The third research question addressed in this study aimed to examine whether the animate feature of the NP modified by lao is likely to affect the interpretation of lao.
With respect to the animacy effect on the non-literal meanings of lao, it is hypothesized that lao with an animate noun is easier to acquire than lao with an inanimate noun.
4.3.1 A Comparison between Animate and Inanimate NPs Modified by Lao Table 4-5 shows that the overall scores for lao-phrases with animate and inanimate NPs achieved a significant difference (F (1, 119) = 153.276, p < .001), and the scores for animate NPs gained a higher score (Mean = 0.83) than those for inanimate NPs (Mean = 0.68).
71
Table 4-5 Subjects’ Overall Performances on the Animate and Inanimate Features
To further identify the animacy effect in each age group, Table 4-5 compares the within-group difference for the scores on the animate and inanimate noun phrases of lao.
Table 4-6 The p-values for the within-group Differences between the Animate and Inanimate NPs of Lao
G1 G2 G3 G4 G5 Control
F 41.514 61.059 9.417 64.006 45.38 16.54
p .000* .000* .006* .000* .000* .001*
A significant difference was found between the scores for the animate and inanimate NPs of lao in all the groups: G1 (F (1, 28) = 41.514, p < .001), G2 (F (1, 28)
= 61.059, p < .001), G3 (F (1, 28) = 9.417, p < .05), G4 (1, 28) = 64.006, p < .001), G5 (F (1, 28) = 45.38, p < .001), and the control group (F (1, 28) = 16.54, p < .01).
Generally speaking, the differences were highly significant (p < .001) for all the children except G3 (p < .01). Moreover, the post hoc comparison showed that the scores for animate NPs were significantly higher than those of inanimate NPs. It was concluded that the lao-phrases with inanimate NPs were more difficult to interpret than those with animate NPs. Figure 4-4 presents the mean scores of each group for the animate and inanimate NPs of lao.
Type M SD F p-value
Animate 0.83 0.18 153.276 .000*
Inanimate 0.68 0.21
72
Figure 4-4 Overall Performance of Each Group on the Animate NPs and Inanimate NPs of Lao
As shown above, the scores for the animate NPs of lao for all the subjects were high (Mean = 0.64, 0.77, 0.76, 0.91, 0.91, 1 for G1 to G5 and the control group, respectively). On the contrary, the scores for the inanimate NPs of lao for all the groups were relatively low (Mean = 0.44, 0.53, 0.63, 0.74, 0.77, and 0.95 for G1 to G5 and the control group, respectively).
Figure 4-5 Subjects’ Overall Performances of the Animacy Effect on the Transparent and Opaque Meanings of Lao
G1 G2 G3 G4 G5 Control
73
Specifically, it has been found that in the transparent meanings, lao with animate NPs (Mean = 0.9) was acquired significantly better than lao with inanimate NPs (Mean = 0.74; F (1,119) = 62.995, p < .001). In the opaque meanings, lao with animate NPs (Mean = 0.76) was acquired significantly better than lao with inanimate NPs (Mean = 0.61; F (1,119) = 80.073, p < .001).
With regard to the between-group differences in animate and inanimate NPs of lao, one-way ANOVA indicated that there was a significant difference among the six age groups (animate: F (5, 114) = 20.071, p < .001; inanimate: F (5,114) = 36.789, p
< .001). The post hoc comparison demonstrated that for the animate NPs of lao, G3 significantly outperformed G1 (p < .01). The older children (G4 and G5) significantly outperformed the younger group (G1 (p < .001), G2 (p < .01), and G3 (p < .001)). The control group significantly outperformed G1 to G3 (p < .001), and G4 (p < .05). As for the inanimate NPs of lao, G2 performed significantly better than G1 (p < .05), G3 performed significantly better than G1, and G2 (p < .001, and p < .05), G4 significantly outperformed G1, G2, and G3 (p < .001, p < .001, and p < .05), and G5 significantly outperformed G1, G2, and G3 (p < .001, p < .001, and p < .01). However, the control group significantly outperformed all the children (p < .001). To conclude, G4 and G5 performed similarly on the lao-phrases with inanimate NPs and both of them significantly outperformed the younger groups (G1 to G3), showing that the older children had no difficulty in interpreting non-literal meanings of lao with inanimate NPs.
4.3.2 General Discussion
A variety of empirical studies have demonstrated that the distinction between animacy and inanimacy arises from early childhood (Schwartz 1980, Gelman and
74
Opfer 2002). To be specific, the age of children‟s understanding of biology-specific processes (i.e., growth, illness, or death) was investigated and it was found that children at the ages of 4 to 6 were able to recognize that some biological properties only apply to animate entities but not inanimate objects.
In accordance with our earlier assumption, the major finding of the present study showed that the lao-phrases with animate NPs were easier to acquire than those with inanimate NPs. In other words, the non-literal meaning lao with an inanimate NP youtiao „the deep-fried dough sticks‟ in lao youtiao „a sophisticated person‟ (Mean = 0.49) was more challenging than that with an animate NP niao „the bird‟ as in lao niao „an expert‟ (Mean = 0.6). The difficulty of the meaning of lao with inanimate NPs is attributed to the fact that the animacy effect is violated. According to Gelman and Opfer (2002), animate entities are distinguished from inanimate objects in that the animate entities predictably possess the biological function which is specific to living things, and yet inanimate objects fail to undergo any biology-specific processes. In the case of lao, the literal meaning of lao is „aged,‟ which refers to the exclusive physical state of a living organism, meaning „having lived for a relatively long time or attaining a specific age.‟ Therefore, it was predictable for the children in our study to accept lao modifying nouns with an animate feature since the core meaning of lao is originally compatible with an animate entity to denote the full maturation. On the other hand, lao modifying nouns with an inanimate feature leads to semantic incompatibility. The animacy effect is violated when lao is used to modify the state of maturation of an inanimate entity. The inanimate nouns such as youtiao „the deep-fried dough sticks‟ are semantically incompatible with the animate feature since the dough stick is not a living organism and thus lacks for biological property. As shown in Figure 4-5 above, regardless of transparent or opaque non-literal meanings,
75
the mean scores for the transparent non-meaning of lao with an inanimate NP were generally higher than those for the opaque non-meaning with an inanimate NP. This showed that the degree of semantic compatibility was obvious between the transparent meanings with an inanimate NP was higher than that in the opaque meaning.
The results showed that younger children (G1 to G3) had more difficulties in interpreting the non-literal meaning of lao with inanimate NPs. The difficulty is due to the fact that the animacy effect is violated; thus, the younger children in our study failed to deduce the non-literal meaning of lao. For the older children (G4 and G5), they performed better on the interpretation of lao with inanimate NPs, implying that they have realized when the inanimate objects undergo the biology-specific process like maturation denoted by lao. Lao is plausible to be interpreted non-literally.
The finding of the present study is consistent with Hsieh‟s (2008) result in that Grades 1 to 3 had difficulty in interpreting the meaning of lao with inanimate NPs, which broke the boundaries of animacy and the interpretation of non-literal meanings and Grades 4 and 5 accepted the violation of animacy restriction. Schwartz (1980) stated that children‟s explanations for similes and metaphors were found to be strongly literal orientated; also, children‟s meta-linguistic judgments were observed from the violations of animacy restrictions. That is why the children in our study who had meta-linguistic ability were able to accept the incompatibility between the NP and lao. To conclude, it was found that the mean scores for inanimate NPs might be an indicator for the acquisition of non-literalness (Hsieh 2008).