Yang Junyi, Grøver Vibeke, Lawrence Joshua F
Department of Education, University of Oslo, Oslo, NORWAY.
J Child Lang. 2025 Jul;52(4):918-944. doi: 10.1017/S0305000924000266. Epub 2024 Oct 2.
Idioms play an important role in language; however, little research has examined idioms in children's natural language settings. This study explored idioms usage in maternal talk during mother-child shared book reading and its relation to children's vocabulary development. Thirty-three Chinese children in Norway (aged 3;0-5;5) and their mothers participated. We observed shared reading at the onset of the study and assessed children's receptive and expressive vocabulary in Chinese three times across one year. Results demonstrated that mothers used an average of 1.8 idioms and explained one-third of the idioms. Maternal idiom usage was correlated with their talk amount and lexical diversity. Individual growth modeling revealed that the number of idioms mothers used predicted the growth of children's receptive vocabulary in Chinese. We speculate that idiom usage could be an effective and understudied marker of parental linguistic sophistication. This study underscores the importance of idiom exposure in children's language environment.
习语在语言中起着重要作用；然而，很少有研究在儿童的自然语言环境中考察习语。本研究探讨了母子共读绘本时母亲话语中的习语使用情况及其与儿童词汇发展的关系。33名在挪威的中国儿童（年龄在3岁0个月至5岁5个月之间）及其母亲参与了研究。在研究开始时我们观察了共读情况，并在一年中三次评估儿童的汉语接受性和表达性词汇。结果表明，母亲平均使用1.8个习语，并对三分之一的习语进行了解释。母亲的习语使用与她们的话语量和词汇多样性相关。个体成长模型显示，母亲使用习语的数量预测了儿童汉语接受性词汇的增长。我们推测，习语使用可能是一个有效但未被充分研究的体现父母语言复杂性的指标。本研究强调了在儿童语言环境中接触习语的重要性。
