LA COMPRENSIÓN DE ALGUNAS EXTENSIONES SEMÁNTICAS

Transcription

UNIVERSIDAD DE EXTREMADURA
FACULTAD DE FILOSOFÍA Y LETRAS
Departamento de Filologías Inglesa y Alemana
LA COMPRENSIÓN DE ALGUNAS
EXTENSIONES SEMÁNTICAS DE LOS
LEXEMAS ‘HAND’, ‘MOUTH’ Y ‘HEAD’ EN LAS
PRIMERAS ETAPAS DEL APRENDIZAJE DEL
INGLÉS
YOUNG EFL LEARNERS’
UNDERSTANDING OF SOME SEMANTIC
EXTENSIONS OF THE LEXEMES ‘HAND’,
‘MOUTH’ AND ‘HEAD’
Ana Mª Piquer Píriz
Cáceres, 2004
UNIVERSIDAD DE EXTREMADURA
Facultad de Filosofía y Letras
La comprensión de algunas extensiones semánticas de los
lexemas ‘hand’, ‘mouth’ y ‘head’ en las primeras etapas
del aprendizaje del inglés
Young EFL learners’ understanding of some semantic
extensions of the lexemes ‘hand’, ‘mouth’ and ‘head’
Vº. Bº
La Directora
Trabajo presentado por Ana Mª Piquer Píriz y
realizado bajo la supervisión de la Dra. D. Fiona
MacArthur para optar al grado de Doctor.
CÁCERES
2004
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to thank the Consejería de Educación, Ciencia y Tecnología de la Junta
de Extremadura (Extremadura Regional Government’s Department of Education, Science
and Technology) for supporting this research (Grant no. FIC00A008).
I would also like to thank my supervisor Dr. Fiona MacArthur for introducing me to
research and because she has made this dissertation possible. Without her guidance,
encouragement and the time she has devoted to it, this piece of work would have never
come out.
This dissertation has also been possible thanks to ‘my’ 148 children, who ‘suffered’
the experiments and my presence in the classroom and to the three schools that agreed to
take part in the project: C.P. ‘Delicias’, C.P. ‘El Vivero’ and C.P. ‘Donoso Cortés’. I am
especially grateful to Ángel and Gloria who generously opened their classrooms to me and
were always extremely kind and supportive.
My research visits to Leeds university, which were possible thanks to Dr. Alice
Deignan, have enriched this piece of work in many different ways. The discussions of my
work with her, Dr. Lynne Cameron and Dr. Graham Low have been especially enlightening
and I am very grateful to them.
I would also like to thank Dr. José Antonio Hoyas Solís for his counselling and
constant encouragement and Dr. Rosario Caballero Rodríguez for listening to my
‘struggles’ with certain notions and offering her help at all times.
And finally, I would like to thank my loved ones for their unconditional love and
encouragement. Those who are far but near: Barbara, Charlotte and Joe, who always make
me want to go back to Leeds; and Philippa, who kindly put me up in the ‘lucky’ house. And
those who are always around: Mónica and Ali, who have looked after me during the hardest
moments; Jose, who has always encouraged me to go on; and my parents, who have taught
me to be the kind of person I am.
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
1. Purpose of the research
2. Context
3. Methodology
4. Outline of the dissertation
PART ONE: BACKGROUND
I. POLYSEMY: SEMANTIC EXTENSION THROUGH METONYMY AND METAPHOR
1. Semantic change, semantic extension and polysemy
2. Metonymy and metaphor in semantic extension
II. YOUNG EFL LEARNERS AND FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
1. Young learners of English as a Foreign Language
2. Figurative language in the EFL classroom
2.1 The ubiquity of figurative language
2.2 Figurative language as a cognitive tool
2.3 The affective element of figurative expressions
2.4 The socio-cultural component of figurative language
2.5 Figurative competence in Foreign Language Learning
2.6 Figurative expressions in EFL course materials
III. THINKING AND SPEAKING FIGURATIVELY IN CHILDHOOD
1. Children’s figurative competence in the L1
2. Children’s development in the production of figurative language
3. Children’s development in the understanding of figurative language
PART TWO. APPLICATION
I. STUDY 1. THREE SEMANTICS EXTENSIONS OF HAND
1. Participants
2. Stimuli and design
3. Procedure
4. Results
4.1 Seven-year-olds
4.1.1 Case 1. Give me a hand
4.1.2 Case 2. The hands of a watch
4.1.3 Case 3. Hand it to me
4.1.4 Discussion
4.2 Nine-year-olds
4.2.4 Discussion
4.3 Eleven-year-olds
4.3.4 Discussion
4.4. General discussion
II. STUDY 2. A SEMANTIC EXTENSION OF MOUTH
1. Participants
3. Procedure
4. Results
4.1 Seven-year-olds
4.1.1 Not open one’s mouth
4.1.2 Discussion
4.2 Nine-year-olds
4.2.2 Discussion
4.3.2 Discussion
4.4 General discussion
III. STUDY 3. FOUR SEMANTIC EXTENSIONS OF HEAD
1. Participants
3. Procedure
4. Results
4.1 Five-year-olds
4.1.1 The head of a bed
4.1.2 The head of a hammer
4.1.3 The head of a line of cars
4.1.4 The head of the stairs
4.1.5 Discussion
4.2 Seven-year-olds
4.2.5 Discussion
4.3 Nine-year-olds
4.3.5 Discussion
4.4.5 Discussion
4.5 General discussion
CONCLUSIONS
REFERENCES
APPENDIX
APPENDIX
APPENDIX
APPENDIX
A. Stimuli designed for Study 1
B. Stimuli designed for Study 2
C. Stimuli designed for Study 3
D. Transcription conventions
TABLES
Table 1.1. Quantitative results of Study 1 (7-year-olds)
Table 1.4. Quantitative results of Study 1 (Participants’ selection of hand)
Table 2.1. Quantitative results of Study 2 (7-year-olds. ‘Delicias A’)
Table 2.2. Quantitative results of Study 2 (7-year-olds. ‘Delicias B’)
Table 2.3. Quantitative results of Study 2 (7-year-olds. ‘Vivero’)
Table 2.6. Quantitative results of Study 2 (all the groups)
Figure 2.0. Steps involved in the understanding of not open one’s mouth
Figure 3.0
Table 3.1. Quantitative results of Study 3 (5-year-olds. The head of a bed)
Table 3.2. Quantitative results of Study 3 (5-year-olds. The head of a hammer)
Table 3.3. Quantitative results of Study 3 (5-year-olds. The head of a line of cars)
Table 3.4. Quantitative results of Study 3 (5-year-olds. The head of the stairs)
Table 3.5. Cross-check of two 5-year-olds’ answers to the four semantic extensions
Table 3.10. Cross-check of a 7-year-old’ answers to the four semantic extensions
Table 3.13. Quantitative results of Study 3 (9-year-olds. The head of a line of cars )
Table 3.15. Cross-check of two 9-year-olds’ answers to the four semantic extensions
Table 3.19. Quantitative results of Study 3 (11-year-olds. The head of a line of the stairs)
Table 3.20. Quantitative results of Study 3 (all the groups)
INTRODUCTION
Introduction
1. PURPOSE OF THE RESEARCH
A remark overheard from a 5-year-old at school when watering a plant encapsulates
some of the assumptions and conclusions reached in this dissertation. Observing the water
running out of the flower pot, the child said: “se está meando” (it’s peeing). This ability to
use a linguistic expression that refers to one domain of experience in order to talk about
another demonstrates our human ability, even at very early ages, to speak and reason
figuratively.
The semantic extension of terms through the transfer from a concrete (or literal) to
an abstract (or figurative) sense has received a great deal of attention in recent decades
from a variety of perspectives such as cognitive linguistics (Lakoff and Johnson 1980;
Brugman 1981; Lakoff 1987; Sweetser 1990; Taylor 2002 or Cuyckens, Dirven and Taylor
2003), corpus analysis (Deignan 1999a, 1999b, 1999c or Gries in press), lexicography
(Aitchison 2003) or child language studies (Elbers 1988 or Nerlich, Clarke and Todd 1999).
From all these perspectives metaphor and metonymy are seen as playing an important role
in this process. These two mechanisms, which are figurative in the sense that they imply
seeing something in terms of something else, are seen to differ in that in the case of
metaphor, the transfer occurs between two well-differentiated domains whereas in the case
of metonymy, the transfer is within a specific domain.
The figurative motivation for the polysemous use of linguistic items promises to
enrich current approaches to the teaching and learning of vocabulary in ELT. Indeed, as a
number of studies have shown, understanding or operationalising the figurative motivation
for diverse types of linguistic expressions in English can aid both their comprehension and
their memorisation (Lindstromberg 1991; Ponterotto 1994; Kövecses and Szabò 1996;
Lazar 1996; Deignan, Gabrys and Solska 1997; Boers and Demecheleer 1998; Boers 2000
or Herrera and White 2000). To date, all these studies have focused on adolescents and
adult learners of English. However, the possibility that such motivation for semantic
8
Introduction
extension might be useful at earlier stages of the learning process has been ignored. In the
context of the Spanish educational system, in which English is a compulsory subject of the
curriculum from, at least, the age of six, it would seem pertinent to ask whether children of
these ages might not benefit from a similar approach. After all, children are not unable to
understand figurative language uses, as the research into the growth of figurative
competence1 in childhood has found (Gentner 1977; Vosniadou 1987; Winner 1988 or
Cameron 1996, 2003a). This research, carried out on monolingual children, has mostly
focused on metaphor, examining children’s ability to understand the linguistic expression
of analogies or similarities between two different concepts. Given the fact that many
children are raised speaking more than one language or learn a foreign language at an early
age, it seems relevant to explore whether the capacity to transfer from the literal to the
figurative senses of a term is also available to children in these contexts2. This dissertation,
thus, focuses on analysing the ability to transfer from the literal to the figurative meanings
of a word in young Spanish learners of English as a Foreign Language (EFL). In this sense,
this piece of work has two main aims:
1.
To explore whether young (5-, 7-, 9-, and 11-year-old) Spanish learners of
EFL are able to identify semantic extensions of English core lexical items,
the prototypical meaning of which they know from their English lessons.
2.
To analyse what kind of reasoning is involved in the children’s
recognition of these figurative senses.
1
Throughout this dissertation, the term ‘competence’ is used in its neutral sense, that is, the ability to do
something well or effectively. It is not related to the Chomskyan notion of ‘competence’.
2
In a state of the art article on metaphor published in 1999, Cameron and Low (1999b: 85) noted that: “also
in need of investigation are the use of metaphor in foreign language teaching materials aimed at young
learners, and the development of metaphor when an L2 is learnt in formal educational settings.”
9
Introduction
This study in turn, hopes to contribute to enrich pedagogical proposals for teaching
English at early ages.
10
Introduction
2. CONTEXT
Three state schools Colegio Público (C.P.)3 ‘Delicias’, C.P. ‘Donoso Cortés’ and
C.P. ‘El Vivero’ in Extremadura (western Spain) took part in the research project. The
project started in April 2002 with an observation phase that allowed me to become familiar
with the children, and the pedagogical techniques and materials employed at different ages.
In Spanish schools, EFL is taught by a qualified teacher who usually teaches only English
to various forms. The lessons observed were taught by the same teacher with different
groups in both schools. At that stage, the groups observed were in Pre-school (3-, 4- and 5year-olds) and the three first years of Primary school (6-, 7- and 8-year-olds). In that
academic year (2001-2002), English was introduced in the Pre-school years in Extremadura
for the first time. It was compulsory from the age of five throughout the region, but there
were only a few schools, including these two, in which the programme was piloted with 3and 4-year-olds.
The researcher was introduced to the youngest children as a ‘teacher’s friend who
also spoke English and was going to visit them regularly’. The children found my presence
in the classroom quite normal, probably because they were used to having trainee teachers
with them at certain periods.
Both schools were visited twice a week until the end of June 2002. During these
visits, which lasted the whole school day (from 9.00 am to 2.00 pm), notes about classwork
were taken and worksheets and other materials used were collected. The set texts employed
were also consulted before and during the lessons.
In the academic year 2002-2003, the observation phase of the research project
continued from the beginning of November until the end of February, in the C.P. ‘Delicias’
alone, because the EFL teacher had stopped working in the C.P. ‘Donoso Cortés’. From
3
‘C.P’ is the acronym for ‘Colegio Público’ which means State School.
11
Introduction
February to May 2003, the same observation work was done with a different teacher in the
C.P. ‘El Vivero’. In this case, I observed all Primary school years (children aged 6, 7, 8, 9,
10 and 11) and two groups of 5-year-olds. The experimental phase of the project started
with the children at the C.P. ‘Delicias’ at the end of February 2003 and in the C.P. ‘El
Vivero’ in mid-May and finished at the end of June 2003 in both schools.
