兒童的喻義理解發展：以「老」字之母語習得為例

The Development of Figurative Meanings in Children: A Case Study of L1 ‘Lao’

本研究旨在探討以中文為母語之兒童對「老」字的喻義理解，主要探討的議題包括隱喻意義、語意透明度和生命效應等因素。本研究包含兩個理解能力測驗：口頭詮釋測驗與選擇題測驗。研究對象包含實驗組的一百位兒童，依平均年齡七歲至十一歲分成五組，每組二十人，以及對照組的二十位成人。
研究結果顯示，字面意義比隱喻意義容易習得。其中，兒童對語意較模糊的隱喻用語有較多錯誤，兒童的理解能力隨著年齡增長而增加。「老」的生命效應除了與修飾的名詞搭配有關之外，亦與隱喻意義之辨識有關。最後，研究發現，七歲兒童仍在理解字面語意階段，兒童十歲後方能理解隱喻用語搭配有生命與無生命名詞；總言之，兒童對於「老」隱喻用語之習得能力隨著年齡增長而提升。

The present study aims to investigate Chinese-speaking children’s understanding of lao， which can be interpreted both literally (as meaning “old”) and non-literally in Chinese. Two comprehension tasks were conducted to examine three factors: metaphoricity， transparency and animacy. The subjects were one hundred elementary school children， between 7 and 11 years old， and they were further divided into five age groups. And twenty adults made up the adult group. The results showed that the literal meaning of lao was found easier to comprehend than its non-literal meaning. The opaque non-literal meaning of lao was more challenging than the transparent literal meaning for all the children. With regard to animacy， our children tended to comprehend lao when used in animate noun phrases (NPs) more easily than when used in inanimate NPs. Finally， the results indicate that children at age 7 could only comprehend the literal meaning of lao， and that the non-literal meanings of lao when used in both animate and inanimate NPs could not be fully acquired until age 10.