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Leonard Bloomfield 1887-1949 Early work Introduction to the Study of Language, 1914 was influenced
by Wundt's mentalism. In his later Language, 1935 he adopted a strict and explicit behaviouristic stance.
(See story of Jack, Jill and apple tree in Lyons, p.32 - language as a substitute for other, non-symbolic,
behaviour)
Since precise definition of most words was impossible to give, semantics was assumed to be outside
the scope of linguistics.
Distinction between descriptive and prescriptive (i.e. normative) grammar - the emphasis was on the
former.
In psychology Behaviorism (1920s-1950s) rejected the focus on mental processes and stressed measurement
based on objective behaviour.
B. F. Skinner (1904-1990) Children learn language through shaping (correction of speech errors).
The associative chain theory: each word in a sentence serves as a stimulus for the next word, and the entire
sentence is produced left to right.
2. Discover the rules by which these phonemes are combined to form sentences.
At the same time the post-Hullians in Psychology worked on mediation theories of language. Psychological
reality of linguistic constructs (eg. phonemes) was studied by some. Subjects' judgements of similarity
between speech sounds were factor analysed to identify space of speech sounds. Analyses were also done to
``measure meaning'' (Osgood, 1957).
The first half of the 20th C saw a confluence of historical, comparative and structural descriptions of
language. Phonology and morphology was well developed by this time but not so syntactic analysis.
Phonology served as a model for grammar. The idea was to build from word level (morphology) to syntax
and thence to semantics.
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