In the Spanish educational system, Primary education is divided into three stages of
two-year-periods known as ‘ciclos’: first ‘ciclo’ (6- and 7-year-olds), second ‘ciclo’ (8- and
9-year-olds) and third ‘ciclo’ (10- and 11-year-olds). It was decided to work with the final
year of each ‘ciclo’ (7-, 9- and 11-year-olds) as well as the final year of Pre-school, that is,
with the 5-year-olds. In the end, there were three groups from the C.P. ‘Delicias’ (one 5year-old group and two 7-year-old groups), and five groups from the C.P. ‘El Vivero’ (two
5-year-old groups and one group of each of the remaining ages: 7-, 9- and 11- year-olds.) A
total number of 148 children participated in the experimental studies.
12
Introduction
3. METHODOLOGY
In order to explore the two main research questions posed above, three experimental
tasks were designed. For each task, some semantic extensions of a core lexical item of the
semantic field of body parts were selected. Thus, the semantic extensions of HAND give me
a hand, the hands of a watch and hand it to me were used in Study 1. For Study 2, the
figurative extension of
MOUTH
not open one’s mouth was chosen. Finally, four extensions
of HEAD, the head of a bed, the head of hammer and the head of a line of cars and the head
of the stairs, were selected for Study 3. As can be seen, these semantic extensions illustrate
different types of figurative language: there are two idioms4 (give me a hand and not open
one’s mouth), nominal realisations (the four semantic extensions of HEAD and the hands of
a watch) and a verbal realisation (hand it to me). The specific semantic field of body parts
was chosen for two reasons: in the first place, figurative extensions of concrete body parts
are very productive in semantic extensions, and, secondly, the lexical set comprised in this
domain receives a great deal of attention at early stages of EFL.
Varied types of stimuli were used in the three studies. In Study 1 a situation or case
in which they would be appropriately used was devised for each the three semantic
extensions. Each situation was presented orally, accompanied by a multiple-choice answer
with three options (see Appendix A). In this study, the participants had to identify the most
logical candidate for use among several body part words. The stimuli used in study 2 were
a short story told to the children in English and three visual story strips to illustrate its
contents and facilitate its comprehension (see Appendix B). The story ended with the idiom
not open one’s mouth and was followed by a comprehension question with two optional
answers (a literal paraphrase of the figurative expression and a distractor). The children’s
4
What different scholars understand by idiom may vary very widely (see, for example, Moon 1998 for
discussion). Different definitions of this concept arise mainly from different conceptions of the nature, lexicogrammatical features, mental processing or motivation for idiomatic expressions. In this dissertation, idioms
are understood as multi-word, non-literal expressions recognised and accepted within the English-speaking
community, which show particular semantic and syntactic features.
13
Introduction
task was to choose one of the two options. In Study 3, the participants were provided with
four photographs which represented each of the four elements referred to in the figurative
uses of
HEAD:
a bed, a hammer, a line of cars and a staircase (See Appendix C). The task
consisted in marking the part of each element in the photograph they considered to be the
head. In all the studies, they participants were also asked to explain their choices.
The children were tested either in small groups of three to five subjects (Studies 1
and 3) or in their usual forms in class (Study 2). Group work was felt the most appropriate
for several reasons. In the first place, the participants feel comfortable because they are
working in a very similar context to that of their usual classroom rather than in an artificial
situation. This encourages them to speak more freely and without any pressure and produce
the desired qualitative data. Secondly, working with groups promotes interaction among its
members, sometimes giving rise to discussions on collective experience and background
knowledge of a group of individuals, in this case children of the same age. Thirdly, these
experimental tasks are designed to test children’s ability to apprehend figurative meanings.
It has been argued that negotiation of meaning with adults, older siblings or peers is an
important factor in children’s understanding of new concepts in natural occurring contexts
(Vygostky 1962; Wood, Bruner and Ross 1976 or Cameron 1996, 2001). In this sense,
group working fosters negotiation of meaning among peers, as will be seen in some of the
examples of the children’s answers. Finally, as one of the specific aims of the studies is to
shed light on pedagogical issues, the classroom itself is the most natural context for
experimental work to be carried out.
As has been noted above, in the three studies the children were asked to identify the
semantic extensions according to the task designed and to explain their answers. The
children’s answers and explanations were tape-recorded5 and transcribed (transcription
conventions are presented in Appendix D). Transcription is orthographic and does not
5
As Seale (1999: 148) notes, adding reliability to the research involves “recording observations in terms that
are as concrete as possible, including verbatim accounts of what people say, for example, rather than
researchers' reconstructions of the general sense of what a person said, which would allow researchers'
personal perspectives to influence the reporting.”
14
Introduction
record overlaps or length of pauses. The transcriptions have been translated into English as
literally as possible.
This way of carrying out the studies, which involved the children freely explaining
their interpretations, provided a considerable amount of data that needed to be examined.
The data has been interpreted from both a quantitative and qualitative perspective. The
latter technique, involving the analysis of the individual answers, proved to be illuminating
as regards the second research question addressed: exploring the kind of reasoning involved
in the children’s understanding of these semantic extensions. A quantitative analysis of the
data was also carried out because, as Silverman points out, quantification is useful in the
following terms:
simple counting techniques can offer a means to survey the whole corpus data
ordinarily lost in intensive, qualitative research. Instead of taking the researcher's
word for it, the reader has a chance to gain a sense of the flavour of the data as a
whole. In turn, researchers are able to test and to revise the accuracy of their
impressions about the data. (Silverman 2001: 35)
However, as will be seen in the discussion of the data of the experiments, statistics
were not able to capture the complexity of the results of this experimental research. In most
cases, the qualitative analysis rectifies quantitative results and clarifies the data.
Some authors (Fielding and Fielding 1986) have argued that in order to validate the
results of any research it is necessary to compare different kinds of data (e.g. quantitative
and qualitative) or different methods (e.g. observation and interviews) to see whether they
corroborate one another. The research presented in this dissertation cannot be validated by
means of this type of triangulation because the two methodologies show different results.
Due to the nature of quantitative analysis, many variables that affect the children’s verbal
responses are not considered in this account and the results it offers are, therefore, biased.
Besides, as some authors have pointed out, triangulation can pose other problems. For
instance, Silverman says:
15
Introduction
the major problem with triangulation as a test of validity is that, by counterposing
different contexts, it ignores the context-bound and skilful character of social
interaction and assumes that members are 'cultural dopes', who need a social scientist
to dispel their illusions. (Silverman 2001: 235)
This view of the context-dependence of learning and reasoning is adopted in this
dissertation, for it cannot be ignored that children’s exposure to English takes place in
group settings. Therefore, mechanisms such as collaborating or expanding on others’
reasoning will reflect, albeit partially, the normal dynamics of classroom interaction.
16
Introduction
4. OUTLINE OF THE DISSERTATION
This dissertation is organised in two main parts. Part One discusses the general
background of the study and consists of three sections. Section I provides a very brief
overview of the phenomena of polysemy, semantic change, and semantic extension and the
role played by metonymy and metaphor in the meaning extension of core lexemes. Section
II is devoted to the discussion of the expansion of EFL to ever younger ages, the
characteristics of figurative language that justify its treatment in the EFL classroom and its
actual presence in EFL course materials. Section III briefly surveys the literature into the
development of figurative competence in the L1, focusing mainly on children’s
development of production and understanding of figurative language. As will be seen in
these sections, there is often little overlap between scholars working on the phenomenon of
figurative language use. The point of view of cognitive linguistics on the role of metonymy
and metaphor in polysemy –or figurative language use in general – does not necessarily
underlie the theoretical premises of psychological research in First Language Acquisition.
A similar problem can be perceived in the pedagogical application of metaphor research to
EFL (see, for example, Low 2003).
Part Two presents the experimental work carried out and reports on three studies.
Thus, Section I is devoted to Study I (Three semantic extensions of
devoted to Study 2 (A semantic extension of
semantic extensions of
HEAD).
MOUTH)
HAND),
Section II is
and Section III to Study 3 (Four
The three sections include subsections devoted to the
participants, the stimuli and design, the procedure, the results of each age group for every
semantic extension and a general discussion.
A final section is devoted to the conclusions of this piece of research. A list of
references and several appendices referring to the experimental part are also included.
17
PART ONE:
BACKGROUND
The idea that language users can fulfil their communicative needs with a limited
number of lexical items is not new. Ogden’s (1934, 1968), Richards’s (1943) or West’s
(1953) lists illustrate attempts to compile the core vocabulary of the English language most
frequently used in everyday communication. The number of words included vary from one
scholar to another. Thus, Ogden’s ‘Basic English’ consists of 850 words whereas West’s
list has 2,000. More recent proposals (Nation 1990 or Peyarwary 1999) have applied the
methods and techniques of corpus linguistics, finding 2,000 such core lexemes6 in use
across different types of discourse. A superficial examination of the lexical items
comprised in such lists shows that the most common are function words such as pronouns,
prepositions or determiners along with highly frequent nouns (man, woman or house),
verbs (make, come or go) and adjectives (hot, warm, bad or good). The most significant
feature of such lexical items is that they are highly polysemous. In this sense, a speaker’s
capacity to communicate in different contexts and express ideas with a limited number of
lexical items seems to depend on their ‘productivity’, which means that such core lexemes
can extend their basic meaning, either in isolation or in combination with other words. The
patterns of meaning extension are very often systematic but it is important to bear in mind
that there are also specific collocational patterns or fixed expressions that function in a
constrained way, as Nattinger and DeCarrico (1992) find in their analysis of lexical
phrases.
These insights can contribute to TEFL in the sense that helping learners to
communicate in wider contexts with a limited number of vocabulary items is useful for
them at all stages of learning EFL. In fact, this underlies the design of EFL corpora-based
materials such as the Collins COBUILD English Dictionary for Advanced Learners
(henceforth Collins COBUILD Dictionary), which includes frequency bands for the most
common uses, or graded readers (for example the Oxford Bookworm Series). However,
current corpora of the English language reflect adult uses of English, as recorded in
6
In this dissertation, lexeme is used in the sense defined by Moon (1998: 5): “a nexus of related senses
realized by a single set of forms.”
19
different sources such as newspapers, conversations or literature. Given the different
communicative needs, cognitive abilities and linguistic and cultural background of children
and adults, it seems that these materials will not necessarily meet the needs of young EFL
learners. Although databases such as the CHILDES corpus (MacWhinney 1995) might
inform this type of material in children’s EFL, this kind of application is still in its infancy.
Yet young EFL learners may be exposed to polysemous senses of words. Semantic
extensions of, for example, body part terms such as hand it to me or head a ball are relevant
to the social, physical and communicative world of EFL learners even at early stages. In
this sense, pedagogical proposals to enhance learners’ awareness of the motivation of
certain semantic extensions from early stages of learning would be beneficial. In fact, since
the L2 lexicon of a beginner is particularly restricted, helping these learners to use their
vocabulary as productively as possible will be especially helpful to them. In this sense, the
research into the motivation of semantic extension discussed in the next sections is relevant
to young children’s learning of EFL.
20
Semantic change, semantic extension and polysemy
1. SEMANTIC CHANGE, SEMANTIC EXTENSION AND POLYSEMY
As is well-known, the lexicon of any language is in constant development. Words
are lost and others may be added over time, filling gaps in the lexicon or replacing old
terms. It is evident that new and old words are connected and that the latter are often coined
from existing resources through compounding and derivation. However, semantic change
and semantic extension also play major roles in this development of vocabulary.
Semantic change is understood in this piece of work as a diachronic process by
which the meanings of lexemes change over time. For example, the etymology of the
adjective sensible can be traced to Latin sensibilis, in the sense of “perceptible by the
senses”7, according to the Oxford English Dictionary (henceforth OED). A further meaning
of sensible which is also recorded in the OED is “capable of or liable to mental emotion.
Having sensibility; capable of delicate or tender feelings”8. These early meanings have
been lost in contemporary English, and current definitions equate the word with prudence,
good reason and wisdom9. Clark (1993) and Aitchison (2003) have drawn attention to the
fact that the process of semantic change is slow and that the new senses, rather than being
unattached, have some connection with the system. Using the young cuckoo metaphor,
Aitchison describes semantic change as a process of coexistence followed by replacement:
Sounds and words do not gradually 'turn into' one another, as had been assumed.
Instead, a new sound or meaning creeps in alongside the old and coexists, sometimes
for centuries. Eventually, the intruder takes over, like a young cuckoo pushing an
existing occupant out of the nest (…) Multiple births -several new meanings -may
7
The OED glosses this meaning with examples from Chaucer 1374 to 1880.
The last gloss of this sense included in the OED is dated 1760: “Sterne. Serm. III 405. St. Peter certainly
was of a warm and sensible nature.”
9
“Sensible actions or decisions are good because they are based on reasons rather than emotions” (Collins
COBUILD Dictionary); “chosen in accordance with wisdom or prudence; likely to be of benefit” (The New
Oxford Dictionary of English). This latter dictionary also includes the definition “readily perceived;
appreciable” as an archaic use of the word.
