La comprensión de enunciados metafóricos a edades tempranasestudio con niños hispanohablantes de 3 y 4 años

  1. Peláez Torres, Marta 1
  1. 1 Universidade de Vigo
    info

    Universidade de Vigo

    Vigo, España

    ROR https://ror.org/05rdf8595

Revista:
ELUA: Estudios de Lingüística. Universidad de Alicante

ISSN: 0212-7636,  2171-6692

Ano de publicación: 2024

Número: 41

Páxinas: 129-144

Tipo: Artigo

DOI: 10.14198/ELUA.25038 DIALNET GOOGLE SCHOLAR lock_openRUA editor

Outras publicacións en: ELUA: Estudios de Lingüística. Universidad de Alicante

Resumo

The metaphor is a phenomenon of very high frequency in human communication, although its comprehension requires complex interpretative processes. Until recent years, most of the work showed a late development of the comprehension of non-literal utterances, at about 7-10-year-old (Winner et al. 1976; Johnson 1982; Dryll 2009), while recent studies have noted the possibility of earlier development, at 3 or 4 years old (Siqueira & Gibbs 2007; Pouscoulous & Tomasello 2019). Thus, the main aims of this study are (i) to examine the early comprehension of non-literal utterances of the metaphoric field from a pragmatic perspective in a Spanish-speaking group considering age and gender variables, and (ii) to analyse the relationship between metaphoric comprehension and specific semantic knowledge. For that purpose, we took a sample of 115 children aged 3 and 4, all Spanish native speakers, and a visual comprehension test —image selection— of perceptive metaphors was performed at a first moment, trying with this type of test to avoid including methodological complexity to the task. Secondly, a semantic verification test was performed to evaluate the knowledge of the words which are necessary for a correct pragmatic interpretation of the first test. Collected data was analysed with SPSS Statistical programme. The results of the research provide scientific evidence for an earlier development of pragmatic abilities as children of the analysed ages proved to be able to correctly interpret the metaphoric utterances of this study, being age a significative and constant predictor variable. The other analysed variable did not prove to be statistically significative when interpreting the results. As for the second aim, a positive and significative correlation is established between metaphoric comprehension level and specific semantic knowledge. This work has provided scientific evidence to an emerging field of study in which only future research will solve those questions still with an answer.

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Fonte de datos: Dialnet