Saussure and Bloomfield

The aim of this essay is to compare and severalise ii important linguistics that reached a signifi squirtt milestone in the chronicle of Language. Their names are Leonard Bloomfield (April 1, 1887April 18, 1949) and Ferdinand de Saussure (November 26, 1857 February 22, 1913). Leonard Bloomfield was an American linguist who led the using of structural linguistics in the United States during the 1930s and 1940s. Ferdinand de Saussure was a Swiss linguist who taught at the University of Geneva, whose ideas about language laid the prat for many significant developments in linguistics in the early twentieth century.Bloomfield came from the Neogrammarian School of linguistics. That means he focused on the diachronic aspects and evolution of languages. He canvas particular languages, their record and how words are generated. two(prenominal) Bloomfield and Saussure studied language as a social system or with a scientific basis. The main difference is that Bloomfield studied ling uistics diachronically its historical and comparative development. Saussure studied language synchronically he made the similitude between language and chess.There is no necessity to know the history moves you could understand the remains just by looking at the control panel at any single moment. This is the synchronic study of Language. Another mark difference is that Bloomfield himself never suggested that it was possible to describe the syntax and phonology of a language in total ignorance of the meaning of words and sentences. His view was incomplete, as he studied part of the system and not the whole. In contrast to this, Saussure studied Language as a system, including all aspects of it.He considered the system has three properties Wholeness, since the system functions as a whole. Transformation, as the system is not static, but capable of change. Self-Regulation, this is related to the fact that new elements can be added to the system, but the basic structure of it can no t be changed. The conception of Language was different for each of them. Bloomfield believed that Language is related to foreplay response acquired by habit formation. He claimed it is used to satisfy homos needs. On the other and, Saussure considered language as a multitude of signs, where each sign links a phonic function (the signifier) with an idea (the signified). The reason why they differed in this conception is because Saussure studied it from a mentalist conception. He considered both the signifier and signified mental entities and self-directed of any external object. Opposite to that, Bloomfield argued that linguistics needs to be to a greater extent objective if it is to become a real scientific discipline. He believed that the main target of linguistic inquiry should be observable phenomena, rather than overcharge cognitive processes.Therefore, Bloomfield rejected the classical view that the structure of language reflects the structure of thought. As a consequence, they also differed in the conception of Language acquisition. fit to Bloomfield, a child acquires language through repetition and stimulus-response. Through nurture habits, the child makes a start on displaced speech (he names a thing even when it is not present). Saussure, on the contrary, viewed language as having an inward duality, which is manifested by the interaction of the synchronic and diachronic, the syntagmatic and associative, the signifier and signified.Taking everything into consideration, both Saussure and Bloomfield had a significant impact on linguistics. Saussure is considered the go bad of modern linguistic and pagan studies. He has influenced several fields such as philosophy, anthropology and semiology. He is the linguist who revolutionized the study of Linguistics, as he adumbrate his theory of language, in which he suggested the need to study language in a scientific way, rather than studying it in a cultural and historic context.Bloomfield, for his pa rt, did more than anyone else to make linguistics autonomous and scientific. Although Bloomfields particular methodology of descriptive linguistics was not widely accepted, his mechanistic attitudes toward a nice science of linguistics, dealing only with observable phenomena, were most influential. His influence waned subsequently the 1950s, when adherence to logical positivist doctrines lessened and there was a restitution to more mentalist attitudes.