8
21
arise, and coexist semi-permanently, often with no loss of the original meaning. The
different senses of the same word overlap, and may remain for centuries. Then
eventually, some of the meanings may drop away. (Aitchison 2003: 154)
In contrast, semantic extension is used to refer to the analogous diachronic process
by which the meanings of a word do not necessarily change, but rather expand over time
(for example, mouse in the contemporary sense of the device connected to a computer). It is
also used to refer to the products of this process, namely, each of the meanings of a given
word that develop from the ‘core’ sense and, therefore, are somehow related to it. However,
the relationship between different senses of a lexeme is often problematic and has received
a great deal of attention from different theoretical perspectives (Wittgenstein 1953; Austin
1961; Berlin and Kay 1969; Rosch and Mervis 1975; Lakoff 1987 or Langacker 1990)
The processes of semantic change and semantic extension underlie polysemy, often
described as the association of two or more related senses with a single phonological form
(Ullman 1962, Sweetser 1990 or Taylor 199510), although in the case of semantic change,
this is diachronic rather than synchronic.
Sweetser describes polysemy as follows: “In polysemy, a morpheme has several
related semantic values” (1990: 76). She distinguishes it from the process of pragmatic
ambiguity in which “a single semantics is pragmatically applied in different ways
according to pragmatic context.” (ibid., p. 76). Traditionally, polysemy has been
distinguished from homonymy, in which two roots that were unrelated historically
converge in form over time (for example, the pupil of a school and the pupil of the eye). An
important insight inferred from this distinction is that polysemy is motivated, and the
different meanings of a polysemous word are not arbitrary. In contrast, the various senses
of a homonym are unrelated; different meanings happen to accidentally share the same
phonological form. Nevertheless, in terms of a person's linguistic understanding, this
distinction may be of little significance, as Taylor points out:
10
"The association of two or more related senses with a single linguistic form" (Taylor, 1995: 99)
22
A speaker's metalinguistic awareness of whether the two senses of a word are related
or not most likely has no consequences at all for the way the person uses the word. It
is sufficient simply that the speaker has learned the appropriate facts of usage.
(Taylor 2003: 645)
It has been argued that, like regular morphological processes, there also exist
general principles of meaning extension. Taylor finds metaphor and metonymy to be
amongst the most productive of these principles but illustrates other patterns of extension
with the various senses of school and museum (building vs. institution) or chicken and
lamb (animal on the hoof vs. edible flesh). These patterns, which are regular and can be
applied quite systematically, contrast with ‘irregular’ principles governing meaning
extension, which are unsystematic and need to be learned, although this does not mean that
they entirely lack motivation. The semantic behaviour of the adjectives ‘high’ and ‘tall’
illustrates an irregular pattern of meaning extension. While the former can be applied to a
wide range of physical and non-physical entities (high wall, high temperature, high price),
its near synomym tall has relatively few non-spatial uses (tall tale, tall story).11
The analysis of polysemy implies a fundamental paradox: whereas polysemy raises
all kind of problematic issues for semanticists or lexicographers, speakers of a language
rarely find a word with multiple senses to be a problem at all (Taylor 2003). Some
theoretical accounts of polysemy see ambiguity as a fundamental issue when processing
polysemous words (Katz and Postal 1964 or Katz 197912). However, according to Taylor,
the fact that for the average language user, polysemy mostly goes unnoticed, and rarely
gives rise to the expected ambiguities, suggests that these theories may actually be
hindering, not aiding, a proper understanding of the phenomenon. In this regard, an
important contribution to the understanding of the processes of semantic change and
extension and their products, polysemous words, has come from cognitive linguistics as
11
All the examples are from Taylor (2003: 643)
Katz, J.J. 1979. Teoría Semántica. Madrid: Aguilar. This is a translation by J. García Puente of the original
work Semantic theory published in 1972 by Harper and Row.
12
23
associated with, for example, Lakoff and Johnson (1980, 1999); Brugman (1981); Lakoff
(1987, 1990, 1993); Sweetser (1990), Taylor (1995, 2002) or Taylor, Cuyckens and Dirven
(2003). Two recent publications devoted to polysemy from the cognitive linguistics
perspective are the collected volumes by Cuyckens and Zawada (2001) or Cuyckens,
Dirven and Taylor (2003).
In this view, a great deal of polysemy can be attributed to figurative usage. Indeed,
it is held that not only our language, but also our cognition operates figuratively. Polysemy
is accounted for within a general approach to human categorisation that rejects the idea that
human reasoning is solely based on the capacity to manipulate abstract symbols. Rather,
human reasoning is held to be grounded in perception, bodily movement, and experience of
a physical and social nature. In this view, metaphor, metonymy and mental imagery are the
means by which abstract concepts, which are not directly grounded in experience, are
understood. This approach is complemented by insights from prototype-theory (Rosch
1977, 1978), basic-level theory (Brown 1958; Berlin and Kay 1969 or Rosch, Mervis,
Gray, Johnson and Boyes-Braem 1976) and the theory of cognitive models (Lakoff 1987).
Within this account, the related meanings of words form categories and the meanings bear
family resemblances to one another. To use Lakoff’s words:
polysemy arises from the fact that there are systematic relationships between
different cognitive models and between elements of the same model. The same word
is often used for elements that stand in such cognitive relations to one another.
(Lakoff 1987: 13)
This view has given rise to different models for lexical networks (Lakoff 1987 or
Langacker 1990) based on the notion that the different meanings of a given lexeme “form a
radially structured category, with a central member and links defined by image-schema
transformation and metaphors” (Lakoff 1987: 460).
The notion of embodiment (Johnson 1987 or Gibbs 2003) is particularly important
in understanding the motivation for polysemy: in this view, human abstract reasoning is
24
embodied, that is, grounded in our sensorimotor experiences and our interaction with the
world. According to Johnson, metonymy and metaphor are the means by which it is
possible “to ground our conceptual systems experientially and to reason in a constrained
but creative fashion” (1992: 351). Thus,
the ‘experiential motivation’ for metaphor
accounts for the systematicity of its products. This notion has been further developed by
Grady in his theory of, first, ‘primitive’ and later ‘primary metaphors’ (Grady, Taub and
Morgan 1996; Grady 1997a, 1997b, 1999a, 1999b). Grady claims that recurrent everyday
experiences give rise to primary metaphors which arise naturally, automatically, and
unconsciously:
[…] a recurring ‘primary scene’, which can be characterized at a very local and
schematic level, involves a tight correlation between two dimensions of experience –
typically with one more directly related to sensory input than the other. Typical of
these scenes is that they are elements of universal human experience –basic sensorimotor, emotional and cognitive experiences which do not depend on the particulars
of culture. (Grady 1999: 85)
Grady’s theory of primary metaphors is complemented by C. Johnson’s ‘conflation
hypothesis’ (1999) which accounts for the natural formation of those primary metaphors in
early
childhood.
According
to
C.
Johnson,
for
young
children,
subjective
(nonsensorimotor) experiences and judgements, on the one hand, and sensorimotor
experiences, on the other, are so regularly conflated, that is, undifferentiated in experience,
that for a time children do not distinguish between the two when they occur together. Early
experiences of vision, for instance, conflate with more subjective judgements such as
SEEING IS UNDERSTANDING
in expressions of the type I see what you mean used by adults.
Although children are exposed to both senses, they initially use the central visual one and
do not distinguish between them. During this period, associations are automatically built up
between the two domains. Later children are able to establish the differences between the
domains, but the associations across them will always persist. This hypothesis introduces a
25
new factor to take into account as regards lexical acquisition, development and
maintenance of polysemy:
CH [Conflation Hypothesis] is not an alternative to MT [Metaphor Theory] in
general. However, it does show that there are alternative explanations for some of the
properties of lexical meanings that MT seeks to explain in terms of general principles
of conceptual relatedness. These alternative explanations rely on the properties of the
contexts in which lexical items are learned. MT must therefore pay more attention to
the role that language learning plays in the historical development and maintenance
of polysemy (…) Instead of assuming that mappings arise as a result of general
correlations in experience, we might hypothesize that many mappings are established
in the language acquisition process by linguistic expressions that call the child’s
attention to certain correlations. (C. Johnson 1999: 167)
The relatively unproblematic view of embodiment as motivating language use as
maintained by scholars such as Lakoff, Johnson or Grady may be also enriched by crosscultural evidence. For instance, cognitive linguists claim that orientational metaphors
motivate polysemous use of prepositions and other expressions. Thus, quantity is
understood in relation to the orientational metaphors
MORE IS UP
and
LESS IS DOWN
and
linguistically realised in expressions such as prices rose, or the market plummeted13.
Similarly, the so-called
TIME ORIENTATION METAPHOR
underlies our conceptualisation of
time. Some of the entailments of this metaphor (The location of the Observer is the Present,
Space in front of the Observer is the Future or Space behind the Observer is the Past) serve
as the grounds for metaphorical expressions such as that’s all behind us now or we’re
looking ahead to the future14.
However, the research into the semantic structure of the spatial domain in different
natural languages has also stressed the different ways that the same phenomenon may be
encoded in different languages.
13
14
Examples from Lakoff (1993: 219)
Examples from Lakoff and Johnson (1999: 140)
26
The spatial domain is of particular interest because human experiences with space
are held to be identical, since human beings are endowed with the same biological features
and can be exposed to similar experiences with the environment. The linguistic encoding of
spatial concepts in different languages is, however, different (Choi and Bowerman 1991,
Bowerman and Choi 2001 or Levinson 2001).
For example, Levinson (2001) discusses the assumption that all languages
foreground the egocentric person-based coordinates of the kind exemplified in English
‘left-right-front-back’ terms. He concludes that this is not the case and, in fact, different
languages make use of three quite different strategies that he calls the ‘Intrinsic’, the
‘Relative’ and the ‘Absolute’ frames of reference15. Not all languages use all three systems
and, indeed, relative concepts like ‘front’, ‘back’, ‘left’ or ‘right’ are neither universal or
learnt early: “Relative as opposed to Intrinsic “front” is mastered only by 3% of Englishspeaking children up to 4;4 and problems with “left” and “right” are notorious.”
(Levinson 2001: 584). Furthermore, Absolute frames are difficult for English speakers.
Similarly, Choi and Bowerman (1991) analyse spontaneous speech produced by
English and Korean children (aged 1-3) talking about similar events that included putting
on and taking off clothing, opening and closing containers or standing up and sitting down,
and also observe semantic variation. While the English children respected the important
English distinction between containment and contact-and-support, the Korean children
distinguished between caused and spontaneous motion along a path. They made no general
distinction between containment and contact and support, but followed the Korean
distinction between ‘interlocked, tight fit’ relations and ‘loose’ relations.
These findings have had important implications for the understanding of the
development of semantic categories (mainly the spatial domain) in children. In the
15
“In the Intrinsic frame, designated facets of the Ground object are used to specify an angle, which in turn
can be used to specify a search domain in which the Figure will be found [back/front]. In the Relative frame,
the body planes of the viewer can be utilized to extract a coordinate system [left/right]. In the Absolute frame,
fixed bearings base ultimately on such things as celestial, meteorological, or landscape constancies can be
used to specify [south/north]” (Levinson 2001: 547)
27
interpretations derived from the so-called Nativist view, children are presumed to come
equipped with a set of semantic primitives for space (for example, Landau and Jackendoff
1993). In this view, learning involves working out how these primitives could be combined
by means of hypothesis formation and rejection or confirmation. Two main difficulties with
crediting this view of children as being endowed with a set of primitives have been pointed
out. In the first place, the kinds of categories that need to be associated with the meanings
of words can vary rather drastically across languages. And secondly, there is little evidence
that children are presuming certain kinds of natural categories, later discarding them in
favour of the local idiosyncrasies. In contrast, Bowerman argues that language guides the
child to form language-specific semantic categories:
I argue that children are prepared from the beginning to accept linguistic guidance as
to which distinctions -from among the set of distinctions that are salient to them they should rely on in organizing particular domains of meaning. (Bowerman,
1985:1285)
The part played by non-linguistic factors in the development of spatial concepts has
also been a controversial factor. Johnston and Slobin (1979) and Johnston (1984), for
example, analyse the development of locative expressions in English, Italian, SerboCroatian and Turkish children and in English children, respectively. Their experiments led
them to the conclusion that children discern the existence of a locative notion first on nonlinguistic grounds. After acquiring these conceptual notions, children need to find what
aspects (syntactic or semantic) are encoded in language and what means are used for this
encoding. This view implies a unidirectional influence of sensorimotor experience on
language. That is, the development of the linguistic classification of space in children
would simply involve matching linguistic forms and physical experience. The belief that
the meanings of spatial morphemes are similar in different languages, presumably because
people interact with space in similar ways, has been adduced in this view. However, as has
been said, work in the line of the studies quoted above (Levinson 2001, and Choi 1991 or
28
Bowerman and Choi 2001) has drawn attention to the fact that spatial situations may be
constructed in various ways, and different languages provide different ways of encoding
these concepts. On the grounds of the patterns of acquisition of English and Korean spatial
concepts in 2-year-old children, Bowerman and Choi (2001: 477) suggest that:
[…] early semantic development involves a pervasive interaction between
nonlinguistic conceptual development and the semantic categories of the input
language, not just a one-way mapping from preexisting concepts.
