Synopsis
Excerpt from An Introduction to the Study of Language
In accordance with this twofold aim, Ihave limited myself to a presentation of the accepted doctrine, not even avoiding well-used standard examples. In a few places I have spoken of views that cannot claim more than probability, of hypotheses, and of problems yet to be solved, but I have done this explicitly and only be cause I think it fitting to indicate the direction in which our study is at present tending. Consequently the matter here presented is by no means my own, but rather the property of all students of language. It will be found in fuller form and with bibliographic support in the books mentioned in Chapter Ten, and these books I may there fore name as my more immediate It will be apparent, especially, that I depend for my psychology, general and linguistic, entirely on Wundt; I can only hope that I have not misrepresented his doctrine. The day is past when students of mental sciences could draw on their own fancy or on 'popular psychology' for their views of mental occurrence. L. B.
About the Author
Leonard Bloomfield, an American professor of Germanic languages, created the field of linguistics as a branch of science. In studying such non-Western languages as Tagalog, spoken in the Philippines, he realized the futility of trying to fit all languages into the format of Latin grammar in the common practice in his time. Bloomfield went on to discover the principles of language itself. His book Language (1933) integrated the field of linguistics for the first time.
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