Sematic independence and degree of bilingualism in two Puerto Rican communities

Resumen

The Spanish and English word naming and word association responses of two groups of Puerto Rican respondents, one living on the Island the other on the mainland, were analyzed in terms of the proportions of translation equivalent pairs to the number of words produced in the weaker language for each of five societal domains. The respondents living on the Island gave significantly higher trans­lation equivalent ratios than did those living on the mainland. The domains of family and neighborhood exhibited the smallest transla­tion equivalent ratios and the domains of education and religion the largest. Semantic independence and relative bilingual proficiency were found to be largely independent dimensions (since each pro- dominated in different domains) with the former reflecting the co­ordinateness of the bilingual’s language system.