This alternative account of the development of semantic categories in children takes
into consideration linguistic and cultural variation and views language as a mechanism
adapted to discerning the variability of culturally distinctive systems. Within this view
children have to discover and progressively construct meanings in a world that they share
with adults as pointed out by Vygotsky. Language is an essential tool they use to perform
this task successfully.
Thus, the contributions of cognitive linguists to the understanding of polysemy as
motivated by the mental phenomena of metaphor and metonymy and grounded in
experiential correlations need to be sensitive to the way that language itself may have some
influence on concept formation. For example, the orientational or container metaphors
described in Lakoff and Johnson 1980, 1999 or Johnson 1987 may not be universal because
of factors such as those described above. Research in this direction is being carried out by
Grady and C. Johnson (2002), who propose a new framework based on ‘primary scenes’
and ‘subscenes’. According to these two authors, there are “recurring experiential
scenarios”, or “primary scenes”, in which experiences associated with the source and
target concepts co-occur in tightly coherent and predictable ways” (2002: 537). For
instance, the conceptualisation of the organisation of an abstract entity as physical structure
is motivated by a primary scene which consists of two subscenes and two participants.
Subscene 1 is the physical manipulation of complex object and Subscene 2 is the formation
of a mental representation of object’s organisation. Participant 1 is the same person in both
29
subscenes in two different roles that of manipulating the object and that of forming a
cognitive representation of object. Participant 2 is the complex, physical object itself in
Scene 1 and the mental representation of the object’s logical organisation in Scene 2. Grady
and C. Johnson claim that in this particular case: “there is a strong association between
manipulating the object and forming an understanding of its structure, since the latter is
causally dependent and temporally correlated with the former” (ibid., p. 538). Both authors
speculate that subscenes may account for cross-linguistic differences in the organisation of
semantic domains, such as spatial relations. In this sense, they claim that:
It may be the case that subscenes define the most basic units for organising the
spatial domain, and that more general concepts such as containment are wellmotivated but non-universal generalisations over more particular relations. These
relations inhere directly in particular experience types (i.e. subscenes). Different
languages might then sort these more specific concepts in various ways. (ibid., p.
550)
Such research promises to shed light on some current unresolved and
controversial issues as regards the relationship between language and thought.
30
Metonymy and metaphor in the process of semantic extension
2.
METONYMY
AND
METAPHOR
IN
THE
PROCESS
OF
SEMANTIC EXTENSION
Most lexical items are polysemous, to a greater or lesser extent. A polysemous item
associates a phonological form with a number of more or less discrete though related
meanings, which cluster in a family resemblance category. A major topic in the study
of polysemy, therefore, is the question of meaning relatedness, and how it is that
distinct meanings come to be associated in the first place. (Taylor 2002: 323)
The quotation above encapsulates one of the most important concerns in relation to
polysemy: how the different senses of the same lexeme are related. In this regard, cognitive
linguists have emphasised the important role played by metonymy and metaphor in what
Taylor calls ‘the question of meaning relatedness’. This importance has been recognised by
numerous scholars from different perspectives. Sweetser (1990), for instance, analyses the
influence of metaphor diachronically in numerous semantic changes, and synchronically in
polysemous words and extended ‘abstract’ uses of concrete vocabulary items. She analyses
four distinct areas (perception verbs, modality, conjunction and if-then conditionals) and
concludes that:
Systematic metaphorical connections link our vocabulary […] These inter-domain
connections are cognitively based, and they pervasively influence patterns of
polysemy, semantic change and sentence interpretation. (Sweetser 1990: 13)
Similarly, Haser (2000) analyses the role played by metaphor and metonymy in the
semantic extension and change of a wide range of lexemes in languages belonging to very
different linguistic families. From a more general lexicographical point of view, Aitchison
(2003) acknowledges the importance of metaphor and metonymy in the process of meaning
extension. In the field of child language studies, Elbers (1988) discusses the role of
31
metaphor in word formation and child language; and Nerlich, Clarke and Todd (1999)
analyse the role of over-extensions based on metonymy or metaphor in the early stages of
the process of language acquisition.
Of these two mechanisms, metaphor has received the greatest attention by cognitive
linguists (Lakoff and Johnson 1980, 1999; Lakoff 1987, 1990, 1993; Johnson 1987; Taylor
1995; Grady 1997a, 1997b; C. Johnson 1999 or Kövecses 2002) although metonymy has
recently attracted an increasing amount of interest (Goosens, Pauwels, Rudzka-Ostyn,
Simon-Vandenbergen and Vanparys 1995; Barcelona 1998, 2000a, 2000b; Kövecses and
Radden 1998; Panther and Radden 1999; Radden and Kövecses 1999; Pauwels 1999 or
Ruiz de Mendoza and Otal 2002).
Metonymy and metaphor are seen as cognitive mechanisms which allow us to
establish analogies among different conceptual domains of experience or within the same
one. Within the cognitive linguistic paradigm, metaphor is defined as a cross-domain
mapping from a source or donor domain of experience onto a target or recipient domain.
The latter is, thus, partially understood in terms of the former. Lakoff holds that this is not
simply a linguistic phenomenon, but a cross-domain mapping in the conceptual system:
The locus of metaphor is not in language at all, but in the way we conceptualize one
mental domain in terms of another. The general theory of metaphor is given by
characterizing such cross-domain mappings. And in the process, everyday abstract
concepts like time, states, changes, causation, and purpose also turn out to be
metaphorical. The result is that metaphor is absolutely central to ordinary natural
language semantics, and the study of literary metaphor is an extension of the study of
everyday metaphor. (Lakoff 1993: 203)
This mental mechanism is, therefore, distinguished from the linguistic phenomenon.
That is, conceptual metaphors, which are on the mental level, are linguistically instantiated
32
by metaphorical expressions (words, phrases, sentences or even whole texts16) that are the
“surface realization of such a cross-domain mapping” (ibid., p. 203)
Metonymy can be distinguished from metaphor because, while in metaphor the
mapping is across two domains, metonymy involves a projection that takes place within the
same domain. Barcelona (2000c: 32-33) defines metonymy in the following terms:
Metonymy is the conceptual mapping of a cognitive domain onto another domain,
both domains being included in the same domain or ICM, so that the source provides
mental access to the target.
For example, the expression all hands on deck illustrates the understanding of hands
as people. This is achieved via synecdoche, which allows us to establish the connection
between a part of the body (hand) and the whole body and, therefore, a person. The
mapping, thus, takes place within the same domain. The distinction of metaphor and
metonymy in terms of across- or intra-domain mappings is, in practice, not easy (Gibbs
1994; Barcelona 1997, 2001; Ruiz de Mendoza 1999, 2000; Radden 2000 or Feyaerts
2000). There are several sources of difficulty. In the first place, the very notion of domain
causes some problems (Croft 1993, 2002). Domains of experience or conceptual domains
are defined within this approach as mental representations of how the world is organised.
The information contained in a domain is not only restricted to empirical data but it may
also include superstitions, beliefs or imaginations. Thus, a domain is a coherent frame of
knowledge for more specific concepts that situates specific meanings in their corresponding
conceptual contexts. Langacker (1987: 147) defines domains as “mental experiences,
representational spaces, concepts or conceptual complexes.” Nevertheless, what actually
comprises a cognitive domain has been subject to a great deal of discussion. For example,
an important feature of domains noted by Barsalou (1989) is that they are not stable and
stored in memory but rather are created in processing, and influenced by recent experience
16
For considerations of the linguistic strings in which conceptual metaphors can be realised, see Gibbs (1999:
40-41) or Cameron (1999: 14)
33
and other contextual factors. Similarly, from the point of view of applied linguistics,
Cameron (1999: 19-20) offers a broader definition of the domains of ‘topic’ and ‘vehicle’17
in relation to metaphor:
‘Domains’ of Topic and Vehicle appear […] not to be single unified domains
underlying single lexical items, but rather more amorphous groupings of all types
and levels of information and meanings that may be activated on encountering the
Topic and Vehicle. Furthermore, in real-time processing these ‘domains’ will be
constrained and influenced by the discourse context and what participants bring to
the discourse. The richness and variation in this view of domains does not make for
simple theory construction or empirical procedures.
As will be seen, the concept of domain knowledge is of particular interest in the
study of children’s interpretation and use of figurative language.
If, as has been noted, our domain knowledge is not static but rather flexible and
develops throughout our lives, it is very difficult to establish the clear boundaries between
domains that allow us to distinguish whether the process takes place between the same
domain (metonymy) or across two domains (metaphor). On the other hand, what comprises
domain knowledge may also be subject to variations on social and geographical parameters.
Such variation is of particular interest to applied linguists in their attempts to make
pedagogical use of metaphor in order to promote learners’ acquisition of L2 figurative
expressions.
Furthermore, different authors (Goosens 1990, 1995; Barcelona 2000c or Radden
2000) have noted cases of interaction between the two phenomena in which metonymy is
17
As is well known, this terminology was first introduced by Richards (1936). The ‘topic’ (Richards himself
used the label ‘tenor’ but both have been used without distinction later on) is the element which is described
in terms of another element, the ‘vehicle’. The features that are central for the interpretation of the metaphor
are the ‘ground’. For instance, in ‘John is a lion’, the topic or tenor is John who is described as a lion (vehicle)
on the grounds of fierceness and bravery. This terminology has been widely accepted and used, being
especially exploited in the models of metaphors based on property saliency such as Ortony, Reynolds and
Arter (1978); Evans and Gamble (1988); Gentner and Clement (1989), Tourangeau and Rips (1991), Ortony
(1993), Murphy (1996) or Giora (1997, 1999).
34
found to be the primary mechanism. Goosens coined the word ‘metaphtonymy’ for such
cases. Two main patterns have been noted: one where the experiential basis for a metaphor
is a metonymy (metaphor from metonymy) and another in which a metonymy functioning
in the target domain is embedded within a metaphor (metonymy within metaphor). Radden
(2000: 95-96) points out that the process of correlation is intrinsically metonymical and,
therefore, many metaphors are metonymy-based:
Correlations are mainly based on observation and, in order to compare the changes in
the two events, they have to be in proximity. Correlation is thus a fundamentally
metonymic relationship […] Not surprisingly, we also find correlation as a
metonymic basis in many metaphors […] The common experiential basis of the two
domains is more obvious in some metaphors than others. We witness the physical
expression happy is up when a football player, after scoring a goal, throws up his
arms and jumps for joy.
The role of metonymy has, thus, been reappraised and, in fact, this mechanism may
be considered to be more important than metaphor in semantic extension:
[…] the essence of metonymy resides in the possibility of establishing connections
between entities which co-occur within a given conceptual structure. This
characterisation suggests a rather broader understanding of metonymy than that
given by traditional rhetoric. The entities need not be contiguous, in any spatial
sense. Neither is metonymy restricted to the act of reference. On this broader view,
metonymy turns out to be one of the most fundamental processes of meaning
extension, more basic, perhaps, even than metaphor. (Taylor 2002: 325.)
Indeed, there is still a significant need for further accounts of the motivation for
specific semantic extensions of a given lexeme. Cognitive linguists have focused on how
the different senses of a word are related to each other but they are also aware that the
motivation of sense distinction is an important issue since the links between senses can
only be distinguished once the distinctiveness of senses has been established, as Gries (in
35
press) points out. In this regard, the study carried out by Ibarretxe-Antuñano (2002) on the
motivation, relationship and interconnections among the different sense of ‘BURU’ (head) in
Basque illustrates the type of accounts which are needed. She finds that the different
semantic extensions of the lexeme ‘BURU’ are motivated by three basic metonymies
(WHOLE FOR PART, ENTITY FOR LOCATION and PART FOR WHOLE) that serve as the grounding
for several other metaphorical expressions (HEAD
FOR CENTER
FOR HAIR, HEAD FOR FRONT PART, HEAD
or HEAD FOR ANIMAL among others).
A similar account for the motivation and interconnection of the different senses of
core lexemes in English would clarify meaning extension patterns and, thus, contribute to
the teaching these items18. For example, the lexeme HEAD is highly polysemous in English
and the relationship between its different senses is fairly complex. It seems clear that the
figurative meaning of
HEAD
in I can’t get that song out of my head is somewhat different
from that in the head of the school or the head of the stairs. In the first expression, HEAD is
equated with mental abilities and, therefore, grounded in a metonymy that could be cast as
HEAD FOR MENTAL ABILITIES (HEAD FOR FUNCTION).
