中文「老」字之第一語言習得研究

Abstract

本研究旨在探討以中文為母語之兒童對中文「老」字的隱喻辭意理解，主要探討的議題包括標誌理論、語意透明度、生命效應、題型效應以及年齡因素。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。在題型效應方面，兒童在選擇題測驗的表現比口頭詮釋測驗好，顯示兒童在辨識隱喻用語語意之能力優先於口頭詮釋。最後，年齡是習得隱喻用語的關鍵因素，七歲兒童仍在理解字面語意階段，八歲及九歲兒童雖能理解隱喻用語，但仍未達到成人能力的階段，十歲及十一歲兒童已能理解隱喻用語搭配無生命名詞；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 focuses on the specific figurative expression lao which can be interpreted both literally and non-literally in Chinese. It aims to investigate Chinese-speaking children’s understanding of lao by examining five factors: the difficulty of metaphoricality, the degree of transparency, animacy effect, task effect, and age effect. Two comprehension tasks (i.e., interpretation and multiple-choice) were conducted and both of them were presented in a designed story scenario. The subjects were one hundred children in the elementary school in Taiwan, and they were further divided into five groups according to their ages (i.e., 7 year-olds to 11-year-olds). Also, twenty adults were recruited as the control group. The results showed that the literal meaning of lao was found easier to comprehend than the non-literal meaning of lao. With regard to the degree of transparency in the non-literal meanings of lao, the opaque non-literal meaning was found to be challenging for all the children. Concerning the task effects, no matter which type of meanings of lao, the subjects performed significantly better on the Multiple-choice task than on the Interpretation task. Finally, the results indicates that children at age 7 could only comprehend the literal meaning of lao, but those 8 to 9-year-olds could comprehend the non-literal meanings of lao and lao with inanimate NPs in particular, although their performances were still not adult-like. Our 10 to 11-year-old subjects were found to be able to comprehend the non-literal meanings of lao with both animate and inanimate NPs.