Idiom Comprehension in Mandarin-Speaking Children

J Psycholinguist Res (2010) 39:505–522DOI 10.1007/s10936-009-9145-z

Idiom Comprehension in Mandarin-Speaking Children

Shelley Ching-Yu Hsieh · Chun-Chieh Natalie Hsu

Published online: 31 December 2009© Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2009

Abstract This study examines the effect of familiarity, context, and linguistic conventionon idiom comprehension in Mandarin speaking children. Two experiments (a comprehensiontask followed by a comprehension task coupled with a metapragmatic task) were adminis-tered to test participants in three age groups (6 and 9-year-olds, and an adult control group).Laval (Journal of Pragmatics 35(2):723–739, 2003) showed that familiarity had an effect onidiom comprehension for French 9-year-olds. However, our finding showed that familiaritywas important for 6-year-old Chinese children when a context was not given. Abkarian et al.(Journal of Speech and Hearing Research 35:580–587, 1992) claimed that context has littleor no effect on comprehension for children under 6. Our results show that context has aneffect on 6-year-old children’s understanding of idioms in a different way. Overall, our majorresearch findings are: (1) Familiarity first appeared in responses at age 6. (2) Context playedan important role in idiom comprehension and had different effects on different age groups.(3) Linguistic convention starts from age 6 on, and a significant effect took place at the age of9. (4) Metapragmatic knowledge showed at the age of 6 and could surface even younger. Ascontext and linguistic convention have a substantial effect on the comprehension of idioms,it is necessary to take them into account to explain language functioning and communicativesituations.

Keywords Cognitive pragmatics and semantics · Developmental psychology · Plantexpressions · Idiom comprehension · Mandarin Chinese

S. C.-Y. Hsieh (B)Department/Graduate Institute of Foreign Languages and Literature, National Cheng Kung University,No. 1, University Road, Tainan 701, Taiwan, ROCe-mail: [email protected]

C.-C. N. HsuDepartment of Foreign Languages and Literature, National Tsing Hua University, Hsinchu, Taiwan, ROCe-mail: [email protected]

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Introduction

Understanding how idioms are acquired is generating growing interest, especially with regardto the factors that affect the developmental processes that permit idiom comprehensionand production (e.g., Lodge and Leach 1975; Ackerman 1982; Prinz 1983; Gibbs 1987,1991; Cacciari and Levorato 1989; Nippold and Martin 1989; Nippold and Rudzinski 1993;Levorato and Cacciari 1992, 1995, 2002; Levorato et al. 2004). Previous developmentalresearch on this specific topic has tested native speakers of English (Abkarian et al. 1992),French (Laval 2003) and Italian (Levorato et al. 2004). However, an assessment of idio-matic expression comprehension by Mandarin-speaking children, primarily concerned withthe underlying cognitive (pragmatic) processes needed for comprehending the expressions,has not been systematically carried out,1 especially on the respective roles of context andlinguistic convention. The linguistic convention here is used in a narrow sense to refer spe-cifically to the arbitrary link between the linguistic form and its meaning in the idiomaticexpression.

The current study reports the empirical results of two experiments that tested Manda-rin-speaking children’s idiom comprehension. Idioms are expressions in which there is adifference between the literal and the idiomatic meanings.2 For example, the idiom qing1-mei2-zhu2-ma3 ‘green plums and a bamboo horse’ is the name of a childhood game.Literally, it refers to the period of time when a boy and a girl who grew up together usedgreen plums as toys and bamboo sticks as horses. Thus, the idiom is used metaphoricallyto mean childhood friends. In other words, the meaning of an idiom depends largely on thelinguistic convention that relates a given linguistic form to a non-literal meaning, and theconvention is agreed upon and shared by a specific language community.

How context facilitates the comprehension of idiomatic expressions is of interest as well.Gibbs (1991) and Levorato and Cacciari (1995, 1999) believe that context begins to be essen-tial for the comprehension of idiomatic expressions at the age of 6 or 7. For children under 6,context has little or no effect on comprehension (Abkarian et al. 1992). Cacciari and Levorato(1989) suggest that 7- and 9-year-olds make more idiomatic interpretations in the literal-con-text condition. Children as young as preschoolers are able to understand metaphoric language,if the familiar conceptual mappings are presented under proper contexts (Vosniadou 1989;Winner 1979, 1988). On the contrary, the performance of adults is not context-dependent(Ackerman 1982; Cacciari and Levorato 1989).

Overall, the literature shows that context affects comprehension at an earlier age than thelinguistic convention does (Ackerman 1982; Levorato and Cacciari 1992, etc.). Karmiloff-Smith (1988) indicates that children adjust their idiosyncratic notions to conventional notions.They invent cognitive theories, and then they filter out the unconventional ones during con-ceptual development. Ackerman (1982) reported that 10-year-old children and adults were

1 Chinese idioms are different from the idioms in alphabetic languages in that Chinese idioms have syntacticstructures such as V+O, V+C, phrase[determiner/adj.]+phrase, etc. Whereas, for example, English idiomshave nominal structures, rhyming/alliterative structures, structures with a verb following with a preposition,etc. (Fan 2006). Therefore, the study of idiom acquisition on alphabetic languages (e.g. English: Abkarianet al. 1992; French: Laval 2003; Italian: Levorato et al. 2004) is not entirely applicable to that of Chineseidioms.2 This study doesn’t distinguish idioms and metaphors for the reason that Nunberg et al. (1994, 492) definedidiom and expressed that “Idioms typically involve metaphors, metonymies, hyperboles, or other kinds of fig-uration.” Victoria et al. (2003, 207) stated that most idioms originate as metaphorical expressions that establishthemselves in the language and become frozen in their form and meaning.

