Hsieh and Hsu (2010)

Much attention is paid to the studies of the development of idiomatic expressions in production and comprehension. Most of the studies of idiomatic development focused on the native speakers of English, French, and Italian. There was little research of the idiomatic expression comprehended by Mandarin-speaking children.

Thus, Hsieh and Hsu (2010) conducted two experiments to investigate the effect of familiarity, context, and linguistic convention on L1 idiom comprehension of Mandarin-speaking children.

A total of 32 subjects were recruited from an elementary school and divided into two age groups: the mean age of the first group was 6;1, and the second was 9;6.

30

Besides, 16 adults were recruited as a control group. In Experiment 1, the subjects were asked to answer the meanings of chosen idiomatic expressions without any linguistic context. In Experiment 1, a list of 30 plant name idioms was selected from the Academia Sinica Balanced Corpus of Mandarin Chinese. These idioms were rated on a four-point scale by 45 elementary school teachers to confirm the familiarity degree to children. A total of 14 idioms were chosen from the assessment: seven familiar and seven unfamiliar. The subjects‟ answers were coded and classified into two categories: „Correct‟ (i.e., correct idiomatic meaning) and „other‟ (i.e., literal meaning or unrelated meaning).

In Experiment 2, a comprehension task along with a meta-pragmatic task was conducted. Hsieh and Hsu (2010) aimed to investigate how context and familiarity influenced children‟s comprehension and children‟s meta-pragmatic knowledge. The children were asked to choose a picture describing either the literal meaning or the idiomatic meaning. The selected 14 idioms were embedded in two different stories:

one depicting the literal meaning of the idiom and one depicting the idiomatic meaning. Each idiom with a story included four pictures in which the fourth picture contained two sub-pictures: one describing the literal meaning of the idiom and the other the idiomatic meaning.

The subjects were asked to choose one of the sub-pictures based on their comprehension of the idiom. After the picture selection, they needed to give explanations for their choice which was a meta-pragmatic task. In the meta-pragmatic task, the subjects‟ explanations were classified into four categories: (1) relating to linguistic convention, (2) relating to literal meaning, (3) relating to the context, (4) relating to other factors like story setting or ambiguous explanations.

The results of Experiment 1 showed that the 6-year-olds and 9-year-olds

31

comprehended familiar idioms better than unfamiliar ones with no context; however, in the familiarity condition, the 6-year-old children produced more „Other‟ answers whereas the 9-year-old children produced more „Correct‟ answers. It was found that familiarity played an influential role affecting the children‟s comprehension of idiomatic expressions. The results of Experiment 2 showed that the idiomatic context was a significant factor in the comprehension of idiomatic meanings. For the 6-year-olds, although they chose more literal answers in both contexts, the increasing proportion of idiomatic answers in literal and idiomatic context (literal context: 8.48%, idiomatic context: 25.43%, t (15) = 2.78, p = 0.013 in both familiar and unfamiliar conditions) indicated that the idiomatic context was indeed a useful aid to comprehend idioms. Regarding the familiarity, only the 9-year-olds performed significantly better on the unfamiliar idioms than on the familiar ones (F (1,15) = 7.079, p < .05). Although the results were not significant, the familiarity effect was found at the age of 6 in that the 6-year-olds chose more correct answers to unfamiliar idioms than to familiar ones. As for the meta-pragmatic task, the 6-year-olds explained their reasons mostly related to the context, the 9-year-olds provided explanations related to the context and linguistic conventions, the adults‟ explanations were more related to linguistic conventions, showing that linguistic convention developed significantly at the age of 9.

In brief, the overall results showed that the familiarity effect was found at the age of 6. The context was indeed an important factor in the comprehension of idiomatic meanings at the age of 6, which was evidenced by Gibbs (1991), Abkarian and colleagues (1992), and Levorato and Cacciari (1995, 1999). The results of Experiment 2 showed that all the groups performed better on the idiomatic context condition than on the literal context condition. However, the results are convincing because the

32

design of the literal context is a great interruption which mislead the subjects to choose the literal meanings rather than idiomatic meanings.

2.2.5 Summary

Table 2-3 summarizes the major findings and limitations of the four empirical studies reviewed in this section.

33

Table 2-3 Major Findings and Limitations of the Previous Studies

Major findings Limitations

Levorato and Cacciari (2002)

1. Linguistic aid: The instruction „is like‟

(i.e., comparative instruction) is a crucial cue to motivate the metaphor mappings.

2. Age: A developmental trend is found in the creation of figurative expressions.

3. Type: Transparent metaphors were easier to produce than opague ones.

1. Subjects: Three age groups

(2) A Judgment Task (by adults) Hsieh

(2004)

1. Linguistic aid: The instruction „is like‟

triggers more metaphors.

2. Age: A development trend of ability is found to produce metaphors for

concrete nouns.

3. Type: Concrete nouns were prone to elicit metaphors whereas emotion

1. Context: Metaphors were much easier to comprehend in context than in isolation.

2. Age: The age of 10 was the breakthrough of interpreting the metaphorical meaning.

3. Type: The metaphorical ability was constrained by the categorical type of si.

1. Subjects: Six age groups (Mean ages= 6;4, 7;7, 8;7, 9;7, 10;7,

1. Context: The idiomatic context was important by the age of 6.

2. Familiarity: The familiarity effect was found at the age of 6.

3. Convention: Convention is a significant factor at the age of 9.

1. Subjects: Two age groups (Mean ages= 6;1. 9;6) and adults

2. Materials: 14 plant name idioms 3. Tasks:

(1) A Word-Card Task without context

(2) A Story Picture Selection Task in literal and idiomatic context (3) A Meta-pragmatic Task

34

Generally speaking, in L1 acquisition of metaphorical language, some aids were found to help children in the process of acquisition. First, the word „like‟ was favored in producing metaphorical language (Levorato and Cacciari 2002, Hsieh 2004).

Second, the linguistic context was found to be an influencial clue to help comprehend metaphors (Hsieh 2008, Hsieh and Hsu 2010). Influencing effects have also been discussed thoroughly, such as familiarity (Hsieh and Hsu 2010), categorical types (Hsieh 2004, Hsieh 2008), and age (Hsieh 2008, Hsieh and Hsu 2010).

As for the limitations of these studies, although these researches have studied metaphorical language, their research designs were different. First, the materials were extremely distinct. For example, some investigated the type of metaphors (Levorato and Cacciari 2002, Hsieh 2004), some studied the single word expression (Hsieh 2008), and some looked into the specific type of idioms (Hsieh and Hsu 2010).

Second, different task types were employed in these studies; for example, some used only a comprehension task (Hsieh 2008, Hsieh and Hsu 2010), some employed only a production task (Levorato and Cacciari 2002), and only one of these previous studies employed both tasks (Hsieh 2004). Last but not the least, the age groups recruited in these studies were not the same. With different research methods, diverse types of figurative expressions, and different age groups, the findings varied as well. Yet, the influential factors like context, age, and type effect have not been commonly discussed.