Letters to Language

Language accepts letters from readers that briefly and succinctly respond to or comment on either material published previously in the journal or issues deemed of importance to the field. The editor reserves the right to edit letters as needed.

May 31, 2002

To the Editor:

I was pleased to see in the Editor’s Department column in the March 2002 issue of Language that you plan to search the Ohio State University archives for more information about the early history of the journal.

You wrote in your column that the ‘call for the creation of a “Linguistic Society” was issued by Leonard Bloomfield’ and that there were ‘twenty-eight scholars joining Bloomfield in this call’. Indeed there are several places in the literature where writers have attributed the creation of the call entirely to Bloomfield, and several have identified him as ‘the founder’ of the LSA. But with one exception, none of the authors whose work I have seen provided any historiographic evidence that this was the case. The exception was an observation by Charles Hockett that an early 1924 letter from Bloomfield to Truman Michelson (located by Ives Goddard at the Smithsonian Institution) and an enclosure with a draft of the call were ‘on the same stationery’ (‘Letters from Bloomfield to Michelson and Sapir’, in Leonard Bloomfield: Essays on his life and work, ed. by Robert A. Hall, Jr. with the collaboration of Konrad Koerner, 39–60, Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1987). Elsewhere and otherwise, I find only unsupported assertions that Bloomfield was solely, or even primarily, the founder of the LSA.

Three names appeared, in alphabetical order, as members of the ‘organizing committee’ for ‘The Call for the Organization Meeting’ dated November 15, 1924, printed in the first issue of Language (1.6–7, 1925): ‘L. Bloomfield, G. M. Bolling, E. H. Sturtevant’. In my own research I have examined documents and statements on the history of the LSA, including letters among Edgar Howard Sturtevant’s papers at Yale University revealing his active solicitation of supporters for the organization meeting. Although Bloomfield was the author of ‘Why a Linguistic Society?’ in the inaugural issue of Language (1–5), nothing there or in the call identified him as sole or primary founder of the society.

Bolling and Sturtevant were each far more active than Bloomfield in early LSA work. It was Bolling who called the first meeting to order, Sturtevant who chaired the committee to draft the constitution; both were elected to the executive committee that first year. Bolling served as editor of Language from 1925 through 1939; Sturtevant organized and directed the first four Linguistic Institutes, where he and Bolling were regular members of the faculty. Sturtevant was elected LSA president for 1931, Bolling for 1932. Both attended every LSA meeting in the first ten years; Sturtevant offered a paper nine years out of ten, Bolling eight years. (This information may be found in issues of Language and the Bulletin, 1925–1934.)

In contrast, Bloomfield’s recorded activities were more limited. His role in the first year of the society was as an appointed member to the Committee on Cooperation with Older Societies in Matters of Mutual Interest. In the society’s first ten years he attended only half of the meetings and gave papers at two; he did not participate in the first four Linguistic Institutes. This is not the level of participation usually associated with an active founding member of an organization, and it raises the question of whether the leading role attributed to Bloomfield in the founding of the LSA is a historically documentable reality or a well-established myth.

Either way, I hope that in the archives of Ohio State University you will find evidence that helps to answer the question.

Julia S. Falk
[jsfalk@san.rr.com]

Editor’s reply: I appreciate Dr. Falk’s input, and stand corrected on this point; I will report on anything I do learn from the OSU archives.