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able to correctly understand idiomatic expressions in literal contexts or with no context,a finding which lends supporting evidence to the role of linguistic convention. In general,linguistic convention enters into play at age 7 (Cacciari and Levorato 1989), or at age 10(Ackerman 1982).

Studies of familiarity with specific idioms have produced contradictory results. Keil (1986)claims that frequent exposure to an idiomatic expression does not guarantee that children willcomprehend the idiom. For Levorato and Cacciari (1992), familiarity plays a minor role inchildren’s understanding of idioms. They argue that familiarity is an important cue at theage of 7 but not at the age of 9. Other studies (Nippold and Rudzinski 1993; Nippold andTaylor 1995; Nippold et al. 1996), however, report that familiarity plays an essential role forchildren and adolescents, and increases in importance between the years from 10 to 17 yearsold. Nippold et al. (1996, 2001) also suggest that the degree of familiarity is increasinglyimportant with age. Laval (2003) reports that French 9-year-olds rely on familiarity to a greatextent in comprehending idioms.

Laval (2003, 727) shows that metapragmatic knowledge varies with both linguistic conven-tion and context for French children. We examine the same argument for Mandarin-speakingchildren and analyze the underlying cognitive processes that Mandarin-speaking childrenuse to comprehend idiomatic expressions, in particular for plant-related idioms.

Plant names are popular vehicles in languages. Radcliffe-Brown (1929) once believed thatpeople attached importance to plants because they were supposed to arouse our spontane-ous interest as food. Children’s first systematic biological knowledge is atheoretical (Atran1990). Springer (1999) argues that by the age of 4 or 5, children already have autonomous andnaïve theories of biology. The critical factor driving children’s creation of naïve theories ofbiology may be their acquisition of factual knowledge, combined with certain key inferencesgenerated from this knowledge. In this paper, we argue that children understand plant idiomsin a way that explains how children perceive and interact with the real world.

A plant-related idiomatic expression, such as the above example qing1-mei2-zhu2-ma3‘green plums and a bamboo horse’, is defined as an expression that contains at least oneplant name. The plant name has a metaphorical meaning and the idiom is a fixed expressionwith syntactic inflexibility. In a child’s mind, humans, animals, and plants are three livingbeings. Younger children are able to give reasons for their beliefs by appealing to the useful-ness, activity, and existence of living beings. Older children do so by appealing to movement(Johnson and Carey 1998), such as the simple knowledge that plants grow, die, or need water(Backscheider et al. 1993; Inagaki and Hatano 1996). Here, we attempt to see how childrenanalogize these plant vehicles (plant names) in idiomatic expressions.

Three research questions are under investigation in this paper: (1) Do context and famil-iarity affect how Mandarin-speaking children comprehend idioms? If yes, from what age? (2)When does the linguistic convention for idiomatic expressions begin to affect how Manda-rin-speaking children comprehend idioms? (3) How do children make inferences from theseplant vehicles (plant names) in comprehending the idiomatic expressions?

We hypothesize that context is important for Mandarin-speaking children to comprehendidioms (cf. Gibbs 1991; Levorato and Cacciari 1995, 1999; Abkarian et al. 1992; Cacciari andLevorato 1989; Vosniadou 1989, and Winner 1979, 1988 in the above review), and linguis-tic convention affects the comprehension of idioms in Chinese at approximately the sametime as, but not later than, context does (cf. Cacciari and Levorato 1989, and Ackerman1982). Beginning at around the age of 9, familiarity affects Mandarin-speaking children’sunderstanding of idioms (cf. Laval 2003), and children understand plant idioms in a way thatexplains how children perceive and interact with the real world.

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Experiment 1: Word-Card Task

The goal of this experiment was to examine whether 6-year-old and 9-year-old children wereable to express the meaning of the chosen idioms without any contextual information. Thisexperiment was designed to look into children’s understanding of idioms by directly askingthem the meaning of each idiom. This task has been regularly used in other studies on idiomcomprehension (e.g., Mueller and Gibbs 1987; Gibbs 1991; Nippold and Rudzinski 1993).

Subjects

Two groups of 16 healthy Mandarin Chinese-speaking children participated in the experi-ment. The mean age of the first group was 6 years 1 month, and of the second group was9 years 6 months. The children were all from middle-class families and were in age-appropri-ate classes. An adult control group (n = 16) also participated in the experiment. They wereall more than 18 years old (Table 1).

Materials

The Mandarin idioms used in the experiment were taken from the Academia Sinica BalancedCorpus of Mandarin Chinese. A list of 30 idioms was first chosen from the corpus based ontwo criteria that a plant name was included in the idiom and that children might have heardthe idiom before. Forty-five school teachers (27 elementary school (grades 1–3) teachers and19 kindergarten teachers with more than 1 year of teaching experience were asked to assessthe familiarity level of the idioms by rating them on a four-point scale (1 = very unfamiliar,2 = unfamiliar, 3 = familiar, 4 = very familiar). Seven idioms were chosen from the top 10idioms whose average ratings were above 2.25 (Table 2). These seven idioms were catego-rized as familiar idioms and had a mean rating of 2.75. The other seven idioms were chosenfrom the bottom 10 idioms with mean ratings were below 1.88. These seven idioms werecategorized as unfamiliar idioms and had a mean rating of 1.73. The difference between themean ratings of the seven idioms in each group was significant (t(7) = 1.94, p < .05).

Each of these selected idioms also had a plausible literal meaning, and hence created apossibility of testing the link between the idiomatic interpretation and the linguistic form.

