Routledge dictionary of language and linguistics - Developers

A-Z 51
American English English
American Sign Language (abbrev. ASL)
sign language
American structuralism (also post-
Bloomfieldian linguistics)
General term for variously developed branches of structuralism pioneered above all by
E.Sapir (1884–1939) and L.Bloomfield (1887–1949). Although the various schools
cannot be clearly distinguished from one another, a distinction is made between two
general phases: the so-called ‘Bloomfield Era,’ and distributionalism, with Z.Harris as
chief representative. Common to all branches are certain scientific prerequisites which
decisively influenced the specific methodological orientation of American structuralism.
At first. an interest in dying Native American languages brought about interdisciplinary
research in linguistics and anthropology. The occupation with culturally distant and as yet
completely unresearched languages, which existed only orally, was a significant catalyst
for the paroleoriented, purely descriptive methods of American structuralism ( langue
vs parole). The works of E.Sapir and F.Boas are significant ( also field work). The
theoretical and methodological format came to be determined in large part by the
principles of behaviorist psychology ( behaviorism). Following the natural sciences,
this direction of research reduces the object of its investigation to sensorally perceptible
data and draws on observations made in animal experiments to explain human behavior.
This restriction to an exact analysis of objectively experienced data meant that the
problem of meaning was deemed an extralinguistic phenomenon, whereas phonology
and grammar were subject to a strictly formal analysis, based on the discovery
procedures of segmentation and classification. Methodologically, American
structuralism is characterized by empirical ( empiricism) and inductive procedures, in
which only the identification and arrangement of linguistic elements are relevant for
grammatical description. ( also antimentalism, descriptive linguistics, item-andarrangement
grammar)
References
Bloch, B. 1942. Outline of linguistic analysis. Baltimore, MD.
Bloomfield, L. 1926. A set of postulates for the science of language. Lg 2. 153–64.
——1933. Language. New York.