Another example motivated by this
metonymy would be an exceptional analyst who could do complex maths in his head19. The
meaning of HEAD in the head of the school is, nevertheless, grounded in a different function
of
HEAD
(i.e., control). HEAD
FOR CONTROL
is also behind the expressions the head of a
company or organization or in the verbal realisation to head a company or organization.
Interestingly, dictionaries do not take these connections into account and, for instance, the
Collins COBUILD Dictionary lists these three realisations of the same meaning under three
different entries.
Similarly, the sense of HEAD in the head of the stairs illustrates a different mapping.
In this case, the head is the top part on a vertical axis in an illustration of an mapping of the
human body schema onto the parts of the staircase. However, other body schemas also
18
Pascual-Aransáez’s cross-linguistic study (1998-1999) proposes a network of some semantic extensions of
but restricted to the those meanings related to ‘rational behaviour’.
19
All the examples have been taken from the Collins COBUILD Dictionary.
HEAD
36
motivate further senses of
HEAD.
Thus, the meaning of
HEAD
in the head of a line of cars
may be motivated by the mapping of animal body schema, specifically the body of reptiles.
This motivation may also underlie expressions such as the head of the queue or the head of
the convoy.
As pointed out before, the complexity of such a highly polysemous item does not
pose any problem for native speakers of English who do not confuse the different senses of
the same lexical item. The fact that these meanings are conventionalised in English may
account for this. As Barstch puts it:
Conventionalisation of a term is a social process, which means that a term gets
generally accepted in a group or speech society. (Bartsch 2002: 53)
She distinguishes this process from that of stabilisation:
[…] a cognitive process based on stabilising neuronal patterns which indicate a
concept after a process of learning. In terms of concept formation, stabilisation
means that the internal similarity of the set of experienced examples converges or
stabilises such that with adding new examples the internal similarity of the growing
set does not decrease anymore. (2002: 53)
However, the way that different languages may conventionalise different word
senses may pose problems for foreign language learners. Thus, studies of this type would
have important implications for the design of EFL materials.
Yet, the cognitive linguistic framework provides important insights for the
phenomenon of semantic extension. In this sense, recent emphasis on the 'usage basis' of
linguistic knowledge (Barlow and Kemmer 1999) is particularly important. According to
this view, someone learning a language does not need to learn all the meanings of the
words in the language, but rather usage patterns for particular combinations of words,
appropriate to particular circumstances. Speakers abstract over usage events. If abstraction
over usage events did not occur, speakers would have no basis for extending their linguistic
behaviour beyond the already encountered utterances. Speakers, therefore, master core
37
lexical items and, via the regular principles of meaning extension, mainly metaphor and
metonymy referred to above, are able to produce and understand other related meanings.
Thus, the knowledge of a few core items is more productive than the knowledge of higher
level abstraction items.
This principle can be applied to foreign language instruction. Selecting and teaching
core lexical items and making learners aware of the principles of meaning extension from
this core vocabulary to more abstract words will help them to organise their lexicon in the
L2 and understand the new vocabulary system in a way that may be similar to that
employed by native speakers.
38
II. YOUNG EFL LEARNERS AND FIGURATIVE
LANGUAGE
Young learners of English as a Foreign Language
1. YOUNG LEARNERS OF ENGLISH AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE
As is well known, mastering foreign languages is increasingly important in a global
society. Rapid technological advances are bringing the most distant parts of the world
closer and foreign languages have become useful tools both in working and non-working
contexts. In this sense, English plays the role of the international language par excellence,
the lingua franca by means of which communicative interactions are carried out in different
settings: business, diplomacy and international relations, science, education and
technology, or more informal circumstances, for instance, tourism or casual contacts
between two people from different countries who cannot understand each other’s mother
tongue. Obviously, this situation has had a profound effect on educational policies
worldwide. The teaching of English as a foreign language (TEFL) is continuously
expanding and being introduced in different school systems at ever younger ages (Rixon
1992, Cameron 2003b). In Spain, the introduction of English as a foreign language (EFL)
in earlier stages began with the national educational reform of 199020 which established the
inclusion of a foreign language (English has been consolidated as the preferred language in
the vast majority of schools) as a compulsory subject in the academic curriculum from the
age of eight. This expansion has continued, encouraged by European regulations (European
Language Portfolio21) and the most recent Spanish educational reform, LOCE, approved in
2002 although it is currently being modified22. At present, Spanish children may well start
20
LOGSE. Ley orgánica de Ordenación General de Sistema Educativo. Ley 1/1990 de 3 de octubre (BOE
núm. 238, de 4 de octubre de 1990)
21
The European Language Portfolio (ELP) was developed and piloted by the Language Policy Division of the
Council of Europe from 1998 to 2000. During the European Year of Languages (2001), the ELP was launched
as a tool to support the development of plurilingualism and pluriculturalism. Up-to-date information on the
ELP is provided by the Language Policy Division on-line (http://culture2.coe.int/portfolio). For a
comprehensive account of the structure, origins, implementation and challenges of the project, see also Little
(2002).
22
LOCE. Ley Orgánica de Calidad de la Educación. Ley 10/2002 de 23 de diciembre. (BOE núm. 307, de 24
de diciembre de 2002).
40
learning English when they are three years old. In Extremadura, the implementation of a
foreign language in the pre-school years or Etapa Infantil, that is, when children are three,
four and five years old, was regulated by the regional educational authorities in August
200123. In practice, this foreign language is English in most cases and as a result of this,
from the academic year 2003-2004, EFL is part of the curriculum of the state schools in the
region from the ages of three to sixteen. The decision to introduce foreign language
instruction at such an early age is not uncontroversial and seems to respond to a widely
accepted but sometimes unreflective belief, especially among parents and policy makers,
that the earlier a foreign language is introduced the greater its command in the long run.
This belief may partly stem from the success with which young children learn
English in immersion or bilingual programmes or as a second language when they live in
an English-speaking country. The Canadian immersion programmes, for instance, have
been especially successful and extensively analysed (Harley 1991, Swain and Lapkin 1982,
Hart, Lapkin and Swain 1988, Lapkin, Swain and Shapson 1990). Harley (1991) points out
some of the benefits of this type of education for the learners. Children enrolled in these
programmes develop strong receptive skills (i.e. listening and reading), communicative
strategies, global understanding and discourse skills. Nevertheless, acquiring EFL by means
of formal instruction, that is, in a classroom, with two one-hour sessions (or thirty-minute
sessions, in the case of the three to five-year-olds)24 per week is quite a different process.
The age factor in the acquisition of a foreign language has been the focus of a great
deal of research (Singleton 1989, 1995; Singleton and Lengyel 1995; García Mayo and
García Lecumberri 2003, García Mayo 2003, García Lecumberri and Gallardo 2003 or
23
Orden de 10 de agosto de 2001 por la que se establece y regula la implantación progresiva de lengua
extranjera en el segundo ciclo de Educación Infantil. Consejería de Educación, Ciencia y Tecnología (DOE
núm. 97, de 21 de agosto de 2001).
24
The duration of the EFL lessons in pre-school and primary school years was established, respectively, by
the ‘Orden de 10 de agosto’ (op. cit.) and the ‘Orden de 30 de agosto de 2000, por la que se establece y regula
la impartición de lengua extranjera en el primer ciclo de la Educación Primaria, en el ámbito de la Comunidad
de Extremadura. (DOE, núm. 101, de 31 de agosto de 2001)’.
41
Cenoz 2003). These studies have cast doubts on the value of learning a foreign language in
the circumstances described above at an early age.
For example, the research group ‘REAL’ (Research in English Applied Linguistics)
in the University of the Basque Country have carried out a longitudinal study to analyse the
linguistic, psychological and social development of children who are bilingual in Basque
and Spanish and learn English as an L3. In this study, the children were divided into three
groups on the basis of the age at which they started learning English (four, eight or eleven)
and were tested on oral comprehension and production in English, written tasks and use of
English, attitudes towards languages and the Basque and Spanish languages in general.
Interestingly, the results show that with an equivalent amount of instruction, the
mastery of English of the children who started to learn at four is lower than the other
groups. In addition, older children progress faster than younger. Nevertheless, positive
benefits were found for younger learners as regards developing positive attitude to foreign
language learning.
Further problematic issues that have been brought up in relation to teaching English
to very young learners are, for example, finding enough teachers with appropriate skills to
teach at this stage or avoiding the problem of children’s increasing lack of interest learning
the language over such a long period of time.
Educational authorities may have been influenced by evidence of the benefits for
learners of acquiring a foreign language, quite apart from the social and economic
opportunities such a mastery implies. For instance, Cook (2002b: 7) claims that “acquiring
another language alters the L2 user's mind in ways that go beyond the actual knowledge of
language itself”. This statement accords with the positive-effect position in the longstanding debate about the influence of learning two languages from an early age on the
intellectual development of children. The opposite view argues that bilingualism has
42
harmful rather than beneficial consequences for children’s cognitive development.25 As
Bialystok (2002) points out, the extreme positions in this dichotomy cannot account for the
actual effects of bilingualism, and empirical research into this issue has been concerned
with developing specific tasks to test certain aspects of the cognitive development of
monolinguals and bilinguals.
Early studies tended to conclude that bilinguals are in a position of disadvantage in
comparison with monolinguals when tested, for example, on memory tasks (Magiste 1979)
or word recognition (Altenberg and Cairns 1983). Nevertheless, these conclusions may be
the result of some problems as regards the methodology employed in these studies.
Bialystok (2002) has drawn attention to the importance of social factors (e.g. the literacy
environment the bilingual child is exposed to, the extent of the child’s proficiency in his L1
or if the child identifies with the group that speaks that language) in order to control
possible differences between bilinguals and monolinguals. Furthermore, in some cases, the
bilingual children were less familiar than the monolinguals with the target language and
were often required to process both languages in some of the tasks. Later studies have
attempted to control these factors (Bialystok 1988 or Ransdell and Fischler 1987). Their
results show that there were no differences in accuracy between bilingual and monolingual
children on verbal memory tasks in the former study, and that bilingual children have an
increased grammatical awareness26 in the latter.
Other positive effects of knowing or learning a second or foreign language at an
early age that have been identified in the literature are, for example, an increased metalinguistic awareness (Galambos and Goldin-Meadow 199027 or the work by Bialystok
quoted above), better performance on tasks that require inhibition of attention to a
25
It is beyond the scope of this piece of work to enter into the debate on the advantages and disadvantages of
bilingualism. For further discussion, see Romaine (1995), Cummins (1984), Cummins and Swain (1986),
Hakuta (1986), Bialystok (1988, 2001, 2002), Cook (1997) or Baker (2001)
26
In this study, bilingual children could judge sentences for syntactic acceptability regardless of
meaningfulness (e.g ‘Why is the cat barking so loudly?’)
27
In a study carried out with Spanish/English bilingual children, Galambos and Goldin-Meadow found that
these children go through the early stages of grammatical awareness more rapidly than monolinguals.
43
misleading cue (Bialystok 2002)28, learning to read faster in their L1 (Yelland, Pollard and
Mercuri 1993)29, or better communication skills in the L1 (Genesee, Tucker and Lambert
1975)30.
The importance of the first years of children’s lives for their future cognitive,
linguistic and social development has been acknowledged from different perspectives.
From a Piagetian viewpoint, cognitive development at the first stages is triggered by action
(Piaget and Inhelder 1969). The child interacts with the world and is presented with
problems in daily life that s/he has to solve by taking action; this is how s/he learns. For
Piaget, children's thinking develops gradually from a sensorimotor stage (from birth to
eighteen months) via a concrete operational period towards a final stage of formal logical
thinking that is not reached before children are eleven years old approximately. This
development is complemented by the so-called symbolic function (imitation, symbolic
play, drawings, mental images and language). In the Vygotskyan framework (Vygotsky
1962), children are also active learners, but very importantly they are seen as social learners
as well. Their learning is guided by the people around them. Parents, teachers, older
siblings or more experienced peers help children to grasp concepts, making the world more
accessible to them. The gap between what children can do on their own and what they can
do with help is their so-called ZPD (zone of proximal development) and mediated learning
is crucial for children’s cognitive development.
In these first years of their lives, children are, then, learning, constructing and
reorganising concepts in the light of the new experiences and information they are exposed
28
Bialystok carried out a series of studies involving language concepts, number concepts and problem
solving. The common feature in all the tasks was the presence of two pieces of competing information, only
one of which must be attended. She described this feature as the function of control and concluded that
bilingual children solve problems designed to assess control earlier and more successfully than monolingual
children do.
29
English children who learnt Italian for an hour a week for five months are reported to learn to recognise
words better than monolinguals do.
30
Genesee and his colleagues report that English speaking 6- and 7-year-olds who knew
French were better able to communicate the rules of a game to blindfolded children than
those who spoke only English.
