Nippold M A, Haq F S
University of Oregon, Eugene, USA.
J Speech Hear Res. 1996 Feb;39(1):166-76. doi: 10.1044/jshr.3901.166.
This study examined factors that were posited to play an important role in the development of proverb comprehension in school-age children and adolescents, namely, the concreteness and the familiarity of the expressions. Normally achieving students enrolled in Grades 5, 8, and 11 (n = 180) were administered a written forced-choice task that contained eight instances of four different types of proverbs: concrete-familiar ("A rolling stone gathers no moss"); concrete-unfamiliar ("A caged bird longs for the clouds"); abstract-familiar ("Two wrongs don't make a right"); and abstract-unfamiliar ("Of idleness comes no goodness"). Performance on the task steadily improved as a function of increasing grade level and, as predicted, the expressions proved to be differentially challenging: Concrete proverbs were easier to understand than abstract proverbs, and familiar proverbs were easier to understand than unfamiliar proverbs. The results concerning concreteness support the "metasemantic" hypothesis, the view that comprehension develops through active analysis of the words contained in proverbs. The results concerning familiarity support the "language experience" hypothesis, the view that comprehension develops through meaningful exposure to proverbs.
本研究考察了被认为在学龄儿童和青少年谚语理解发展中起重要作用的因素，即表达的具体性和熟悉度。选取了正常就读于五年级、八年级和十一年级的学生（n = 180），让他们完成一项书面强制选择任务，该任务包含四种不同类型谚语的八个例子：具体且熟悉的（“滚石不生苔”）；具体但不熟悉的（“笼中之鸟向往云”）；抽象且熟悉的（“两个错误不等于一个正确”）；以及抽象但不熟悉的（“游手好闲没有善果”）。随着年级的升高，任务表现稳步提高，并且正如预期的那样，这些表达被证明具有不同程度的挑战性：具体谚语比抽象谚语更容易理解，熟悉的谚语比不熟悉的谚语更容易理解。关于具体性的结果支持了“元语义”假说，即认为理解是通过对谚语中所含词语的积极分析而发展的观点。关于熟悉度的结果支持了“语言经验”假说，即认为理解是通过有意义地接触谚语而发展的观点。
