Leonard Bloomfield

OLARU CRISTINA – MARIA RUSU MARIA – IULIA ANUL II, ENGLEZA – SPANIOLA

Leonard Bloomfield and the Amerian Amerian Str!t!rali"m

The term structuralism is used in many contexts in different disciplines in the 20th century. Structuralism proposes the idea that many phenomena do not occur in isolation, but instead occur in relation to each other, and that all related phenomena are part of a whole with a definite, but not necessarily defined, structure. Structuralists, in any area of knowledge, attempt to perceive that structure and the changes that it may undergo with the goal of furthering the development of that system of phenomena or ideas. Collective term for a number of linguistic approaches in the first half of the twentieth century , all based on the work of . de Saussure, but strongly divergent from one another. !hile "structuralism# in its narrower sense refers to de Saussure#s linguistic theories , in its broader sense it is an umbrella term for approaches in anthropology, ethnology, sociology, psychology, and literary criticism, which $ in analogy to linguistic structuralism $ concentrate on synchronic analysis rather than on genetic % historical  preconditions, in order to expose the universal structures at work under the surface of social relations. &eneral term for variously developed branches of structuralism pioneered above all by '. Sapir ()**+  )--/ and . 1loomfield ()**  )-+-/. 3lthough the various schools cannot be clearly distinguished from one another, a distinction is made between two general phases4 the so called "1loomfield 'ra#, and distributionalism, with 5. 6arris as chief representative. eonard 1loomfield ()** $ )-+-/ was an 3merican linguist, whose influence dominated the development of structural linguistics in 3merica between the )-0s and the )-70s. 6e is

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especially known for his book anguage ()-/, describing the state of the art of linguistics linguistics at its time. 1loomfield was the main founder of the inguistic Society of 3merica. 3merica. 1loomfield8s thought was mainly characteri9ed by its behavioristic principles for the study of meaning, its insistence on formal procedures for the analysis of language data, as well as a general concern to provide linguistics with rigorous scientific methodology. :ts preeminence decreased in the late )-70s and )-;0s, after the emergence of &enerative &rammar. 1loomfield also began the genetic examination of the 3lgon