44
to and their social interactions. At the same time, their language is developing. According
to Donaldson, the development of the child’s linguistic system is closely related to the
interpretation of the situations s/he is exposed to, that is, language is closely associated to
the context in which it is produced and it is interpreted according to it:
In the early stages, before the child has developed a full awareness of language,
language is embedded for him in the flow of events which accompany it. So as long
as this is the case, the child does not interpret words in isolation -he interprets
situations. He is more concerned to make sense of what people do when they talk and
act than to decide what words mean. (Donaldson 1978: 88)
This characteristic of children’s L1 development, that is, being used to not fully
understanding the language that is addressed to them, is similar to the experience of being
exposed to a foreign language. Thus, whereas from the point of view of an adult or an older
child, not understanding linguistic prompts or exchanges in their L1 is uncommon, young
children are used to dealing with this situation and have their own strategy to compensate
for it, namely, trying to make sense of the context in which the language is uttered.
Encouraging the use of this strategy in the foreign language classroom will contribute to the
children’s learning, but in order to achieve this, learners need to be engaged in activities
that make sense to them and are suitable for their cognitive development (Donaldson 1978).
The child’s drive to make sense of the world by inferring from the context is
complemented by the human instinct to communicate that can also be exploited in the
foreign language classroom:
When children are put in a situation where they want to share understanding with
other people through the foreign language, they will search their previous languageusing experience for ways to act in the foreign language. If their language resources
are not sufficient, then the social motivation to construct shared understanding [...] is
likely to lead to use the first language or mixtures of L1 and the foreign language.
45
This tendency towards communication at any cost affects learners of all ages.
(Cameron 2001: 39)
Starting teaching children at the age of three is not the magic recipe that will ensure
their proficiency in English at an older age. But the first stages may be fundamental in
terms of engaging the children’s interest, and establishing a solid basis for future
development. However, in order to accomplish this, there are several important factors that
need to be taken into consideration. In the first place, the materials and methodologies need
to be adapted to the cognitive, social and linguistic characteristics of each age. In many
cases, the expansion of EFL to younger ages has involved the recycling of teaching
techniques and materials used with older learners, that is, the materials used with 8-year-old
beginners have been basically transposed to 6-year-olds first and, to a large extent, to 4and 3-year-olds later. The cognitive development and needs of a 3-year-old are quite
different from those of an 8-year-old and unless materials and methodologies are adapted to
pre-schoolers’ cognitive and social growth there will be no long-term benefits of expanding
TEFL to younger ages. Secondly, there is an obvious need for solid teacher training
programmes. In the classroom, the teacher is the bridge between what children can do on
their own and what they can achieve with help (Wood, Bruner and Ross 1976; Wood
1998). With the teacher’s help, children enlarge and improve their knowledge. Teachers,
therefore, need to be aware of the children’s needs and abilities (e.g. their drive to construct
shared meanings to be able to communicate) at each stage and be able to exploit them in
productive ways. As regards language, the teacher is the main supplier and organiser of
English language input in the EFL classroom, therefore, s/he needs to know the type of
language that is appropriate at different ages and master it.
And finally, the limited amount of time that is devoted to EFL at school31 and the
fact that EFL is very often considered a minor subject in contrast to more important
31
One hour per week in the pre-school years, two hours per week when the children are six and seven and
three hours per week from eight to eleven are devoted to EFL in the academic curriculum.
46
subjects like Maths or Spanish, and consequently relegated to times of the day when the
children may be more tired, restricts the aims that can be achieved.
Despite the potential benefits of early foreign language learning, current conditions
in terms of methodologies or human resources, for example, may not, as in the Basque case
cited earlier, produce the desired results. The educational community needs to rise to these
challenges and ensure a solid implementation of TEFL programmes for young learners.
47
Figurative language in the EFL classroom
2. FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE IN THE EFL CLASSROOM
The research into metaphor and metonymy in recent years and the application of
some of its findings to the teaching and learning of foreign languages have provided
insights that justify attention to figurative language in the EFL classroom from early stages.
The ubiquity of figurative expressions in daily communicative exchanges; the cognitive,
social, and affective features that characterise figurative language; or the influence of
figurative competence on the overall communicative competence of L2 learners are some
of the reasons that make this attention necessary. Nevertheless, in practice, when figurative
language in EFL has been studied, it has been approached almost exclusively from its
application to older (intermediate or advanced) learners (Ponterotto 1994; Lazar 1996;
Kövecses and Szabó 1996; Deignan, Gabrys and Solska 1997; Boers and Demecheleer
1998; Boers 2000 or Luciani 2001) or figurative language used in specialised discourse, for
example, English for Specific Purposes (Lindstromberg 1991; White 1997; Charteris-Black
2000; Herrera and White 2000; Charteris-Black and Ennis 2001 or Caballero 2001, 2003a,
2003b). Scant attention has been paid to other forms of figuration or to the possibility of
considering figurative language as part of the teaching contents in early EFL syllabi.
2.1 THE UBIQUITY OF FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
The ubiquity of figurative language in our daily linguistic exchanges (Lakoff and
Johnson 1980 and 1999, Paprotté and Dirven 1985, Kövecses 2002 or Barcelona 2004) as
opposed to its consideration as a deviant or rare device restricted to literary language32,
32
For a comprehensive summary of theories that support either the view of metaphor as a literary
embellishment or theories that claim that metaphor is present in everyday language and thought, see, for
example, Ortony 1993 or Gibbs 1994.
48
suggests that it merits attention in the EFL classroom. If figurative language is a
fundamental part of everyday language, then pedagogical approaches must take it into
account from early stages in order to ensure its development, consolidation and mastery
during the lifespan of the foreign language learner. Language learners need to be able to
understand, and, to a lesser extent, produce those figurative utterances which are widely
employed by native speakers.
Determining the scope of figurative language is, however, not a simple matter.
Indeed, there appears to be no agreement on where to establish the boundaries of this
category, and many classifications of figurative language include a miscellany of
expressions comprising phrasal verbs, metaphorical expressions, proverbs, sayings, routine
formulae, anomalous collocations or clichés. Much research has been solely concerned with
idiomatic expressions from different perspectives (Makkai 1972; McMordie 1974;
Alexander 1984; Cacciari and Tabossi 1988; Needham 1992; Cronk, Lima, and Schweigert
1993; Glucksberg, Brown and McGlone 1993; Irujo 1993; Nunberg, Sag and Wasow 1994;
Cacciari and Glucksberg 1995; Everaert, Van der Linden, Schenk and Schreuder 1995;
Keysar and Bly 1995; Fernando 1996; Cacciari and Levorato 1998; Drew and Holt 1998;
Moon 1998; Ruiz Gurillo 1998; Corpas Pastor 2000 or the research carried out by Gibbs
and his colleagues33). These studies do not pay attention to single lexemes that are equally
figurative. Moreover, even in the specific research into idiomatic expressions, there is no
agreement on either the definition of what an idiom is or the criteria for classification. In a
comprehensive analysis of what she labels FEIs (Fixed Expressions and Idioms), Moon
(1998) defines them as holistic units of two or more words that include frozen collocations,
grammatically ill-formed collocations, proverbs, routine formulae, sayings, similes and
fossilised metaphors. She also proposes three criteria to assess a string as a FEI:
institutionalisation, which is ‘the process by which a string or formulation becomes
recognized and accepted as a lexical item of the language’ (1998: 9); lexico-grammatical
33
Gibbs and Gonzalez 1985; Gibbs, Nayak and Cutting 1989; Gibbs, Nayak, Bolton and Keppel 1989, Gibbs
and Nayak 1989; Gibbs and O’Brien 1990; Gibbs 1992, 1995 or Gibbs, Bogdanovich, Sykes and Barr 1997.
49
fixedness, and non-compositionality, which is related to the semantic properties of the
string and has also been termed as ‘opacity’ or ‘semantic unanalysability’ in other
approaches34. According to these criteria, an idiom is not necessarily figurative. However,
figurative language is not restricted to such multi-word lexical units. Single words, or,
rather specific meanings of a single word, may be figuratively motivated. For example, the
metonymical hand as a verb in hand it to me can be considered as equally figurative as
hands as part of the unit to have one’s hands tied in, for instance, ‘she wanted to help you
but her hands were tied’. In this sense, Lazar (1996) offers a useful classification of the
different types of figurative expressions a language learner may encounter that includes
these figurative extensions of literal meanings. According to this author, language learners
may be exposed to figurative language in the following forms:
1. The figurative extensions of a word’s meaning, for example, ‘Violence is the
cancer of modern society’ (my italics)
2. Clusters of expressions motivated by the same underlying conceptual metaphor
(e.g. ‘Jane's ego is very fragile and she is easily crushed, so you have to handle her with
care.’ THE MIND IS A BRITTLE OBJECT) (italics in original)
3. Idioms.
4. Literary forms of metaphorical language.
It is evident that these four kinds of figurative language differ significantly not only
in how they are used but also in their lexico-grammatical features. Across the life span,
language learners will have to deal with different types of figurative language to become
competent language users. In this sense, being aware of the particular features that
characterise the different types of non-literal uses may facilitate their learning. For instance,
different forms of figurative language can be distinguished in terms of their degree of
34
Their irregular syntactic behaviour and their non-compositionality (i.e., the fact that the overall meaning of
the expression cannot be interpreted by means of adding up the meanings of its constituent parts) have been
the most widely accepted criteria to define an idiomatic expression (Fraser 1970; Swinney and Cutler 1979;
Schenk 1995; Nicolas 1995 or Everaert, Van der Linden, Schenk and Schreuder 1995). Other classifications
50
entrenchment: their conventionalisation or idiomaticity. Thus, they could be positioned
along a cline with innovative forms at one end (e.g. literary metaphors) and conventional
expressions at the other (e.g. fixed expressions). Understanding creative and
conventionalised forms is, thus, unlikely to be the same. Learners will need to be provided
with some strategies for decoding creative forms, and others appropriate to standardised
figurative units which may be processed as chunks. Another important distinguishing
feature of the different types of figurative language is their syntactic behaviour. In this
sense a given form can be either invariant or it may allow syntactic modifications such as
the passive form or changes in word class. This has been particularly explored in the case
of idioms (Gibbs and Gonzalez 1985; Gibbs, Nayak and Cutting 1989,;Gibbs, Nayak,
Bolton and Keppel 1989 or Gibbs and Nayak 1989) but it is also a feature of figurative
meanings realised by single lexemes. For example, the semantic extension of nominal HEAD
may be realised by a noun in the expression the head of a line, but it also allows a verbal
instantiation and, therefore, to head a line is also possible. In contrast, some lexemes do not
display the same syntactic flexibility. Low (1988: 131), for instance, points out that “one
ordinarily says ‘The river snaked (its way) through the jungle’, but not ‘the river was
(like)/resembled a snake’ ”. In this case, the semantic extension with this particular
meaning can only be realised as a verb.35
Forms of figurative language can also be distinguished in terms of whether the
figurative meaning is realised by a single lexeme or a whole phrase. In the latter case, the
relation between the constituent parts and the global meaning also varies from some
expressions to others. Research into this aspect has, again, mainly focused on idiomatic
expressions. In this sense, a clear-cut distinction has been established between semantically
have also considered features such as affective stance (Nunberg, Sag and Wasow 1994 or Moon 1994) or
figuration (Nunberg, Sag and Wasow 1994)
35
The lexeme ‘snake’ in the nominal form can also have a figurative meaning, for instance, when we refer to
a person as a ‘snake’. This semantic extension is, however, different from the verbal ‘snake’ in ‘the river was
like a snake.’ While, in the former, the metaphorical comparison is established on the basis of the shape of the
animal, the negative features assigned to the animal are the ground for the latter.
51
opaque36 expressions (e.g. ‘kick the bucket’) in which the individual parts do not contribute
to the overall meaning of the expression and semantically transparent idioms (e.g. ‘button
your lips’) where there appears to be a relationship between the meaning of the constituents
and the unitary meaning of the expression. Gibbs, Nayak and Cutting (1989) establish a
further division in the category of transparent, or semantically decomposable idioms in
terms of the type of relation that is established. Thus, they distinguish between ‘normally
decomposable’ (e.g. ‘button your lips’) and ‘abnormally decomposable’ (e.g. ‘spill the
beans’) idioms. In the latter case, the relationship is metaphorical, so, for example, the act
of someone tipping over a container with beans is understood as a revelation of a secret
because of the two underlying metaphors MIND IS A CONTAINER and IDEAS ARE
ENTITIES. These two conceptual metaphors, according to Gibbs, structure our conceptions
of minds, secrets, and disclosure. In the case of transparent or normally decomposable
idioms, however, the two elements may belong to the same domain. The understanding of
‘button your lips’ as ‘keeping quiet’ arises from the fact that ‘button’ belongs to the same
conceptual domain as ‘close’37. As will be seen later, enhancing learner’s awareness of the
relationship between an idiomatic expression and its underlying conceptual metaphor has
proved to be a successful pedagogical technique. Nevertheless, information about the
relative transparency or opaqueness gleaned from psycholinguistic research on L1 users
may well not be applicable to second language learners. This is because, on the one hand,
the L1 users may know the meaning of an idiom, and this may determine its relative
transparency. On the other hand, understanding an underlying conceptual metaphor will be
affected by learners’ knowledge of the source domain, which may be culturally restrained.
