Lojban In General

On Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 22:17, Colin Wright <
colin.wright@denbridgemarine.com> wrote:

> Most would accept that words in one's native langauge often
> carry additional "baggage" beyond the stated definitions.

Well, I would accept that the dictionary definitions are completely
inadequate to describe a word's usage.

> My understanding is that coordinate bilinguals will not even
> try to find matches, they will simply use the correct word
> according to the context. Compound bilinguals, on the other
> hand, will tend to carry the same baggage in each language,
> and have a much tighter match in semantic mappings.
>

Stephen Krashen (http://www.sdkrashen.com) makes a distinction between
'learning' and 'acquisition' (I don't remember whether he originated this
idea). Learning is studying rules and vocabulary; acquisition is getting an
intuitive feel through immersion. It sounds to me that the result of
learning is what you call here compound bilinguals, and the result of
acquisition is coordinate bilinguals.

> The thesis to which I referred found that there was no real
> measurable shift in personality for compound bilinguals, but
> a clear shift for coordinate bilinguals, which I think is
> what I would have predicted if the SWH is true.

Since it seems to me that coodinate bilinguals gain their ability through
immersion, which also almost always includes cultural immersion, that comes
as no surprise, and doesn't require SWH to explain it.

--
Adam Raizen <adam.raizen@gmail.com>
Timendi causa est nescire.