Procedure

In this experiment, the 14 test idioms plus 2 practice idioms were presented and read outloud to the participants. Each idiom was printed on a separate word card. The partici-pants were asked to give the meaning of these idioms. For example, we presented a childparticipant the word card with the printed idiom phrase xin1-hua1-duo3-duo3-kai1

‘heart-flower-each-open = to be extra delighted and joyful’, and we read theprinted idiom out loud and asked “What does xin1-hua1-duo3-duo3-kai1 mean?” The child

Table 1 The participants’ information

Age range Male Female

6-year-old 5.1–6.9 6 10

9-year-old 9.1–9.8 10 6

Adult 23–35 5 11

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Table 2 The 14 selected idioms (seven familiar idioms and seven unfamiliar idioms) and their mean ratingof familiarity level

Familiar idioms Meanrating

ding3-gua1-gua1 ‘top-melon-melon = very best’a 3.42

zhi2-wu4-ren2 ‘plant-person = a vegetable person; someone who isin a coma without awareness and is unable to move’

2.91

ping2-guo3-lian3 ‘apple-face = rosy cheeks like an apple’ 2.82

luo2-bo1-tui3 ‘radish-leg = short and sturdy shank’ 2.80

xin1-hua1-duo3-duo3-kai1 ‘heart-flower-each-open = to beextra delighted and joyful’

2.49

cai4-niao3 ‘vegetable-bird = someone new to a job or environment,still unfamiliar with things and acting foolishly’

2.44

yiao2-qian2-shu4 ‘shake-money-tree = a “money tree” (in legends)which sheds coins upon shaking; someone who brings lots of income fortheir keeper/master’

2.38

Unfamiliar idioms Mean

luo4-ye4-gui1-gen1 ‘fall-leaf-return-root = what comes from thesoil will return to the soil’

1.87

dao4-chi1-gan1-zhe4 ‘invert-eat-sweet-sugar cane = the sugarcane gets sweeter more nearer the root; to gradually blend into thepositive atmosphere’

1.82

tang4-shou3-shan1-yu4 ‘scald-hand-mountain-taro = things thatare troublesome and which others do not wish to handle’

1.76

tu4-zi-bu4-chi1-wo1-bian1-cao3 ‘rabbits-donot-eat-nest-side-grass = rabbits do not eat the grass near their lair toprotect their home from being seen; one does not harm his close ones orneighbors’

1.71

yi2-hua1-jie1-mu4 ‘move-flower-connect to-wood = (of plants) tograft, (fig.) to swap something authentic for something counterfeit in adeceiving act’

1.67

tie3-shu4-kai1-hua1 ‘iron-tree-open-flower = a sago cycadblossoming; something rarely seen or very hard to realize’

1.64

gua1-tian2-li3-xia4 ‘melon-patch-plum-below = to do up theshoes in a melon-patch and to put on a hat under a plum tree; be carefulnot to be found in a suspicious position’

1.64

a ding3-gua1-gua1 can be written as or with the same meaning

was expected to respond to the question based on what they knew. The answers were audio-recorded for analysis.

Data Coding

The answers were classified into two categories: ‘Correct’ and ‘Other’ answers. A responsewas categorized as a ‘Correct’ answer when the participant provided the correct idiomaticmeaning of the given idiom. All other responses different from the idiomatic meaning, such asthe literal meaning or the answers such as ‘I don’t know’, were categorized as ‘Other’ answers.For example, if the participant said that the idiom xin1-hua1-duo3-duo3-kai1meant ‘happy’, then it was a ‘Correct’ answer, but if they said it meant “the blooming ofthe heart-shaped flowers”, which is the literal meaning of the idiom, it was classified as an‘Other’ answer.

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Table 3 The percentage of the two types of responses in the familiar and unfamiliar conditions for each group

Group Familiar condition Unfamiliar conditionAnswer Answer

Correct Other Correct Other% n % n % n % n

6-year-old 12.5 14/112 87.5 98/112 0 0/112 100 112/112

9-year-olda 55.2 58/105 44.8 48/105 8.6 9/105 91.4 96/105

Adult 86.6 97/112 13.4 15/112 67.9 76/112 32.1 36/112

a The data of one participant from the 9-year-old group (number 5) were removed from the analysis becausethey had been incorrectly recorded

Results

The overall results are presented in Table 3. Chi-square tests, done for the categorical data,showed that overall, the proportions of ‘Correct’ answers were higher in the familiar condi-tion than in the unfamiliar condition (χ2(2) = 27.627, p <.001). In the familiar condition,there was a similar number of ‘Correct’ answers and ‘Other’ answers (χ2(1) = .246, p =.62), but in the unfamiliar condition, there were significantly fewer ‘Correct’ answers andmore ‘Other’ answers (χ2(1) = 76.84, p <.0001).

Age also significantly affected whether the answers were ‘Correct’ or ‘Other’ (χ2(2) =243.9, p < .001). Both the 6-year-old and 9-year-old groups produced more ‘Other’ answersthan ‘Correct’ answers (6-year-olds: χ2(1) = 717.5, p < .0001; 9-year-olds: χ2(1) = 27.5,p < .0001), while the adult group produced more ‘Correct’ answers than ‘Other’ answers(χ2(1) = 66.45, p < .0001). The 6-year-old and the 9-year-old groups in the familiar con-dition differed significantly in their answers (χ2(1) = 44.64, p < .0001): the 6-year-oldsproduced more ‘Other’ answers and the 9-year-olds produced more ‘Correct’ answers. In theunfamiliar condition, both the 6-year-olds and 9-year-olds produced more ‘Other’ answersthan ‘Correct’ answers, but the difference was bigger for the 6-year-old group than for the9-year-old group (χ2(1) = 10.02, p < .005).

Brief Discussion

The results of this experiment show that both age and familiarity have an important effecton children’s responses. Adults gave more ‘Correct’ answers than 9-year-olds did, and 9-year-olds gave more ‘Correct’ answers than 6-year-olds did, an unsurprising outcome. Allthree groups gave more ‘Correct’ answers in the familiar condition than in the unfamiliarcondition.