36
They have also been termed ‘pure idioms’ (Fernando and Flavell 1981, Cowie 1992 and Moon 1998) or
‘nondecomposable idioms’ (Gibbs and his colleagues)
37
It is beyond this piece of work to provide a detailed discussion of the syntactic and semantic features of
idiomatic expressions. For further discussion, see Swinney and Cutler 1979, Wasow, Sag and Nunberg 1983,
Gazdar, Klein, Pullum and Sag 1985, Gibbs and Gonzalez 1985, Gibbs, Nayak and Cutting 1989, Gibbs,
Nayak, Bolton and Keppel 1989, Gibbs and Nayak 1989, Nunberg, Sag and Wasow 1994 or Cacciari and
Levorato 1998.
52
Despite the fact that the greatest part of the literature is devoted to idiomatic
expressions, idioms are comparatively infrequent in language use. As Moon points out in
the introduction of the Collins COBUILD Dictionary of Idioms:
Nearly one third of the idioms in this dictionary occurs less often than once per 10
million words of the corpus. The idioms in the highest frequency band occur in our
data at least once per two million words of English. However, to set the matter in
perspective, only a few of these occur as frequently as any of the words we have
marked for frequency in the COBUILD English Dictionary. (2000: v)
That is, figurative language use may be ubiquitous, but particular idioms may not
be. Nevertheless, there are idioms that belong to the lexical network of a core item and,
therefore, express a figurative meaning which is related to the basic sense of a highly
frequent word. For instance, the idiomatic expressions give me a hand and not open one’s
mouth, chosen for the experimental studies reported in the second part of this piece of
work, convey two senses which are related to the functions of the two body parts (‘helping’
in the case of
HAND
and ‘speaking’ in the case of
MOUTH).
As will be seen later, the
metonymical link between these two idioms and the lexemes from which they arise can be
easily grasped even by young learners which helps them to interpret their meaning and,
consequently, to enlarge their vocabulary. It is useful to recall that some idioms, along with
other figurative extensions of the core meaning of a single lexeme and creative or more
conventional figurative uses in literary language, journalism or advertising are different
instantiations of conceptual metaphors and metonymies that pervade our language and are
systematically related. L2 learners are, therefore, bound to encounter these figurative forms
and need to be provided with strategies to deal with them.
53
2.2. FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE AS A COGNITIVE TOOL
Apart from its ubiquity, figurative language is also a heuristic tool fundamental to
learning. In the first place, metaphor has a cognitive component that helps us to understand
complex, abstract concepts through more concrete explanations. Children, as well as nonexpert adults, need some concrete support in order to understand certain complex concepts.
For instance, Nash draws attention to the different language used by scholars depending on
whether their work is addressed to experts or to the general public. In the former case, the
language employed may be more technical and complex whereas in the latter, the contents
tend to be made more accessible by using figurative language. He illustrates this contrast
with two texts about the connections between the human eye and the neural system. One of
them is addressed to professional scientists and the other to an audience of more general
kind. The afferent neurones that connect synapses in the first text, become nerve-lines
connecting nerve-exchanges which are also described as stations on the way to further
stations in the second (Nash 1990: 27). This cognitive role of metaphor, which was already
pointed by Aristotle38, is present in our daily use of language, particularly in educational
discourse. This use of metaphor has been explored by Cameron (1996: 51) in the primary
school classroom. With examples such as ‘the atmosphere is a blanket of gases’, she
illustrates how a concrete element children are familiar with (blanket) is used in order to
introduce a concept that is new to them: (atmosphere). Children’s familiarity with the
‘vehicle’ term (blanket) is a needed requirement for the instructional purpose to be
achieved. If children were not familiar with this concept and its properties, the metaphor
would not be understood. Furthermore, children exploit the cognitive value of metaphor in
their own linguistic production, as Cameron also illustrates with her examples of children
using expressions like sticky treacle, runny butter or wax to refer to melting volcanic rocks
(1996: 55).
54
The importance of the cognitive element of metaphor for children has been also
pointed out by Winner (1988), who distinguishes between the figurative language
addressed to children and that produced by the children themselves. As far as the latter is
concerned, she argues that some of the non-literal language produced by children may well
be an attempt to classify and understand the world:
Early metaphoric naming is playful, but it can also be seen as a way of classifying
and hence attempting to know and understand the world. The child who called a
streak of skywriting a scar was crystallizing her recognition of a similarity between
two very different kinds of markings on a surface. The child was clarifying to herself
the properties of a novel stimulus, the sky-writing, by noting its resemblance to a
well-known stimulus, the scar she had so often seen on her mother. This is no less an
attempt at organization of the world than is classification of the basis of literal
similarity. (Winner 1988: 122)
As regards the figurative uses children are exposed to, metaphors in texts have been
shown to enhance recall and comprehension (Vosniadou and Ortony 1983). Children could,
therefore, benefit from the use of metaphor in school texts, a practice which is not very
common, as both Winner (1988) and Cameron (1996) point out. Similarly, in his
classification of the functions of metaphor39, Low (1988) acknowledges its cognitive role
that he sees as contrasting with its pragmatic role to control the degree of personal
distancing and explicitness in an argument:
38
This view has been denied to Aristotle (Ortony 1993, Gibbs 1994) but, for a fuller reappraisal of Aristotle’s
theory of metaphor, see Mahon (1999).
39
Low classifies the functions of metaphor in the following way:
1. To make it possible to talk about X at all.
2. To demonstrate that things in life are related in systematic ways we can, at least partially, comprehend.
3. Extending thought.
4. To compel attention by dramatizing X (positively or negatively)
5. To prevaricate and deny responsibility for X.
6. To allow the speaker to discuss emotionally charged subjects.
They can be divided into cognitive (1-3) and pragmatic (4-6) functions of metaphor. (Low 1988: 127-128)
55
Metaphor […] has the intriguing attribute of having two central but opposing roles.
On the one hand, it promotes greater clarity in what is said, while, on the other, it
serves, with quotations, jokes, and stories, to create what Lerman (1983: 4) calls ‘a
shielded form’ of discourse. (Low, 1988: 129)
It is very important to distinguish between this use of metaphor for instructional
purposes from the use of figurative language as part of the L2 linguistic input to which L2
learners are exposed to. In an attempt to clarify this distinction, Danesi (1986) refers to the
former as ‘heuristic’ use of metaphor and to the latter as the ‘content’ use. Although the
content use of metaphor is often the focus in the EFL classroom, its heuristic use may also
be exploited as one of the possible didactic techniques to deal with metaphorical language.
If metaphor is commonly used in human reasoning to understand complex notions via more
concrete, accessible concepts, it seems likely that learners will benefit from this strategy not
only in their L1 but also in an L2.
2.3. THE AFFECTIVE ELEMENT OF FIGURATIVE EXPRESSIONS
Another important element that characterises the use of conventional figurative
expressions is their affective stance. In the case of idioms, for instance, one of the features
proposed to distinguish idiomatic from non-idiomatic phrases is affect. To use the words of
Nunberg, Sag and Wasow (1994: 493):
Idioms are typically used to imply a certain evaluation or affective stance towards the
things they denote. A language doesn’t ordinarily use idioms to describe situations
that are regarded neutrally.
Moon (1994: 127) also emphasises the interpersonal component that characterises
the use of idiomatic expressions:
56
[...] by choosing to use a stereotyped formula, the speaker/writer can be deliberately
vague, less directly assertive, but less open to question or refutation by appealing to
shared cultural values.
Affect does not only characterise idiomatic expressions but it is also a trait present
in figurative uses realised by single lexemes. For instance, in a corpus-based study of the
metaphorical meanings of lexemes with literal senses in different semantic fields, Deignan
(1999b) notes that the metaphorical senses of ‘hot’ and ‘warm’ have opposite evaluative
orientations. While ‘hot’ is frequently used figuratively to describe anger implying a
negative connotation, ‘warm’ often has the positive figurative meaning of ‘friendly’.
Thus, unlike literal language, entrenched figurative uses usually have an evaluative
component and are chosen for a particular reason. It is evident that expressions like, for
example, to die, to kick the bucket or to pass away, even though they express the same
general meaning are used in different situations. While to die expresses the most neutral
evaluation and can be used in different situations, the idiom to kick the bucket, has a more
complex meaning which is appropriate in a specific discourse situation or register. Even the
most ordinary uses of English, demonstrate this. For example, early everyday use of
figurative language with affective goals by children have been reported. Maybin (1991: 44)
offers the following use of metaphorical language produced by two ten-year olds:
J: … I say I've been involved when I've not. I stick up for my other friends.
P3: I know, you're trying to get your nose in and things.
J: I'm not, I'm sticking up for my friends and I say that I was doing it as well.
The affective component of figurative language may also have an influence on the
communicative exchanges between native and non-native speakers. If it is common for the
former to use figurative language to convey their attitude towards a given subject, nonnatives must grasp not only the semantics of the proposition but also the pragmatic intent.
57
Being aware of this component of figurative expressions is, therefore, also essential for
learners of English as a foreign language.
2.4. THE SOCIO-CULTURAL COMPONENT OF FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
Language learning implies a process of enculturation into the socio-cultural beliefs
of a particular language-speaking community and this is true not only for native speaking
children, but also for those who learn the language as a foreign language, however much
this might appear as an apology for cultural imperialism. Figurative uses have a strong
socio-cultural component that also plays an important role in the global process of learning
and in the specific process of learning a foreign language. As far as the former is
concerned, from a very early age children memorise and learn culture-specific metaphors
through religious hymns, metaphors from adverts, TV and radio programmes or storybooks (Jackendoff 1995 or Cameron 1996). Through this process, they learn the specific
socio-cultural norms encoded in the language of their own community. Figurative language
is, as has often been pointed out, closely related to cultural practices. This is well-illustrated
by the large number of idiomatic expressions related to bull-fighting in Spain or to horseracing in the UK and in the fact that these metaphors are not used in the other language.
The awareness of this difference would, once again, improve learners' mastery of a foreign
language, as Abkarian, Jones and West suggest (1992a: 247):
Persons learning a second language commonly report that misuse of idiomatic
expressions clearly marks the speaker as non-native. The more that speakers have
control of the common idioms of a culture or sub-culture, the less likely that they
will feel (and be perceived as) outsiders in social interactions.
In a similar vein, Danesi (1986: 9) claims that ‘the true sign that learner has
developed communicative proficiency is the ability to metaphorize in the target language’,
a view also held by, for example, Seidl and McMordie (1978).
58
2.5 FIGURATIVE COMPETENCE IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE LEARNING
Apart from the important role played by figurative language in the aspects discussed
above, figurative competence has also been recognised as a useful cognitive strategy in
second language learning. Low (1988), for instance, argues that when learning a foreign
language, metaphor can be used to aid comprehension, extend thought, shed new light on
issues, compel attention and clarify ideas. Consequently, language learners need to develop
a number of skills related to figurative competence “if they hope to be seen as competent
users of the language” (Low 1988: 129). Among these skills, which involve cognitive and
social factors, he includes the ability to construct plausible meaning, the knowledge of the
boundaries of conventional metaphor, the awareness of acceptable topic and vehicle
combinations, the awareness of ‘socially sensitive’ metaphors or the interactive awareness
of metaphor.
Littlemore (2001a: 461) proposes a definition of metaphorical competence limited
to the mental processes involved in metaphor production and comprehension. In her view,
metaphorical competence consists of four components:
1. Originality of metaphor production: the ability to construct one’s own
unconventional metaphors.
2. Fluency of metaphor interpretation: the ability to find more than one meaning in
a metaphorical expression by identifying more than one ground for comparison between the
topic and vehicle.
3. Ability to find meaning in metaphor: the ability to give a plausible meaning for
a novel metaphor.
4. Speed in finding meaning in metaphor: the ability to find a plausible meaning
for a novel metaphor rapidly and under pressure.
59
Littlemore notes that “metaphoric competence is important for foreign language
learners, as it is likely to contribute to their overall communicative language ability.”
(2001a: 466). As she points out, figurative expressions have been shown to pose serious
problems for non-native speakers when they attempt to follow spoken discourse. In order to
understand these expressions as they are intended by the speaker, a listener must have
access to the same contextual information that is available to the speaker and, of course,
many foreign language students listening to native speakers do not have immediate access
to this information (‘fluency of metaphor interpretation’) nor time to draw on the necessary
resources for interpretation before the speaker moves on to the next topic (‘speed in finding
meaning’). In these situations, the two components of metaphorical competence pointed out
by Littlemore may help learners keep up with the interlocutor and maintain the
communicative flow. Thus, metaphorical competence is likely to enrich language
production, facilitate comprehension of figurative expressions, which, as discussed above,
pervade language, and aid communicative interactions between native and non-native
speakers. Consequently, it can be said that it contributes positively to an overall level of
communicative competence.
