Leonard Bloomfield was born in Chicago on April 1, 1887. His parents were Sigmund and Carola Buber Bloomfield. He came from a family of many high achievers. His aunt Fannie Bloomfield Zeisler had an international reputation as a concert pianist. His uncle Maurice Bloomfield, like Leonard, was a scholar in the field of linguistics. Maurice Bloomfield was Professor of Sanskrit and Comparative Philology at John Hopkins and was the second President of the Linguistic Society.
In the mid-1890's, his father Sigmund took a position of proprietor at a hotel in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin and moved the family there. Leonard was nine years old at that time and started attending the village school. At one time he failed to be promoted to the next grade and it was said that the village school did not agree with him. There was a family joke that the village school was too hard for him. But it could have been that he just didn't agree with the method of teaching. His mother tutored him and he was able to pass the then required high-school entrance examination. He moved to Chicago and entered the North Division School.
Bloomfield entered Harvard College in 1903 and graduated three years later. One of his favorite courses there was conducted by the late Professor Charles Townsend Copeland on daily themes. Bloomfield said later that it was that course, with its daily writing, that taught him not only to write but to think. He said that every awkward sentence or careless word would be mercilessly exposed so one was careful with every word. He then went on to graduate from the University of Wisconsin in 1908 and later studied at the University of Chicago. He spent most of his time comparing and contrasting Germanic languages. At the University of Ohio, Bloomfield caught his first break as an Assistant Professor of German. He spent seven years under that title, and then moved on to the University of Chicago where he was the head Professor of German, and taught there from 1921-1928.
Bloomfield eventually became more interested in the description of languages, and how they pertained to science. When he got into this aspect of language, he wrote his masterpiece Language. It dealt with a standard text and had a tremendous influence on other linguists. Until very recently, most United States linguists considered themselves in some sense as Bloomfield's disciples, whether they actually studied under him or not, and a great deal of American linguistic work has taken the form of working out questions raised and methods suggested by Bloomfield (Online-Media: Important Linguists).
Leonard had six main publications during his lifetime, and they too have had their own little mark in the history of linguists. His first main book came in 1914, when he was an Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois. It was called Introduction to the Study of Language; this dealt with the overall aspect of language and was just the beginning of Leonard's profound career. After this Leonard went into the grammatical aspect of the Philippine language, he wrote and published his next main book Tagalog Texts with Grammatical Analysis (1917). The next book was called Menomini Texts (1928), one of Bloomfield's least favorable publications. In the middle of his writing career came Language (1933), which was the book he is renowned for. From here Leonard went deeper into grammar, and wrote The Stressed Vowels of American English (1935). The last main book of Leonard Bloomfield's career was when he went back into the scientific research of language. It dealt with the overall aspect of language and science, and didn't get as much publicity as Language. This book was called Linguistic Aspects of Science (1939). At the end of Leonard's writing career, he tried to write about other languages (Dutch and Russian) but couldn't really get the true feeling out of this, like he did with his other books. In the end, Leonard Bloomfield is not only considered one of the best Linguists of his time, he is considered one of the best of all time.
References
Leonard Bloomfield Anthology, Indiana University Press, Chicago, Ill, 1970
http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O29-BLOOMFIELDLeonard.html, 2007
Written By: Mitch Hewitt
Edited By: Lillian Dolentz, 2008