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“Compound” and “Coordinate” Bilingualism: A

Conceptual Artifact

Karl C. Diller

To cite this article: Karl C. Diller (1970) “Compound” and “Coordinate” Bilingualism: A Conceptual
Artifact, Word, 26:2, 254-261, DOI: 10.1080/00437956.1970.11435596

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KARL C. DILLER------------------------

"Compound" and "Coordinate"

Bilingualism: A Conceptual Artifact*

Since the Fifties, linguists and psychologists have talked of compound and
coordinate bilingualism as if such phenomena existed in identifiable form.
The terms were conceived in the context of behaviorist learning theory and
the Saussurean theory of signs, and apparently Ervin and Osgood were the
first to use them in print.l The notion seems to be based on the belief that
different manners of learning second languages will result in radically
different grammars in the brain.
Compound bilinguals, it is thought, do not have an independent grammar
for their second language. It is asserted that people can learn a second
language in such a way that it will always be dependent on (i.e., com-
pounded to) the first language. A putative example would be the case of the
student who is taught an English equivalent for every French word. This
student might eventually become a balanced bilingual and his ordinary con-
versation might become indistinguishable from that of a native Frenchman.
Yet it would be asserted by some psycholinguists that this compound bi-
lingual, because of the way he originally learned French, would still be
translating into English every time he heard French, and translating out
of English every time he spoke French.
Coordinate bilinguals, on the other hand, would be those people who
learned two languages in separate contexts; therefore, the grammars of
their two languages would be completely independent. It is even thought
that coordinate bilinguals would have great difficulty in translating because
of this separateness of their two languages.
I argue that it is an error to think that there are two kinds of bilingualism
that fit the labels compound and coordinate. First, compound and coordinate
• This article was originally presented as a paper at the Forty-second Annual Meeting
of the Linguistic Society of America in Chicago on December 29, 1967, and revised for
publication in this journal.
1 Susan Ervin and Charles E. Osgood, "Second Language Learning and Bilingual-
ism," in Psycholinguistics, ed. Charles E. Osgood and Thomas A. Sebeok (Bloomington,
Ind., 1954), pp. 139-146.
254
 "COMPOUND" AND "COORDINATE" BILINGUALISM 255

bilingualism are poorly defined; second, the experimental evidence does not
support these concepts; and third, there are strong linguistic reasons why
these concepts cannot stand.

I
First, the problem of definition: compound and coordinate bilingualism are
not well defined. Perhaps as an effort to get around impreciseness, it is usually
stated that bilinguals may be arranged along a continuum between pure com-
poundness and pure coordinateness, and that indeed there is no sharp dicho-
tomy between the two kinds of bilingualism. Even worse, incompatible de-
finitions have been formulated for compound and coordinate bilingualism.
Let us take as an example a typical language student who studies either by the
grammar-translation method in which he learns word lists or by the audio-
lingual method in which he memorizes dialogues with the aid of transla-
tions in parallel columns. Will this student become a compound or a co-
ordinate bilingual? According to the definition of Ervin and Osgood,2 this
person is a prime example of the compound bilingual. But Lambert3 has
changed his definition to argue the opposite-he argues that everyone who
learns a second language outside the home after ten years of age becomes
a coordinate bilingual.
Another example of incompatible definitions is the case of a man who
has a Swedish-speaking mother and a Finnish-speaking father. Speaking
both Swedish and Finnish in the home from childhood, he is equally pro-
ficient in both languages. Is he a compound or a coordinate bilingual?
Ervin and Osgood and also Lambert would agree that he is a compound
bilingual. Brooks, however, would take exception here. This man is a
"true" bilingual, he would argue, and "true" bilinguals are coordinate bi-
linguals. Brooks has what we might call a "common-sense definition" of
compound and coordinate bilingualism. For him, a compound bilingual is
a language learner who is still in a decoding stage, the stage we were in after
studying Latin in high school. Yet notice how close Brooks comes to saying
that compound bilingualism is not truly bilingualism at all.4
Not only do various authorities use the terms compound and coordinate
bilingualism with different meanings, but sometimes these terms are used
with different meanings by the same authorities. Ervin and Osgood,s for
2Ibid., pp. 139-140.
3W. E. Lambert, "Psychological Studies of the Interdependencies of the Bilingual's
Two Languages," presented to the Linguistic Institute of the Linguistic Society of
America, mimeographed (1966), p. 14.
4 Nelson Brooks, Language and Language Learning (New York, 1964), p. 267.
s Ervin and Osgood, p. 140.
256 KARL C. DILLER

