The study, use and spread of language

Bloomfield proposes that the empirical science of language should study a real rather than a fancied object. 

Language conceived as a normative ideal does not constitute an empirical object; language as a universal phenomenon can only be established inductively; one can 

observe actual speech----and its actual effects on hearers---without preconceptions, so the Behaviorist approach provides a model. 

Speech communities are best observed behavioristically. Density of communication can be empirically observed, quantified, and correlated with geography, social stratification, occupation, success in cooperation, and consequences in describable speech differences. 

There are behavioral correlates for determining traditional concerns about language: 

(1)The literary standard 

(2)The colloquial standard 

(3)The provincial standard 

(4)Sub-standard 

(5)Local dialect 

The phoneme. Sound-production can be described empirically. Phonetics is the branch of science that deals with it. 

What phonetics provides is an objective record of gross acoustic features, only part of which are distinctive for particular languages, while phonology, or practical phonetics, determines which features are the distinctive ones. 

Phonetic basis. This predominantly phonetic account ‘may be viewed as a kind of basis which may be modified in various ways’. 

Modification, presumes some standard from which a departure is made, and the criteria for establishing the base can vary, legitimately or inconsistently. 

For instance, it might be inconsistent to shift, in phonology, from subjective, or objective production to subjective reception or objective disturbance of the air, or from objective measurement to subjective standards.