On Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 23:10, Colin Wright
<colin.wright@denbridgemarine.com> wrote:
>> Most would accept that words in one's native language 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.
I didn't say dictionary, but you're right. Words are notoriously
difficult to explain/define/delimit.
You can put a definition in something other than a "dictionary" but that doesn't change it's basic nature.
>> 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.
Forgive me if I misunderstand you, but you appear to be interpreting
as constant and unvarying fact something that is simply a correlation.
Some coordinates gain their ability through what Krashen calls
"learning", and some compounds gain their second language through
acquisition.
Well, I disagree with that. As far as I can tell all coordinates get their ability through acquisition, sometimes in conjunction with varying degrees of learning. A coodinate bilingual who got their ability solely through learning is probably non-existent, certainly extremely rare. I'd have to reread Krashen but I believe the experimental evidence supports this. As far as compounds and acquisition, there is also a complicating factor of psychological motivation for learning the language, which seems to have a very significant effect on what kind of language input gets accepted by the student for the purpose of acquisition.
Further, I didn't say that these things require SWH to explain
them, I meant that I believe a form of SWH to be true (although
possibly not the form S or W would originally have expounded)
and that the findings I have to hand are what I would've predicted.
But if the evidence can be explained completely adequately without any recourse to SWH then by Occam's razor we would tend to discount SWH, until we get some other data that can't be explained in another way.