Cacciari C, Levorato M C
J Child Lang. 1989 Jun;16(2):387-405. doi: 10.1017/s0305000900010473.
Some studies have shown that children tend to interpret figurative language literally. Our hypothesis is that they can reach an idiomatic competence if idioms are presented within a rich informational environment allowing children to grasp their figurative sense. First and third graders were presented with narratives biased both to the figurative meaning of idioms (experiment 1) and to the literal meaning (experiment 2) and then given a comprehension task. Experiment 3 was designed to investigate children's production of idioms as compared to the comprehension abilities explored in experiments 1 and 2. Results show that informative contexts can improve children's ability to perceive idiomatic meanings even at the age of seven; and that children are less able to produce idioms than to comprehend them. Generally results emphasize that children seem able to perceive that language can be both figurative and literal.
一些研究表明，儿童倾向于从字面意义上理解比喻性语言。我们的假设是，如果习语出现在丰富的信息环境中，使儿童能够领会其比喻意义，他们就能达到习语能力。我们向一年级和三年级学生呈现了偏向习语比喻意义的叙述（实验1）和偏向字面意义的叙述（实验2），然后让他们完成一项理解任务。实验3旨在研究儿童习语的产出情况，并与实验1和实验2中探索的理解能力进行比较。结果表明，即使在七岁时，信息丰富的语境也能提高儿童领会习语意义的能力；而且儿童产出习语的能力不如理解习语的能力。总体而言，结果强调儿童似乎能够意识到语言既可以是比喻性的，也可以是字面性的。
