Levorato and Cacciari (2002)

Levorato and Cacciari (2002) proposed a model of the acquisition of figurative language, named the Global Elaboration Model (henceforth GEM) to explicate the development of figurative competence. The GEM is exemplified by five developmental phases which include the abilities and level of knowledge to process language with possible age range, as shown in Table 2-2:

20 Table 2-2 Five Developmental Phases in GEM³

The developmental

phase Description of figurative languages Age

Phase 1

A primitive type of processing is carried out consisting of a piece-by-piece elaboration of the linguistic input; children process language literally even when it does not make sense in the linguistic communicative error (Levorato and Cacciari 2002:129).

8-10

Phase 3

The child acquires the knowledge that the same communicative intention can be realized through different sentence forms (literally, idiomatically, metaphorically, and so forth). …, in phase 3, the internal state of the speaker, his/her intentions and knowledge, are taken into consideration (Levorato and Cacciari 2002:129).

10-12

Phase 4

An ability to use a conventional repertoire of figurative expressions is achieved by fifteen-year-olds. The developmental gap between the ability to comprehend and to produce figurative language, still presented in phase 3, is progressively reduced, particularly as far as idiomatic expressions are concerned (Levorato and Cacciari 2002:130).

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Phase 5

An adult-like figurative competence is reached that is characterized by the ability to use figurative language in a creative way and based on a metalinguistic and metasemantic awareness (Gombert, 1992) representing the most mature acquisition is also achieved (Levorato and Cacciari 2002:130).

adult

3 The statements of Global Elaboration Model (Levorato and Cacciari 2002) are summarized into Table 2-2 for the sake of convenience.

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They investigated the development of meta-linguistic awareness in the creation of figurative expressions with the support of the GEM. Two experiments were conducted in the study. Experiment 1 was an elicitation task in which their subjects were asked to create a new expression to denote the target expression. The targets consisted of two types: (1) nine common actions that were familiar to children, e.g.

Rivelare un segreto (revealing a secret), (2) nine common emotions that were generally experienced by children, e.g. Essere felici (being happy). Four age groups were recruited from two schools of Padua (Italy): 108 nine-year-old children (Mean age=9;6), 124 eleven-year-old children (Mean age=11;3), 112 adolescents (Mean age=18;5, range from 14;1 to 19;7), and 100 adults (university students). There were two types of instructions: (1) the nominal instruction: the subjects were allowed to produce a new figurative expression without constraints (e.g. „Target is…‟), (2) the comparative instruction: the subjects were asked to use a comparative structure

„Target is like …‟, which the researchers attempted to explore whether the constraint

„like‟ would influence the subjects‟ creation of figurative expressions.

The answers to new figurative expressions were classified into four categories.

The first category is Synecdoches/ Metonymies which refer to expressions “when the part for the whole was referred to, or the opposite” (p. 134). For instance, „having a red face‟ (nine-year-olds), „walking with lowered head‟ (teenagers) are expressions to the target item Being ashamed (common emotion). Secondly, “when the conceptual relation between the target and the new expression was easily inferable” (p.134), it is defined a transparent metaphor, e.g. „putting glue in the pajamas‟, „to be a boiled potato‟ (eleven-year-olds), which is an expression for the common action Sleeping too much. The third type is an opaque metaphor, which is defined as “when a more complex mapping from source to target is required than for a transparent metaphor”

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(p. 134). For instance, „being like a glue‟, „being like a blanket of snow that prevents life‟ (adolescents) are productions to the common emotion Being jealous. The fourth type is a convention idiom, which is defined “when the subject used existing idiomatic expressions or slight variants” (p.134), e.g. „being on top of the sky‟ is the production of the common emotion Being happy. The production is similar to the Italian idiom „being in the seventh sky.‟

The results of Experiment 1 showed that the ability to produce new figurative expressions had a developmental trend which was only up to adolescence (9-year-olds=37%, 11-year-olds=42.4%, adolescents=67.5%, and adults=61.3%). In other words, the adolescents behaved similarly to the adults. The comparative instruction („is like‟) was found to produce more figurative expressions for all age groups except the adults since the operator „like‟ provided the young children with the cue of generic cross-domain similarity. Also, the production of transparent metaphors was easier because the conceptual domain between the source and target is already existing and thus easily inferable than opaque metaphors.

Experiment 2 investigated the comprehensibility, appropriateness and novelty of examples of transparent and opaque metaphors elicited in Experiment 1. Nearly 50 % of the samples were randomly selected and judged by 240 adults. The subjects were asked to rate on a seven-point scale to each expression (from 1= not at all, to 7=

extremely). Results of Experiment 2 showed that the production became more comprehensible, novel, and appropriate with the increasing age. It was unexpected that the production with the nominal instruction obtained the highest scores for three scales than the comparative instruction which elicited more production in Experiment 1. The production of many children went beyond the paraphrase of the target expressions, which supporting the GEM that children are able to go beyond the literal

23 expressions.

To summarize, Levorato and Cacciari (2002) investigated the ability to produce figurative expressions for two targets (i.e., actions and emotions) in two instructions (i.e., nominative and comparative), and judged the answers by the appropriateness, comprehensibility, and novelty. The subjects‟ production was classified into four categories: Synecdoches/ Metonymies, Transparent metaphors, Opaque metaphors, and Conventional idioms. The results of Experiment 1 showed that the subjects produce more transparent metaphors among all types of figurative expressions.

However, the lack of other types of figurative expressions (e.g. metonymies or conventional idioms) does not entail the lack of the subjects‟ inability to produce the figurative expression. It may be due to the influences of the instructions involving „is‟

(i.e., nominative) and „is like‟ (i.e., comparative). To be specific, the instruction may impose some constraints on the production of figurative expressions.