example, maintained that people would become compound bilinguals when

learning a language through "vocabulary lists, which associate a sign from
language B with a sign and its meaning in language A." Yet what about the
man who has spoken Swedish and Finnish since infancy? They would say
that he is a compound bilingual. But which language is basic for him?
Does he translate from Swedish into and out of Finnish-or does it work
the other way? Ervin and Osgood have already provided an answer:
Neither Swedish nor Finnish would be basic, but he would have some
third compromise language. He would have to translate both for Swedish
and for Finnish. As Ervin and Osgood put it, "in this instance some
compromise representational processes taken from both languages may be
established, with neither having- pronounced dominance." 6 Ervin and
Osgood, then, have at least two distinct types of compound bilingualism:
one in which the second language is compounded on to the first and one
in which two native languages are compounded to a compromise base.
My first major point is, then, that the terms compound and coordinate
bilingualism are not well defined. There exist in current usage at least
three definitions which are incompatible with each other. Furthermore, the
assertion that there is a continuum between pure compoundness and pure
coordinateness only suggests that there is no clear distinction between
these two supposedly different kinds of bilingualism.

II
Let us turn now to the question of whether there is any good experimental
evidence to support the notion of two kinds of bilingualism. There are a
number of experiments on the problem, the most notable of which are by
Lambert and his associates at McGill University.
Ervin and Osgood suggested that the Semantic Differential would be a
good device to test whether "translation-equivalent signs" are identical or
different for the two kinds of bilinguals. 7 But is the Semantic Differential a
good test? After all, it has almost no bearing on what linguists think of as
semantic matters; it furnishes no information that could be used by a
dictionary maker. When a person rates a word on the Semantic Differential,
he tries to analyze his emotional reaction to the word or to its under-
lying concept. The scale is a continuum between two opposing adjectives,
and the word to be rated is a noun or a noun construction. For example, on
a Semantic Differential test we might be asked whether a house is hot or
cold. One can say that it is halfway between hot and cold, or three-fourths
of the way to hot, and so on. Then we might be asked whether houses are
6 Ibid. 7 Ibid., p. 141.
 "COMPOUND" AND "COORDINATE" niLINGUALISM 257

beautiful or ugly, angular or rounded, small or large. Surely the dictionary

definition of house depends in no way on whether houses are beautiful,
rounded, large, or even hot. Therefore, we cannot use this test to learn
whether bilinguals have compound or coordinate dictionaries in their
brains. It becomes evident that one's ratings on this test are affected more
by one's experience with houses than by the manner in which he learned his
second language. Carroll suggests that the Semantic Differential "might
better be termed an experiential differential." s
Lambert's experiments with the Semantic Differential underline the
problems we have just considered. He found that, as expected, his "com-
pounds" gave similar ratings to such pairs as house and maison, but his "co-
ordinates" divided themselves into two groups according to their re-
sponses. Dissimilar ratings were given by the "coordinates" who had learned
their two languages in two different cultural settings, such as Paris for
French and Montreal for English. However, those who had learned both of
their languages in the same place (in this case, Montreal) behaved as if they
were compounds. 9 This result supports the view that the experiential con-
text, not the manner oflearning the second language, is reflected in Semantic
Differential ratings. The Semantic Differential tests the wrong variables,
and we can get no evidence about compound and coordinate bilingualism
from this experiment or any other which uses the Semantic Differential,
such as Lambert's experiment on the "satiation of meaning."
There are some-Diebold, for example-who assert that "the most
compelling evidence" for compound and coordinate bilingualism comes
from case histories of aphasic bilinguals. 10 The evidence is not really
at all compelling. Diebold credits Lambert and Fillenbaum 11 with
"the most significant discovery" in this area. Those authors, how-
ever, are much more cautious in interpreting the results of their
pilot study of aphasia among bilinguals. They studied the cases of
fourteen bilingual aphasics in Montreal a_nd compared them with twenty

8 John B. Carroll, rev. of The Measurement of Meaning, by Charles E. Osgood, George

J. Suci, and Percy H. Tannenbaum, Language, XXXV (1959), 72.
9 W. E. Lambert, "Behavioral Evidence for Contrasting Forms of Bilingualism,"
Report of the Twelfth Annual Round Table Meeting 011 Linguistics and Language Studies,
ed. Michael Zarechnak, Monograph Series on Languages and Linguistics, Georgetown
University, No. 14 (Washington, D.C., 1961), p. 76.
to Cf. A. Richard Diebold, Jr., "The Consequences of Early Bilingualism in Cognitive
Development and Personality Formation," prepared for the symposium "The Study of
Personality: An Interdisciplinary Appraisal," Rice University, Houston, Texas, mimeo-
graphed (1966), p. 15.
II W. E. Lambert and S. Fillenbaum, "A Pilot Study of Aphasia among Bilinguals,"
Canadian Journal of Psychology, XIII (1959), 28-34.
258 KARL C. DILLER

