.53).
Understandably, its more rigid word order made English the foredestined model
language for the later trend toward formal syntactic theories (cf. 7.5, 18, 41, 61, 66, 79
81, 739; 9.25; 13.7).
This account is vague; most utterances stimulate the hearer to produce speech forms.
Equally obtuse is the idea that a negative like nobody excludes the possibility of
a speech-form (BL 248f). More helpful is the statement that an interrogative
prompts the hearer to supply the identification of the individual (BL 260).
Even the dialogue Is? -- No; was is judged to consist of sentences, because forms
are spoken alone (BL 179). Further on, however, a phrase starting with a relative
substitute like which or that is judged to be marked as not constituting a full
sentence (BL 263).
Here, Bloomfield proposes for once to leave the ground of linguistics and to examine
the problems in sociology and psychology, in order to return bolder (BL 248,
250). His discussion is more commonsensical than technical, however.
The work of Whitney (1867, 1874) and Paul (1880) is cited, but the latter's book is
scolded for such faults as the neglect of descriptive language study and the
insistence upon psychological interpretation (cf. Note 1) -- plus being not so well
written and having a very dry style (BL 16f) (look who's talking).
Though fluctuation in the frequency of a speech-form can be observed, its
disappearance cannot, because we can have no assurance that it will not be used
again (BL 393). The doctrine of our grammarians is of course judged ineffective in
banishing or establishing specific speech-forms (BL 498) (cf. 2.44; 8.26).
Yet Bloomfield decries the search for the motives of change in the individual word
(BL 420). He emphasizes diversity in space as well as time when he demands a
 statement of the topographic extent of each feature of a dialect, charted on as many
maps as possible (BL 323f) (cf. 2.43; 3.65; 4.82).
However, Bloomfield is displeased that samples were often written down by
schoolmasters and other linguistically untrained persons (BL 324; cf. 4.5, 84ff).
To this overstatement add the ones maintaining that different economic classes differ in
speech, which is hardly true of the U.S. today; and that a form used by a less privileged
class often strikes us as coarse, ugly, and vulgar (BL 49, 152). Bloomfield knows after
all that slang is favoured not merely by vagrants, and criminals, but by young
persons and by most other speakers in their relaxed, unpretentious moods (BL 154; cf.
BL 49, 147, 394). And the speech of native servants and slaves did influence the
language of the masters in South Africa (BL 474).
Bloomfield disparages creolized language as an inferior dialect of the masters speech,
and a desperate attempt greeted by the English speaker's contemptuous imitation (BL
473f)