Experiment 2: Story Picture Selection Task and Metapragmatic Task

Experiment 2 was a comprehension task coupled with a metapragmatic task. We designedthis experiment to match the experiment used in Laval (2003) to make a fair comparisonwith the results from French children. We aimed to understand how context and familiarityaffect children’s comprehension of idioms and children’s metapragmatic knowledge of theseidiomatic expressions, so the second experiment was made up of two parts. Comprehensionwas assessed on whether the subjects chose a picture which described the literal meaning or a

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picture that described the idiomatic meaning of the test idiom. The metapragmatic knowledgewas assessed on the basis of children’s verbal explanation of the comprehension task.

Materials and Design

Each of the 14 selected idioms in Table 2 was embedded in two different context stories:one designed to elicit the literal meaning of the idiom and the other designed to elicit theidiomatic meaning of the same idiom. The context story for each idiom had four pictureswith two main characters, Xiaohua and Xiaoming. Pictures 1 and 2 depicted the context ofthe story. They were manipulated to create two different types of contextual settings: theidiomatic context, which was biased toward the idiomatic interpretation of the idiom, andthe literal context, which was biased toward the literal interpretation. Picture 3 focused onone of the main characters Xiaohua who uttered the test idiom. Then, Picture 4, which con-tained two sub-pictures—one depicting the literal meaning of the uttered idiom and the otherthe idiomatic meaning of it—was presented to the participant. The participant was asked tochoose one of the pictures to end the story according to their understanding of the idiom.Take the idiom cai4-niao3 ‘vegetable bird’ in Table 4 for example.

The idiomatic meaning of the idiom in Table 4 is “someone new to a job or an environ-ment, still unfamiliar with things and who acts foolishly.” Its literal meaning describes abird that is made of vegetables. Pictures 1 and 2 in Table 4 create a context for the literal

Table 4 Story for the idiom cai4-niao3 in the literal context

Picture 1: Context

Xiaoming and Xiaohua watched a

cook cooking.

Picture 2: Context

The cook made a bird-like dish with

vegetables

Picture 3: Utterance

Xiaoming said, ‘cai4-niao3’

Picture 4: Selection

Left picture: idiomatic meaning

Right picture: literal meaning

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Table 5 Story for the idiom ping2-guo3-lian3 in the idiomatic context

Picture 1: Context

Xiaoming was jogging.

Picture 2: Context

Xiaohua saw Xiaoming being out of breath

and with a flushed face after jogging.

Picture 3: Utterance

Xiaohua said, ‘ping2-guo3-lian3’

Picture 4: Selection

Left picture: idiomatic meaning

Right picture: literal meaning

meaning of this idiom. Picture 1 shows Xiaoming and Xiaohua watched a chef cooking. InPicture 2, they saw a bird-like dish made of vegetables. Picture 3 shows that Xiaoming wasastonished and uttered the idiom “cai4-niao3”. Then, Picture 4 shows the two meanings ofthis idiom phrase: on the left is the idiomatic meaning and on the right side is the literalmeaning. Table 5 illustrates the story for the idiom ping2-guo3-lian3 ‘apple face’ inthe idiomatic context.

The story for each test idiom has the same schema. The 28 test items (14 idioms, 7 familiarand 7 unfamiliar, in 2 types of context) were then distributed into two lists in a Latin-squaredesign so that each participant saw the same idiom only once. Each list had 16 items, 2 practiceitems and 14 test items (with 7 idiomatic context items and 7 literal context items).

Procedure

The first part of the task was a picture selection task. The experimenters presented the storypictures accompanied by an oral description to each participant. After listening to the story,the participant was instructed to choose a picture that showed the meaning (either the literalor the idiomatic, depending on the participant) of the idiom phrase to end the story. Then,the participant was asked to provide an explanation to justify that choice, which was used to

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assess their metapragmatic knowledge. The whole experiment lasted about 25 min for a childparticipant and about 10 min for an adult participant. Their responses were audio-recordedfor analysis.

Data Coding and Results

Part I: Story Picture Selection Task

Data Coding For the picture selection task, there were two types of answers depending onthe participant’s choice of picture. If the participant chose the picture that depicted the literalmeaning of the uttered phrase, the choice was taken as a literal answer. If, on the other hand,the participant chose the picture that depicted the idiomatic meaning of the uttered idiom,the choice was taken as an idiomatic answer.

The responses to the unfamiliar idiom tu4-zi-bu4-chi1-wo1-bian1-cao3‘rabbits-do not-eat-nest-side-grass = one does not harm his close ones or neighbors’ wereremoved from the analysis because its pictures were found to be ambiguous to the partici-pants. In addition, eight data responses were removed. Among them 2 were from the adultgroup because the answers were ambiguous and 6 were from the 9-year-old subjects becausethey were null answers. Due to the removal of some data, the total numbers of valid trial datawere not the same across all conditions. Therefore, we used idiomatic-answer percentagesrather than raw counts as our dependent variable in the statistical analysis.

Result This experiment examined children’s understanding of idioms by analyzing their per-formance in choosing the pictures in an idiomatic context and a literal context. The overallresults are presented in Table 6, for familiar idioms, and Table 7, for unfamiliar idioms.

