A Comparison between Transparent and Opaque Non-literal

meanings of lao, transparent and opaque were significantly different (F (1, 119) = 80.198, p < .001), and the post hoc comparison showed that generally the transparent type was acquired better than the opaque type.

Table 4-3 Subjects’ Overall Performances on the Transparent and Opaque Meanings of Lao

Type M SD F p-value

Transparent 0.82 0.19 80.198 .000*

Opaque 0.69 0.21

Figure 4-2 presents the mean scores of the subjects‟ responses to the two types of non-literal meaning: Transparent and Opaque.

Figure 4-2 Overall Performance of Each Group on Transparent and Opaque Meanings of Lao

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= 0.86 > 0.79, G5: M = 0.9 > 0.78, Control: M = 0.99 > 0.95). Table 4-4 further shows the within-group differences for the performance of each age group between two types.

Table 4-4 The p-values for the within-group Differences between the Transparent and the Opaque Meanings

G1 G2 G3 G4 G5 Control

F 20.775 21.486 26.201 5.431 15.915 8.598

p .000* .000* .000* .031* .001* .009*

A significant difference between the transparent and opaque meanings was found in G1 (F (1, 28) = 20.775, p < .001), G2 (F (1, 28) = 21.486, p < .001), G3 (F (1, 28) = 26.201, p < .001), G4 (1, 28) = 5.431, p < .05), G5 (F (1, 28) = 15.915, p < .01), and the control group (F (1, 28) = 8.598, p < .01). Therefore, it has been found that the opaque meaning was more difficult to acquire than the transparent meaning.

Concerning the between-group differences in the two types, one-way ANOVA indicated that there was a significant difference among the six age groups in the two sub-types of the non-literal meaning of lao (transparent: F (5, 114) = 12.661, p < .001;

opaque: F (5,114) = 48.687, p < .001). The post hoc comparison showed that for the transparent meaning, G2, G3, and G4 significantly outperformed G1 (p < .01, p < .01, and p < .001 respectively). G5 significantly outperformed G1 (p < .001), G2 (p < .01), and G3 (p < .05). G5 was not significantly different with G4 (p > .05). However, the control group performed significantly better than the experimental group (p < .001) except for G5 (p > .05). As for the opaque meaning, G2 performed significantly better than G1 (p < .05), G3 performed significantly better than G1 (p < .001), and G4 and G5 significantly outperformed G1, G2, and G3 (p < .001). However, the control group significantly outperformed all the children (p < .001). Based on the finding, although

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G5 significantly outperformed the younger groups on both types of the non-literal meaning, they still had a significant difference from the control group. However, it was concluded that even G5 had not fully acquired the opaque meaning of lao and found the opaque meaning especially difficult.

4.2.2 General Discussion

In addition to the finding that the literal meaning of lao was easier to acquire than the non-literal meaning, we further explored the difficulty between the two types of the non-literal meaning, transparent and opaque. Previous studies have noted that metaphoric transparency was found to influence the developmental process of children‟s acquisition of figurative expressions (Gibbs 1987). The major finding illustrated that the transparent meaning was easier to acquire than the opaque meaning as we had expected. In other words, the meaning which is not closely related to the core meaning of lao as in lao niao „an expert‟ was more challenging for the children to acquire than that which is apparently related to the core meaning of lao like lao pengyou „a friend that one has made for a long time.‟

As mentioned in Chapter Two, lao functions as an adjective and later is grammaticalized as a frequency and degree adverb. Liu (2007) argued that the grammaticalization of lao is undergoing the mechanism of metaphor. Specifically, the grammaticalization is formed by means of the similarity between the cognitive domain (i.e., to understand the abstract concept based on the concrete concept). Heine and his colleagues (1991) propose a scale representing the route of grammaticalization motivated by metaphor as represented in (3).

(3) PERSON > OBJECT > ACTIVITY > SPACE > TIME > QUALITY

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The scale accounts for the domain of conceptualization in terms of the degree of metaphorical “abstraction” (i.e., left: most concrete; right: most abstract). That is, any one of the concepts on the scale may serve to conceptualize any other categories to its right. Accordingly, Liu (2007) stated that the grammaticalization of the adverb of lao is transferred from the PERSON domain (i.e., the origins of the core meaning of lao

