Editing Leonard Bloomfield (section)

==Early life and education==
Bloomfield was born in [[Chicago]], [[Illinois]], on April 1, 1887, to Jewish parents (Sigmund Bloomfield and Carola Buber Bloomfield). His father immigrated to the United States as a child in 1868; the original family name ''Blumenfeld'' was changed to Bloomfield after their arrival.<ref>Depres, Leon, 1987, p. 11, Fn. 1</ref> In 1896 his family moved to [[Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin]], where he attended elementary school, but returned to Chicago for secondary school.<ref>Hall, Robert, 1990, pp. 5–6</ref> His uncle [[Maurice Bloomfield]] was a prominent linguist at [[Johns Hopkins University]],<ref name="Despres, Leon, 1987, p. 4">Despres, Leon, 1987, p. 4</ref><ref name="Bloch, Bernard, 1949, p. 87">Bloch, Bernard, 1949, p. 87</ref> and his aunt [[Fannie Bloomfield Zeisler]] was a well-known concert pianist.<ref name="Despres, Leon, 1987, p. 4"/>

Bloomfield attended [[Harvard College]] from 1903 to 1906, graduating with the [[Bachelor's degree|A.B.]] degree.<ref name="Bloch, Bernard, 1949, p. 87"/>  He subsequently began graduate work at the [[University of Wisconsin–Madison|University of Wisconsin]], taking courses in [[German language|German]] and Germanic [[philology]], in addition to courses in other Indo-European languages.<ref>Hall, Robert, 1990, pp. 7–8</ref> A meeting with Indo-Europeanist [[Eduard Prokosch]], a faculty member at the University of Wisconsin, convinced Bloomfield to pursue a career in linguistics.<ref name="Bloch, Bernard, 1949, p. 87"/> In 1908 Bloomfield moved to the [[University of Chicago]], where he took courses in German and Indo-European philology with Frances A. Wood and [[Carl Darling Buck]]. His doctoral dissertation in [[Germanic languages|Germanic]] historical linguistics, ''A semasiologic differentiation in Germanic secondary ablaut'', was supervised by Wood, and he graduated in 1909.

He undertook further studies at the [[University of Leipzig]] and the [[University of Göttingen]] in 1913 and 1914 with leading Indo-Europeanists [[August Leskien]], [[Karl Brugmann]], as well as [[Hermann Oldenberg]], a specialist in [[Vedic Sanskrit]]. Bloomfield also studied at Göttingen with Sanskrit specialist [[Jacob Wackernagel]], and considered both Wackernagel and the Sanskrit grammatical tradition of rigorous grammatical analysis associated with [[Pāṇini]] as important influences on both his historical and descriptive work.<ref>Hall, Robert, 1990, p. 16</ref><ref>Rogers, David, 1987</ref> Further training in Europe was a condition for promotion at the [[University of Illinois]] from Instructor to the rank of assistant professor.<ref>Hall, Robert, 1990, pp. 13–14</ref>