An analysis of variance (ANOVA test) was conduced based on the percentage of idi-omatic answers in each condition. The dependent variable was analyzed in a three-waymixed model with repeated measures with context (2: idiomatic/literal) and familiarity (2:

Table 6 The percentages of each type of answer in each context condition in the familiar condition

Group Familiar conditionLiteral context Idiomatic context

Idiomatic answer Literal answer Idiomatic answer Literal answer% n % n % n % n

6-year-old 10.7 6/56 89.3 50/56 19.6 11/56 80.4 45/56

9-year-old 26.3 15/57 73.4 42/57 98.1 51/52 1.9 1/52

Adult 21.8 12/55 78.2 43/55 100 56/56 0 0/56

Table 7 The percentages of each type of answer in each context condition in the unfamiliar condition

Group Unfamiliar conditionLiteral context Idiomatic context

Idiomatic answer Literal answer Idiomatic answer Literal answer% n % n % n % n

6-year-old 6.25 3/48 93.75 45/48 31.25 15/48 68.75 33/48

9-year-old 6.67 3/45 93.33 42/45 83.33 40/48 16.67 8/48

Adult 10.6 5/47 89.4 42/47 91.67 44/48 8.33 4/48

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familiar/unfamiliar) as the within-subject factors and age as the between-subject factor (3:adults, 9-year-olds, 6-year-olds). The analysis showed that there was no significant three-way interaction, but there were two significant two-way interactions: familiarity by age group(F(2, 45) = 3.531, p < .05), and context by age group (F(2, 45) = 30.901, p < .00001). Testsof simple main effects were then done for the two-way interactions. First, for the interactionbetween familiarity and age group, the one-way ANOVA with the group as the independentvariable showed that the three different age groups’ performances were significantly differ-ent in the familiar (F(2, 45) = 46.443, p < .00001) and unfamiliar conditions (F(2, 45) =16.880, p < .001).

The post-hoc Tukey tests showed that in the familiar condition, there were no significantdifferences in the performances between the adult group and the 9-year-old group (p > .05),but there were significant differences in the performance between the adult group and the6-year-old group (p < .001), and between the 9-year-old group and the 6-year-old group(p < .001). A similar pattern was found in the unfamiliar condition. The one-way ANOVAwith repeated measures with familiarity as the independent variable showed that only the 9-year-old group performed significantly better in the familiar condition than in the unfamiliarcondition (F(1, 15) = 7.079, p < .05). The adult group performed only marginally better inthe familiar condition than in the unfamiliar condition (F(1, 15) = 3.238, p = .09). How-ever, the 6-year-old group did not perform differently between the familiar and unfamiliarconditions (F < 1; see Fig. 1). The significant interaction between familiarity and age wasdriven primarily by the different performance pattern of the 6-year-old group because theirpercentages of idiomatic answers were significantly lower than the other two groups in boththe familiar and the unfamiliar conditions.

Second, for the interaction between context and age group, the one-way ANOVA withgroup as the independent variable showed that the three different age groups’ performanceswere significantly different in the idiomatic context condition (F(2, 45) = 86.351, p <

.00001), but not in the literal context condition (F < 2). The post-hoc Tukey tests showedthat in the idiomatic context condition, there were no significant differences in the perfor-mances between the adult group and the 9-year-old group (p > .05), but that there weresignificant differences in the performances between the adult group and the 6-year-old group(p < .001), and between the 9-year-old group and the 6-year-old group (p < .001). How-ever, in the literal condition, there were no differences in the performances between any twogroups. A one-way ANOVA with repeated measures with context as the independent variable

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showed that all three groups performed better in the idiomatic context condition than in theliteral context condition (Adult group: F(1, 15) = 143.284, p < .00001; 9-year-old group:F(1, 15) = 123.641, p < .00001; 6-year-old group: F(1, 15) = 7.059, p < .05; see Fig. 2).The significant interaction between context and age found in this experiment was drivenprimarily by the noticeably different performance pattern of the 6-year-old group in the idio-matic context condition. Unlike the 9-year-olds and the adults, who presented more idiomaticanswers than literal answers in the idiomatic contexts, the 6-year-olds produced more literalanswers than idiomatic answers in the idiomatic context. Although, as shown in Table 6,the 6-year-olds produced more literal answers in both contexts, the overall (combining thefamiliar and the unfamiliar conditions) results show that the use of idiomatic context indeedhelped the 6-year-old children to increase the proportion of idiomatic answers significantly(Overall: 8.48% vs. 25.43%, t(15) = 2.78, p = 0.013). The increase is less obvious in thefamiliar condition (from 10.7% to 19.6%, (t(15) = 1.16, p = 0.26), but is significant in theunfamiliar condition (from 6.25% to 31.25%, t(15) = 3, p = 0.009).

Overall, in the picture selection task, the context effect was significant in all three agegroups, but the familiarity effect was significant only in the 9-year-old group. In addition,the post-hoc paired tests showed that the performances of the adult group and the 9-year-oldgroup had similar patterns. In other words, the significant interactions found in the overallanalysis were primarily the result of the different performance of the 6-year-old group.

Part II: Metapragmatic Task

Data Coding The metapragmatic knowledge task involved analyzing the explanations thatthe participants gave after choosing pictures. Based on the overall observed answers, we clas-sified the explanations into four categories: explanations relating to (1) linguistic convention,(2) literal meaning, (3) context, and (4) other factors (i.e., story setting and ambiguous expla-nations). Take again the idiom cai4-niao3 ‘vegetable-bird = someone new to a job oran environment, still unfamiliar with things and who acts foolishly’ in Table 4. The typicalexample of each type of explanation given by the participants to justify their answers for thisidiom is shown in Table 8.

Again, all the responses to the idiom tu4-zi-bu4-chi1-wo1-bian1-cao3were taken out of the analysis because its pictures of both idiomatic and literal contexts were

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Table 8 Examples of the participants’ explanation types

Explanation type Typical example

Relating to linguistic convention ‘cai4-niao3 means someone new to a job or environment,still unfamiliar with things and acting foolishly.’

Relating to literal meaning ‘cai4-niao3’ is a bird made up of vegetables.’