„a seventy-year-old elder‟) onto the TIME domain (i.e., „the duration of action‟ as in lao zai shuijiao meaning „always sleeps‟), following the route from the most concrete toward the abstract concept. Along this line, the transparent meaning of lao is transferred from the PERSON domain (i.e., the origins of the core meaning of lao „a seventy-year-old elder‟ onto the TIME domain (i.e., „the duration of time‟ as in laopengyou „someone who existed from a long time ago.‟) In other words, lao originally denotes the “maturation (growth of age),” in which “the long-standing of age in the lifespan” is used to express the temporal concept about the continuity of interpersonal relationship metaphorically. Furthermore, the opaque meaning of lao as in laoshou „an experienced person‟ is conceptualized from the TIME domain (i.e., „a prolonged period of time‟) into the QUALITY¹ domain (i.e., „an experienced or sophisticated person.‟ The concept in the TIME domain „a prolonged period of time‟

is used to express the consequence or characteristic of someone who undergoes a prolonged period of time. As a result, an explanation for why the transparent meaning of lao is easier to process may be due to the fact that according to the scale of conceptualization for human experiences, the transparent meaning is conceptualized by concreteness (i.e., PERSON → TIME), whereas the opaque meaning of lao poses more challenging for acquisition since it is conceptualized by a relatively abstract concept (i.e., TIME → QUALITY). According to Ma (2002), the diverse meanings

1 Heine and his colleagues (1991) defined the QUALITY concept as „the catchall for a number of quite divergent conceptualization.‟

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of lao comprise a three-level semantic field. The first level refers to the core meaning

„old‟ and the feature „a prolonged period of time‟ which is derived from the core meaning constructs the second level. The second level consists of lao pengyou

„someone who existed from a long time ago,‟ and another meaning as in lao shou „an experienced person.‟ The latter one (i.e., the opaque meaning) is claimed to be indirectly related with the former meaning as illustrated in Figure 4-3. It has been implied that on the scale of metaphorical concepts, there seems to be a cognitive activity that illustrates an egocentric distance proceeding from the concept closest to human experience (i.e., PERSON) to the one that is the most remote (i.e., QUALITY) (Heine and his colleagues 1991). In other words, the opaque meaning is remote from the children‟s personal experience and they need to bear greater cognitive load in processing the metaphorical opaque meaning.

Figure 4-3 The Match between the Semantic Field of Lao (Ma 2002) and the Scale for the Grammaticalization Route

The results of the study are consistent with the previous findings of Gibbs (1987), First level (Core meaning)

laoxiansheng „an old man‟

Second level (Non-literal meaning) laopengyou „someone who existed

from a long time ago‟

laoshou „an experienced person‟

Time

Quality Person

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and Nippold and Rudzinski (1993) that their children more easily comprehended and explained the transparent meanings than opaque meanings. Gibbs (1987) states that when processing transparent idioms the children tended to metaphorically extend the literal meanings to other contexts and create figurative interpretations; while processing opaque idioms, the children encountered more difficulties since the obscure historical nature for the meanings of opaque idioms was not easy to recognize.

In the case of lao, the opaque meaning „an experienced person‟ denoting the state as the consequence of being through „a prolong period of time,‟ which is obscure and involves historical origins. For instance, lao jianghu originated from the Chinese novel Ershinian mudu zhe guaisiansiang² (Vol. 50) in Qing Dynasty, in which one described himself as a lao jianghu „ a man of long experience‟ and claimed that how a man of long experience fell for your tricks. For that reason, the historical nature of the opaque meaning of lao was hardly recognizable for children.

With regard to the between-group comparison in the transparent meaning, the fifth graders were found to perform significantly better than the younger groups (G1 to G3) and similarly to the control group. It was found that the fifth graders gained the ability to acquire the transparent meanings as the adults did. Although G4 performed similarly with G5, they did not achieve the adult-like performance. In addition, G2, G3, and G4 were not significantly different from one another, indicating that the younger children did not acquire the ability of the transparent meaning of lao until the age of eleven (i.e., G5).

However, for the opaque meanings of lao, the older children (G4 and G5) exhibited a better performance than the younger children (G1 to G3), indicating that the children at ten have started developing the ability to infer the non-literal meaning

2 ErshiNianMuDuZhiGuaiXianZhuang was written by Wujianren and the original quote was Shuzhi wo ye shige laojianghu, qi ken shang ni de dang.

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that is not closely related to the literal meaning of lao. This is somewhat consistent with the finding in Gibbs (1987) that five- to nine-year-olds (i.e., G3 in the study) have not fully acquired the opaque idioms. However, this was found in examining the acquisition of the opaque idioms in the without-context condition (Gibbs 1987).

Although the older children performed significantly better than the younger children, the acquisition was still in the progress since the control group significantly outperformed the children. Generally speaking, the results indicated that Grade 5 has acquired the transparent meaning of lao; however, they still have not acquired the opaque meanings as in lao niao „an expert.‟