BLOOMFIELD BIOGRAPHY
The renowned American linguist Leonard Bloomfield wrote a precedent setting book, Language, in 1933. The book truly demonstrated his overall knowledge of languages. He knew many languages, including two Algonquin tongues in depth, and Scandinavian languages including Old Norse. He used many examples of both in his book. Bloomfield, by his own examples in the book, knew Algonquin pronouns and Old Norse pronouns, including the reflexive pronouns.
In Language Bloomfield explains how an original language, for example, Latin, can influence the language of near-by cultures and how different sounding words in two diverse languages, such as Old Norse and Spanish, could be traced back to the root language. Bloomfield gave several examples to show how the different words from different Algonquin tribes can be analyzed to yield a prototype word, which can be assumed to be similar to the original language.
Bloomfield is a respected pioneer of the techniques still practiced by modern linguists.