Relating to context ‘The cook is cooking vegetables.’

Relating to other factors ‘I don’t know.’ (unable to judge)

Table 9 The percentage of each type of explanation to idiomatic answers in each group

Group Ling convention Literal meaning Context OthersAnswer Answer Answer Answer

% n % n % n % n

6-year-old 25.7 9/35 11.4 4/35 40 14/35 22.9 8/35

9-year-old 52.9 55/104 6.7 7/104 39.4 41/104 1 1/104

Adult 76 89/117 6 7/117 17 20/117 1 1/117

ambiguous. The 8 responses removed from the picture-task analysis were also removed. Inaddition, 7 null responses in this metalinguistic task were removed from the data analysis.

Result Explanations for idiomatic answers to linguistic convention (or idiom meaning)were of interest because this type of answer revealed the participant’s knowledge of linguisticconvention. Thus, we analyzed those verbal explanations that followed a behavior showingthat the participants understood the meaning of the idiom. That is, we analyzed the expla-nations only in cases in which the participants selected the idiomatic picture in the pictureselection task. Table 9 shows the proportions of different types of explanations to idiomaticanswers in each age group.

The 6-year-olds typically produced explanations based on context. Of 35 idiomaticanswers, they gave 8 explanations relating to other factors, 14 to context, and 9 to linguisticconvention, and only 4 to the literal meaning of the idioms. For the 9-year-old group, mostof the explanations related to the context and idiomatic meaning. Of 104 idiomatic answers,they produced 41 explanations relating to context, 55 explanations to linguistic convention,7 to the literal meaning of the idioms, and one to others. The adult group naturally explainedtheir answers in terms of idiomatic meanings. Of 117 idiomatic answers, they produced 89relating to linguistic convention, 17 to context, 7 to the literal meaning of the idioms, and oneto others. Overall, most adults’ and 9-year-olds’ explanations of idiomatic answers relatedto linguistic convention (Adults: 76%; 9-year-olds: 52.9%), while most of the 6-year-olds’explanations to idiomatic answers related to the context of the story (40%).

Chi-square tests on the categorical data showed that the three age groups performeddifferently in the four types of explanations to their idiomatic answers (χ2(6) = 62.21,p < .00001). The Chi-square tests were also run within each group. Both the 9-year-oldgroup and the adult group showed significant differences in the number of each of the fourexplanation types they gave (9-year-old group: χ2(3) = 78.92, p < .00001; adult group:χ2(3) = 169.19, p < .00001), but not the 6-year-old group (χ2(3) = 5.80, p < .122). Chi-square tests were also done on the number of each type of explanation. For explanationsrelated to linguistic conventions, the three groups performed significantly differently (χ2(2)= 63.22, p < .00001): adults produced the most and the 6-year-olds produced the fewest. For

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explanations related to literal meanings, there was no difference among the three groups(χ2(2) = 1, p = .67). For explanations related to context and others, there was a significantdifference among the three groups (χ2(2) = 16.08, p < .00001; χ2(2) = 9.8, p < .01).

In addition, to understand the reasons behind the literal answers produced by the partic-ipants, we also looked into their explanations to literal answers. While the majority of theexplanations to literal answers produced by 6-year-olds were related to the literal meaningof the phrase (65.9%), most of the adults’ and 9-year-olds’ explanations to literal answerswere related to the context of the story given in the test (9-year-olds: 59.3%; adults: 74.2%).See Table 10.

Chi-square tests showed that the three age groups performed differently in the four typesof explanations to their literal answers (χ2(6) = 76.65, p < .00001). The Chi-square testswere also run within each group, and each group showed significant differences in the num-ber of each of the four explanation types (6-year-old group: χ2(3) = 182.45, p < .00001;9-year-old group: χ2(2) = 33.65, p < .00001; adult group: χ2(2) = 84.528, p < .00001).The overall results suggest that the patterns of explanation types for idiomatic answers andliteral answers were different.

To understand the effect of familiarity and context on the participants’ explanations relat-ing to linguistic convention for their idiomatic answers, we further singled out this type ofexplanation for each test condition. The proportions of linguistic explanations for idiomaticanswers in each condition are shown in Table 11.

Descriptively, both the 9-year-old group and the adult group produced the smallest pro-portions of linguistic convention explanations in the unfamiliar/idiomatic condition; for theother three conditions, the adult group produced an average of 87% of this type of explana-tions, whereas the 9-year-old children produced an average of 65%. The 6-year-old childrenproduced the most explanations of this type in the familiar/literal conditions. However, therewere too few data points in several conditions for fair statistical tests in this case.

Table 10 The percentage of each type of explanation to literal answers in each group

Group Ling convention Literal meaning Context OthersAnswer Answer Answer Answer

% n % n % N % n

6-year-old 1.7 3/173 65.9 114/173 27.8 48/173 4.6 8/173

9-year-old 9.9 9/91 30.8 28/91 59.3 54/91 0 0/91

Adult 5.6 5/89 20.2 18/89 74.2 66/89 0 0/89

Table 11 The proportion of explanations relating to linguistic conventions for idiomatic answers in fourdifferent conditions in each group


Literal context Idiomatic context Literal context Idiomatic context% n % n % n % n

6-year-old 66.7 4/6 27.3 3/11 0 0/3 13.3 2/15

9-year-old 64.3 9/14 65.3 32/49 66.7 2/3 31.6 12/38

Adult 75 9/12 85.7 48/56 100 5/5 61.4 27/44

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Table 12 The proportion of explanations relating to linguistic conventions in four different conditions in eachgroup


Literal context Idiomatic context Literal context Idiomatic context% n % n % n % N

6-year-old 10.7 6/56 5.4 3/56 2.1 1/48 4.2 2/48

9-year-old 29.1 16/55 64 32/50 9.1 4/44 31.6 12/46

Adult 21.8 12/55 85.7 48/56 12.8 6/47 26.1 28/48

To get an overall picture of how familiarity and context affected the participants’ produc-tion of explanations relating to linguistic convention, a three-way ANOVA was run on thepercentage of such responses out of total responses (from both literal and idiomatic answers).The analysis revealed significant interactions between familiarity and age group (F(2, 44) =5.53, p < .01), and between context and age group (F(2, 44) = 22.117, p < .001). SeeTable 12.