European cases reported by Leischner. In the Montreal cases, "both

languages are damaged but retain the order of dominance which was de-
veloped prior to aphasia." 12 In a number of the European cases, however,
a childhood language did not appear to survive as well as the currently
used second language. If one assumes that the Montreal aphasics were
compounds and that the European asphasics were coordinates, then the
data would indicate that compounds and coordinates have different re-
covery responses to aphasia. But Lambert and Fillenbaum point out
that there is an alternative explanation: Montreal is a bilingual city, and
the person recovering from aphasia there has the freedom to use both his
languages. Yet in most of the European cases, the bilingual was in a mono-
lingual environment and had little opportunity to use his childhood lan-
guage. The convalescent's environment may explain the differences in the
case histories, and this is probably the better answer. I know of no cases
where aphasia has obliterated one of a bilingual's languages, leaving the other
language untouched. The reason is that aphasia is not the loss of language; it
is a physiological interference with language. Lenneberg has formulated this
distinction well: "careful observation of the recovery process during the
critical post-morbid period, makes it very plain that the patient does not
start with specific lexical or grammatical lacunae, but that some basic
physiological processes relating to activating, monitoring, or processing of
speech are deranged." 13 If we accept Lenneberg's viewpoint, we are almost
forced to accept Lambert's alternative explanation, which stresses the differ-
ence between a monolingual and a bilingual environment for the person
recovering from aphasia.
We have seen here, with the Semantic Differential tests and with aphasia,
two cases in which various groups of bilinguals have behaved in statisti-
cally different ways. In neither case can we link this difference in behavior
to compound and coordinate bilingualism. The converse, however, is just
as vacuous. Failure to find statistically significant differences in behavior
between groups of bilinguals does not mean that compound and coordinate
bilingualism do not exist. Kolers reports on a word-association experiment
in which subjects "with nearly identical linguistic histories respond dif-
ferently, while others with different histories respond similarly". 14 This
finding, he says, "casts some doubt on the usefulness of these terms [com-
pound and coordinate]." It is impossible, however, to find crucial evi-
dence against such poorly defined concepts. Since it is not at all clear why
12 Ibid., pp. 31-32.
13 Eric H. Lenneberg, Biological Foundations of Language (New York, 1967), p. 207.
14 Paul A. Kolers, "Interlingual Word Associations," Journal of Verbal Learning and
Verbal Behavior, II (1963), 299.
 "COMPOUND" AND "COORDINATE" BILINGUALISM 259
compound and coordinate bilinguals should behave differently on
word-association tests, we cannot say that Kolers' experiment does more
than "cast doubt."
If the compound/coordinate distinction has any validity, it should be
corroborated by translation tests: the compounds should be better trans-
lators. However, in four experiments involving translation, Lambert found
negative results in three. As he has pointed out, difficulties in experimental
design keep these negative results from being conclusive. 15 The same can be
said for the experiment that had positive results.
My second major point in this article is that no good experimental
evidence supports the distinction between compound and coordinate bi-
lingualism. One should not be surprised, then, at Lambert's statement,
made at the 1966 Linguistic Institute, that although he is encouraged by his
current bilingual experiments with the Stroop color-word test, his "con-
fidence in the compound-coordinate matter is only luke-warm."16

Ill
Now let us consider the theoretical difficulties of compound and co-
ordinate bilingualism from a more linguistic viewpoint. Weinreich wrote of
people who have "merged [linguistic] systems." 17 This phenomenon surely
exists for many language learners. Yet is it possible for a proficient bilingual
to have merged linguistic systems? The answer would seem to be no, be-
cause, as Weinreich points out, merged systems cause linguistic inter-
ference.
Let us take an example from syntax. Native speakers of French will
frequently try to form the English past tense by using a construction with
have and a past participle. That, of course, gives them the present perfect
tense. They say, "Yesterday I have eaten lunch at 12 o'clock." One can
easily understand the mistake. We might say that this bilingual has a
merged or compound system and that he is trying to speak English as if
it were French. But then compound grammatical systems are a cause of
mistakes: no two languages are grammatically similar enough to be com-
poundable.
The same is true with regard to vocabulary. A glance through a good
bilingual dictionary should show the impossibility of a compounded
vocabulary. The vast majority of words in French, for example, have to be

1s Lambert, "Behavioral Evidence," p. 78.

