布龙菲尔德的意义观诠释

On Bloomfield’s Concept of Meaning

布龙菲尔德的语言观在20世纪30年代和40年代对大多数美国语言学家的态度和语言观起着决定性影响。然而,许多语言学家批评他在语言描写中不仅忽视意义,而且排斥意义。本文通过分析布龙菲尔德的意义观,发现他在语言分析中没有忽视意义或排斥意义。布龙菲尔德认为,研究人类的语言不能忽视意义,意义在语言分析中不是使用或不使用的问题,而是如何恰当使用的问题。

Bloomfield’s interpretation of linguistics predominated in the attitude and outlook of most American linguistics during the 1930s and 1940s. Bloomfield, however, has been criticized by linguists of different backgrounds and various approaches to language for not taking meaning into their account of language description. This paper analyzes Bloomfield’s concept of meaning and finds that he doesn’t ignore meaning or exclude the study of what he calls meaning from scientific linguistics. With Bloomfield, no serious study of human language can or does ignore meaning, and meaning was not between presence and absence of meaning, but between its proper and improper use.