Tests of simple main effects were then done for the two-way interactions. First, for theinteraction between familiarity and age group, the one-way ANOVA with group as the inde-pendent variable showed that three different age groups’ performances were significantlydifferent in the familiar (F(2, 45) = 30.966, p < .0001) and unfamiliar conditions (F(2,45) = 10.317, p < .0001). The post-hoc Tukey tests showed that, in both the familiar andunfamiliar conditions, there were no significant differences in the performances between theadult group and the 9-year-old group (p > .05), but there were significant differences in theperformances between the adult group and the 6-year-old group (p < .001), and between the9-year-old group and the 6-year-old group (p < .001). The one-way ANOVA with repeatedmeasures with familiarity as the independent variable showed that both the 9-year-old groupand adult group performed significantly better in the familiar condition than in the unfamiliarcondition (9-year-old: F(1, 15) = 21.197, p < .0001, adult group: F(1, 15) = 8.899, p <

.005). However, the 6-year-old group did not perform differently between the familiar andunfamiliar conditions (p = .088).

Second, for the interaction between context and age group, the one-way ANOVA withgroup as the independent variable showed that three different age groups’ performances weresignificantly different in the idiomatic context condition (F(2, 45) = 49.703, p < .0001), butnot in the literal condition (p = .064). The post-hoc Tukey tests showed that in the idiomaticcontext condition, there were significant differences in the performances between the adultgroup and the 9-year-old group (p < .001), between the adult group and the 6-year-old group(p < .001), and between the 9-year-old group and the 6-year-old group (p < .001). However,in the literal condition, there were no differences in the performances between any of thetwo groups. The one-way ANOVA with repeated measures with context as the independentvariable showed that the adult group and the 9-year-old group performed better in the idio-matic context condition than in the literal context condition (Adult group: F(1, 15) = 63.92,p < .0001; 9-year-old group: F(1, 15) = 12.61, p < .005) but that the 6-year-old group didnot (F < 1; see Table 12).

General Discussion

In this study, we examined the effect of context, familiarity, and linguistic convention on idiomcomprehension in Mandarin-speaking children by conducting two experiments: Experiment

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1 used a word-card task, and Experiment 2 had both a picture selection task and a metaprag-matic task.

Experiment 1 confirmed that the adult control group comprehended most of the familiar(86.6%) and unfamiliar (67.9%) idioms, while the 6-year-olds understood only a few familiarones (12.5%), but none of the unfamiliar ones (0%; See Table 3). In other words, familiarityis important in children’s comprehension of idiomatic expressions: it is clearly involved atleast by age 6, and develops remarkably by age 9 (familiar 55.2% / unfamiliar 8.6%).

The picture selection task in experiment 2 revealed that, in literal context, the three groupsproduced similar patterns: more literal interpretations than idiomatic interpretations. How-ever, in an idiomatic context, adults and 9-year-olds chose many more idiomatic answers,while 6-year-olds chose more literal answers. Although the 6-year-old children producedmore literal answers in both the literal and the idiomatic contexts, the use of an idiomaticcontext successfully increased their possibility of producing an idiomatic answer. The occur-rence of the idiomatic answers might suggest that linguistic convention has already startedat the age of 6, even though the literal interpretation is still dominant at this time, as reflectedby the large proportions of literal answers in both contexts. An interesting finding aboutthe involvement of context was the discrepancy in the performance of the 6-year-olds inExperiment 1, in which no context was given, and in Experiment 2, in which a context wasprovided. When we examined familiarity in Experiment 2, the 6-year-olds gave more correctanswers for unfamiliar idioms than familiar ones. Although the difference was not significant,the pattern was opposite to that found in Experiment 1, in which the 6-year-olds performedmuch better in the familiar condition than in the unfamiliar condition. In a sense, the findingseems to suggest that with the interference as well as the interruption of a literal context, the6-year-olds’ comprehension of idiomatic expressions was affected by the context. Based onthe given context, they sometimes gave highly imaginative literal answers that went againstlinguistic convention. For example, participant No. 2 in the 6-year-old group gave the correctidiomatic meaning of zhi2-wu4-ren2 ‘plant-person = a vegetable person; someonewho is in a coma and is unable to move’ in Experiment 1, but the different contexts thatmight have assisted him to give the ‘right’ answer in Experiment 2 made him become un-confident in choosing the idiomatic answer. So, he adopted a strategy that gave him a wayout of the predicament: the literal interpretation.

The results of the metapragmatic task, similar to that of the picture selection task, show thatthe 6-year-old group produced more explanations relating to context (40%; see Table 9). Theadult group gave more explanations relating to linguistic convention (76%), and the 9-year-olds (52.9%) gave more explanations relating to linguistic convention. Thus, in our study,the effect of metapragmatic knowledge was apparent after age 6 and was clearly establishedby age 9.

We reviewed relevant literature on the influence of context, familiarity, and linguisticconvention in children’s comprehension of idioms in the Introduction where there were con-tradictory findings. In terms of familiarity, our study coincides with those of Nippold etal. (1996, 2001), who reported that the degree of familiarity is increasingly important withincreasing age, and Laval (2003) who showed that the role of familiarity was clearly discern-able in French 9-year-olds. In the present study, we showed that familiarity is important inidiom comprehension for Mandarin-speaking children starting at the age of 6 when contextwas not given, and that it develops remarkably by age 9.