16 Lambert, "Psychological Studies," p. 41.
17 Uriel Weinreich, Languages in Contact: Findings and Problems (The Hague, 1964),
pp. 8-11.
260 KARL C. DILLER

defined by at least two English words, and vice versa. Sometimes the
dictionary will take half a page to give the equivalents of a word in the
other language. Ervin and Osgood suggested that the learning of word lists
would foster compound systems, 1B but few word lists are that simple. Take,
for example, the third lesson of an elementary Greek textbook: agathos
means 'good' or it means 'brave'; ethe/6, 'wish' or 'be willing'; kai, 'and',
'also', or 'even'; kalos, 'beautiful', 'honorable', or 'fine'; luo, 'loose',
'break', or 'destroy'. Nearly half of the words in that vocabulary list have
two or three English glosses, and that is a simplified list. If a person tries to
compound his vocabulary, he can expect trouble. A Frenchman who liked
his steaks saignant asked "for a "bloody beefsteak" in London. The waiter
replied, "I suppose you want seme God-damned mashed potatoes too."
My argument here is that insofar as people have compound or merged
linguistic systems, they will make mistakes in their second language. No
two languages are similar enough to allow morpheme-by-morpheme or
rule-by-rule correspondences.19
My second linguistic argument questions whether "coordinate bilinguals
should be poorer translators than compounds are." Does a bilingual exist
whose languages are stored so separately in his brain that he cannot speak
in one language about things which he has learned in the other? Obviously
not. Conversations with foreign students about certain aspects of their
native countries would be impossible if that were the case. Surely one can
expect to find his best translators among people who have the least inter-
ference between their languages. It has been argued that compound bi-
linguals should be better translators since the translation equivalents arc
already compounded in the bilingual's brain. Yet it seems quite unlikely
that a person stores a verbal definition with each word in his brain. A child
might be told that a bungalow is a 'small house'. However, he does not
thereby make a compound sign with bungalow and small house. He knows
that such definitions are approximate and that bungalows are probably

18 Ervin and Osgood, p. 140.

19 J. C. Catford (A Linguistic Theory of Translation [London, 1965]) has provided a
great deal of evidence on the noncompoundability of language pairs. Even two dialects
of the same language frequently have noncompoundable subsystems. He cites this
example on p. 37: Standard English has a two-dimensional system of demonstratives
(this, that/ these, those), but NE Scots has a unidimensional system (this, that, yon) in
which plurality is irrelevant. These two systems cannot be compounded.
On the other hand, there are example of dialects which differ only in a few phono-
logical rules, such as Pig Latin and English. Here a compound system might be possible
but would be superfluous. The Pig Latin form is always predictable from the English
word. If a new word is brought into English, e.g., Sputnik, there is no doubt about what
the Pig Latin equivalent will be.
 "COMPOUND" AND "COORDINATE" BILINGUALISM 261

different from such small houses as cottages and cabins. Why, then, would
a person make a compound sign when he is told that a bungalow is a
'petite maison'? Translation is actually quite similar to the process of para-
phrasing. Just as it seems senseless to talk of a compound monolingualism
which fosters paraphrasis, it is likely that there is no such thing as a com-
pound bilingualism which facilitates translation.

In conclusion, let us summarize our observations. First, we saw the

problems in defining compound and coordinate bilingualism. At least
three contradictory definitions are currently used. Sec::ond, we saw that the
experimental evidence does not confirm a distinction between two kinds of
bilingualism. Third, we pointed out that what might be taken as compound
systems are a cause of mistakes in the grammar and vocabulary of a bi-
lingual's second language. Therefore, compound systems are incompatible
with bilingualism, and the expression compound bilingualism is a contradic-
tion in terms. Yet neither can one hold to the notion of a strict coordinate
bilingualism in which the languages are so separate that translation is in-
hibited. All bilinguals can translate, and the manner in which a bilingual
has learned his second language does not seem to inhibit his ability to
translate.
In 1956, Haugen gave every benefit of the doubt to psycholinguists
who were trying to solve the problem of compound and coordinate bi-
lingualism. He noted, however, that "little has been done so far beyond the
elaboration of a terminology."20 What I have been arguing here is that
compound and coordinate bilingualism will never be more than an "elab-
oration of a terminology." The terms are empty. Compound and coordinate
systems do not exist in identifiable form in bilinguals who are proficient in
their second language.
Department of English
Harvard University
Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138

20 Einar Haugen, Bilingualism in the Americas: A Bibliography and Research Guide,

Publication of the American Dialect Society, No. 26 (University, Ala., 1956), p. 69.