In terms of linguistic convention, our findings suggests that it develops substantiallyfrom age 6 to age 9. At age 9, children already show the signs of comprehending idiomaticexpressions via their knowledge of linguistic convention, and such knowledge is predictedto develop through adolescence and into adulthood. Cacciari and Levorato (1989) suggested

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that linguistic convention enters into play at age 7, and Ackerman (1982) suggested that it isnot a factor until around age 10. Our findings suggest that perhaps there is no clear-cut age asto when children begin to be aware of linguistic convention, that its effects surface betweenage 6 and 9, but that it is not a significant factor until age 9.

Our findings agree with that of Gibbs (1991); Levorato and Cacciari (1995, 1999), andAbkarian et al. (1992) in that context is important in the comprehension of idioms by the ageof 6.

Two results in our study should be highlighted. First, in terms of language functioning,context (literal versus idiomatic) starts to have a substantial impact on idiom comprehen-sion at age 6 and remains important in adulthood. This reinforces the necessity of takingcontext and linguistic conventions into account to explain language functioning, not only inchildren as several authors have mentioned previously (Laval and Bernicot 1999; Tomasello2000), but also in adults. On the other hand, the overall late emergence of familiarity andlinguistic convention (from 6 and significantly developed by 9) suggests that adolescence iscrucial for developing certain pragmatic aspects of language. Karmiloff-Smith (1988) pointsout that during language acquisition, children adjust their idiosyncratic conceptions to con-ventional conceptions, invent cognitive premises and assumptions, and then filter out theunconventional ones during conceptual development.

Second, in terms of the communicative situation, a metapragmatic knowledge of linguisticconventions can be seen at the age of 6 although literal interpretation remains predominant.At age 9, the contextual features of the communicative situation reach their highest, andthe ability to demonstrate linguistic convention is also increased. For adults, metapragmat-ic knowledge is primarily related to linguistic conventions and, to a lesser extent, to thecontextual features of the communicative situation.

Finally, the results of our experiments confirmed our hypothesis that children have aunique understanding of plant idioms. How do children analogize the plant vehicles in idio-matic expressions relating to plants? They use their knowledge about plants, knowledge ofthe world, and educated guesses. As educated guess is an ‘inference and estimation basedon experience and certain knowledge’ (Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary 2003, 11thEdition). Our word card task and metapragmatic task indicated that 6-year-olds distinguishthe attributes of humans, animals and plants. For example, when asked the meaning ofxin1-hua1-duo3-duo3-kai1 ‘heart-flower-each-open = to be extra delighted and joy-ful’, 6-year-old participant No. 3 said ‘petals are beautiful when they bloom’ which showedhis knowledge about plants. When asked the meaning of tu4-zi-bu4-chi1-wo1-bian1-cao3

‘rabbits-do not-eat-nest-side-grass = rabbits do not eat the grass near theirlair to protect their home from being seen; one does not harm his close ones or neighbors’,6-year-old participant No. 10 replied that ‘rabbits don’t eat grass, but carrots’. She showed herknowledge about an animal. The 6-year-olds’ knowledge about the world showed especiallywhen they made novel interpretations. When 6-year-old participant No. 8 was asked aboutzhi2-wu4-ren2 , he said ‘people unlike those of us who can walk around’ because heunderstands the difference between a person and a plant: Plants do not spontaneously move.Furthermore, some children turned serious when given the meaning of zhi2-wu4-ren2. They recognized that zhi2-wu4-ren2 is almost as severe as death. As Barrett and Behne(2005) pointed out, 4-year-olds understand death as the cessation of the ability to act.

Young children consider humans, other animals, and plants as biological bodies with thesame underlying mechanisms just as Inagaki and Hatano (1993) proposal about vitalisticbiology, which says that 5- and 6-year-olds understand biological phenomena in terms ofvitalism. The role of plant names in languages is substantial. Lévi-Strauss (1963) believesthat plants are nature’s material for mankind’s languages and assumes “their ability to serve

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as symbols expressing contrasts and oppositions” (1963: 2). The results of our study supportthese assumptions.

Conclusion

In the present study, we investigated the understanding of idiomatic expressions in Manda-rin-speaking Taiwanese children, particularly the underlying cognitive processes used forcomprehending such expressions. Children with normal cognitive and linguistic profiles butin different age groups were tested with plant-related idiomatic expressions that also havepossible literal meanings. The respective roles of context and linguistic convention wereexamined.

Our findings show that (1) familiarity affected the responses of the 6-year-olds when nocontext was provided, and the effect was significant in the responses of the 9-year-olds.(2) Context was important in idiom comprehension for all three groups of subjects. For the6-year-olds, the use of the idiomatic context can successfully help to produce more idio-matic answers than the literal context. The 9-year-olds, however, generally ended the storiesaccording to the context. The adults tended to use their knowledge of linguistic convention.(3) Linguistic convention begins affecting how Mandarin-speaking children understand Chi-nese idioms at the age of 6, but that the effect is not significant until they are about 9 yearsold. (4) Metapragmatic knowledge showed at the age of 6 in the present study, but it mightbe a factor in younger children’s understanding of Chinese idioms.

Moreover, because context and linguistic convention have a substantial impact on idiomcomprehension, it is necessary to take context and linguistic convention into considerationto explain language functioning and communicative situations. Finally, children use theirknowledge about humans and other biological bodies, such as plants, to perceive, interactwith, and understand the real world. The role of plants in language is substantial for under-standing idioms and the underlying mechanisms of human communication.

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Idiom Comprehension in Mandarin-Speaking Children