2.6 APPROACHES
TO
TEACHING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
IN THE
EFL
CLASSROOM
Despite the importance of figurative language, its inclusion in EFL syllabi has often
either been neglected or, at least, not effectively exploited, especially at early stages. The
focus on non-literal language in EFL materials has been generally restricted to the teaching
of idiomatic expressions in upper-intermediate or advanced stages. The teaching techniques
employed have usually involved the presentation of these linguistic strings out of context
and accompanied by a literal paraphrase. There are several drawbacks to an approach that
encourages the learner to identify the idiomatic expressions with a literal paraphrase.
60
For example, Gibbs (1992) has shown that people view idioms as having more
complex meanings than their literal paraphrases do. Consequently, they can be used in
many different kinds of situations because literal paraphrases are less specific in meaning,
whereas idiomatic expressions have a more precise meaning and they are only suitable in a
context which is consistent with it.
Similarly, Moon’s research (1994) on the functions of idiom in discourse confirms
this view: idioms have a specific function, they convey an evaluation or affective opinion
that a literal paraphrase cannot render.
Furthermore, as MacLennan (1994: 108) points out:
paraphrasing often distorts nonliteral items so that precision of meaning along with
awareness of the connotative features of the original are lost […] This approximation
or alternative becomes the actual meaning of the item for the student who not only
remains unaware of the writer's precise intention but is also denied access to sets of
concepts which could deepen understanding and accelerate learning.
A further problem with the treatment of idiomatic expressions in EFL course
materials is that materials designers tend to include under the same the label, usually
‘idiom’, a mixture of proverbs, phrasal verbs, fixed phrases, sayings, compounds or
collocations40. This practice is very likely to confuse rather than help learners.
The lack of a clear theoretical basis for such methodologies makes their value to the
learner extremely dubious. For instance, the understanding of the behaviour of prepositions
in the target language from the very beginning will influence learners’ command of phrasal
verbs over time. It has been shown, for example, that the semantic extension of prepositions
as used in phrasal verbs is very often motivated by metaphors. Nevertheless, the most
popular techniques for teaching phrasal verbs have involved memorising the string, either
individually as it occurs in texts or in lists; or, using the so-called ‘polysemy method’41
40
For example, in her analysis of three Proficiency level textbooks, Díez Arroyo (2002) points out the
mixture of different expressions grouped under the heading ‘idiom’.
41
The label ‘polysemy method’ is used by Low (1988).
61
which consists in choosing a specific word, usually the verb rather than the preposition, and
learning all its different meanings and uses.
Díez Arroyo (2002) describes other techniques frequently employed in EFL course
materials to teach idiomatic expressions. In activities designed to promote the
comprehension of idioms, the most common tasks are matching and guessing. The former
usually consists of two lists, containing the idiomatic expressions and their literal
paraphrase, between which correspondences are to be established. The latter can take the
form of a full text, in which fixed phrases of several types (phrasal verbs, compounds,
sayings, collocations, idioms, etc.) have been used. The reader is asked to go over the
passage again in order to guess the appropriate meaning. The preferred techniques to
encourage idiom production are gap filling (which usually consists in inserting a group of
elements from a list in the appropriate gap), replacing (in which the learner is asked to
replace part of the component of a sentence with a formulaic expression) and rewriting (in
which the task is transforming a sentence into a new one, keeping as close to the original as
possible.)
Apart from the previously mentioned drawbacks associated with activities that
promote the identification of a figurative expression with a literal paraphrase, such
pedagogical approaches do not take advantage of what learners already know about
figurative language use. Metaphor is not strange to language learners. In fact, they may use
this mechanism as a compensatory strategy in their foreign language (Low 1988, Littlemore
2001b). So, when trying to overcome gaps in their L2, learners exploit this knowledge,
which may involve the creation of non-literal expression, as Low has pointed out:
[…] what they do not yet know is treated as if it were part of the reduced inventory,
or stock, of the second language that they do know. The process is analogous to that
of small children learning their first language, except that adult learners may well be
more aware than native speakers in the same situation might not need to create a
metaphor. (Low 1988: 135)
62
Unlike native-speaking children, however, L2 learners need to be aware of the
‘boundaries’ of figurative expressions in the target language, that is, what native speakers
could and could not say and still be understood. Consequently, the use of metaphor as a
compensatory strategy may be counter-productive in the way Abkarian, West and Jones
(1992a) point out.
The design of alternative pedagogical techniques to deal with figurative language
has been the concern of different scholars. Low’s proposal of the use of multi-text and
multi-task activities that imply the learner’s involvement in a task they have to solve and a
natural context for the use of figurative expressions has been followed by others. In this
sense, the so-called ‘applied cognitive linguistic’ line of research has been particularly
fruitful (see, for instance, the two recent collected volumes by Pütz, Niemeier and Dirven
2001a, 2001b).
However, most of this research has focused on idioms and older learners. Several
scholars (Kövecses and Szabó 1996; Boers and Demelecheer 1998; Boers 2000; Charteris
Black 2000, 2002 or Herrera and White 2000) have analysed the underlying metaphorical
or metonymical conceptual motivation of specific figurative expressions and have tested
the hypothesis that clarifying the connection between a conceptual metaphor and its
linguistic instantiations aids learning. They focus on different areas such as phrasal verbs,
prepositions or individual lexical items. Their results are suggestive and the premise is
applied to the design of classroom tasks. The range of suggested activities to exploit this
idea in the classroom varies from explicit descriptions of specific conceptual metaphors that
determine the use of some metaphorical expressions (Herrera and White 2000), to more
embedded ways of teaching figurative language, such as presenting students with texts or
lists of expressions where they have to identify the items that are used metaphorically and
the conceptual metaphor behind them (Ponterotto 1994; Deignan, Gabrys and Solska 1997).
In the same line, more specific activities have also been designed to deal with particular
aspects such as vocabulary (Lazar 1996, 2003 and Boers 2000) or prepositions (Boers and
Demelecheer 1998 or Lindstromberg 1996, 1997). The advantages of these activities are
63
evident: they offer a systematic way of teaching figurative language which, on the one
hand, clarifies certain mental and linguistic patterns, and on the other, relates them to
human ways of categorisation, facilitating their incorporation to mental schemata.
However, despite its indisputable strong points, this approach is not unproblematic.
On the one hand, simply drawing students’ attention to specific conceptual metaphors
underlying metaphorical instantiations as cognitive researchers claim might not be
sufficient. As MacArthur (2001) points out, what is sometimes necessary is to make them
aware of the stereotypical characteristics of the vehicle within the particular target culture
or enhance typical knowledge of a domain. Learners may be aware of conceptual
metaphors of the type MAN IS AN ANIMAL, but may not know the particular
characteristics that are attributed to a specific animal in a community other than their own.
In this sense, what might be semantically transparent for an adult native speaker, is opaque
for the learner due to the lack of knowledge of the specific features of the vehicle term.
The culture specific aspect of domain knowledge poses a problem in foreign
language instruction. Likewise, even when the same conceptual metaphor exists in more
than one culture, its linguistic instantiations are often different. Research in this area has
pointed out the importance of distinguishing between the mental and the linguistic levels,
that is, between a conceptual metaphor such as LOVE IS A JOURNEY and its linguistic
realisations: ‘this relationship is not going anywhere’, ‘we’re at the crossroads’42. Being
familiar with the conventional conceptual metaphors of a given language does not
guarantee the mastery of their linguistic instantiations because it is not always easy to
predict how those conceptual metaphors will be used to produce figurative expressions in
the target language. As Kövecses says:
[…] the metaphor is not only cognitively but also culturally motivated. As the
cultural factors change from culture to culture, so does the metaphor and its linguistic
expression. In it, the cognitive and the cultural are fused into a single conceptual
42
Examples from Lakoff and Johnson (1980)
64
complex. In this sense, what we call conceptual metaphors are just as much cultural
entities as they are cognitive ones. (Kövecses 2003: 319)
Cross-language studies have proved to be an insightful source of information on this
issue (Hiraga 1991; Deignan, Gabrys and Solska 1997; Kövecses 2003; Deignan 2003 or
Boers 2003). From research into very different languages (English and Japanese and Polish
and English, respectively), both Hiraga (1991) and Deignan, Gabrys and Solska (1997)
establish a very similar classification of the different combinations that can be observed:
1. Same conceptual metaphor and equivalent linguistic expression.
2. Same conceptual metaphor but different linguistic expression.
3. Linguistic expressions that are perceived to derive from different conceptual
metaphors.
4. Words and expressions with similar literal meanings but different metaphorical
meanings.
Being aware of these differences is very important for both course books designers
and teachers. Research into the particular differences of two given languages can shed light
on specific activities that could be designed in order to exploit these findings. Teachers
need to take into account these four possibilities to avoid learners’ over-generalisations of
patterns.
In this respect, important contributions have been made by Deignan (1999a) using
corpus linguistics to explore the linguistic expression of metaphor. She finds that the
tendency to map creatively from source to target domain is restrained by a conflicting
principle to fix specific collocations –Sinclair’s idiom principle43. The result of this is the
fossilisation of regular collocations that only occur in the target domain. These fossilised
43
“The principle of idiom is that a language user has available to him or her a large number of semipreconstructed phrases that constitute single choices, even though they may appear to be analysable into
segments. To some extent, this may reflect the recurrence of similar situations in human affairs; it may
illustrate a natural tendency to economy of effort; or it may be motivated in part by the exigencies of real-time
conversation. However, it arises, it has been relegated to an inferior position in most current linguistics,
because it does not fit the open-choice model.” (Sinclair 1991: 110)
65
strings would be the typical unanalysable, opaque idioms which learners find so hard to
understand. This would partly explain why certain words or phrases are metaphorically
used in a specific syntactic form –e.g., animal names are more frequently realised
figuratively as verbs rather than nouns. If there is no systematic transfer of the metaphorical
meanings from source to target domain, the implications for language teaching are that
learners’ vocabulary cannot be enlarged as easily as it might seem at first glance.
Another important aspect to be considered when dealing with figurative language in
the EFL classroom is that, despite the apparent value of helping learners develop their
figurative competence, some students will have a natural tendency to produce and
understand figurative uses while others will find it more difficult. Kogan (1983) notes that
metaphorical competence is a stable cognitive trait and Littlemore (2001b) adds
‘metaphorical intelligence’ to Gardner's (1983) eight types of intelligence (visual, verbal,
mathematical, kinaesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, naturalistic, and rhythmic).
According to Littlemore, metaphorical intelligence is likely to play an important
role in the process of language learning, but the degree to which learners have each of the
four aspects she considers metaphorical competence consists of varies from one learner to
another. Working on the principle that a holistic style is associated with field dependence,
loose analogical reasoning and divergent thinking, which are factors also likely to underlie
metaphorical competence, Littlemore (2001) explores whether the holistic learning style
and metaphorical competence are connected. In an experiment carried out with Frenchspeaking university students specialising in English, she finds that holistic learners score
significantly higher in metaphor interpretation tests than analytic learners. Similarly, J.
Johnson’s (1989) and J. Johnson and Rosano’s (1993) studies relate field-dependence and
successful metaphor interpretation. However, the analytic/field independent learning style
is usually related to language learning success because it facilitates better performance on
the most common activities to measure language proficiency such as structure tests,
dictations, multiple choice or cloze tests. Including tasks that encourage the interpretation
and production of figurative language in class may usefully boost the confidence of holistic
66
students, who may perceive themselves to be weak language learners due to the fact that
analytic students are more likely to perform better on traditional language learning
activities and tests. Tasks that involve loose analogical reasoning include those discussed
by McCarthy (1990), in which students are encouraged to consider the implications of the
various metaphors used to describe, for example, the mental lexicon (e.g., a dictionary, a
thesaurus, a computer). In another task, suggested by Rinvolucri and Davis (1995), students
visualise and mime the different tenses that are used in the target language sentences. Tasks
that involve divergent processing include those in which students are encouraged to come
up with alternative, metaphoric meanings for vocabulary items and think of situations in
which these meanings make sense. For example, they might know that an eye is an organ of
sight in humans and other animals, but they might not know that potatoes, needles, and
hurricanes can also have eyes.
As pointed out earlier, scholars who have made this sort of proposal (Low 1988;
Deignan, Gabrys and Solska 1997; Littlemore 2001b or Lazar 2003) are typically
concerned with the adolescent or adult EFL learners. Even the recently published course to
teach figurative language designed by Lazar (2003) is aimed at intermediate or advanced
learners of English but not young learners.
However, in countries with a long term educational process, the focus needs to take
account of the learner’s lifespan. It is not clear from these studies how applicable these
findings can be to young learners.
From observation and analysis of the pedagogical materials designed to implement
the syllabus contents in Pre-school and Primary school years, it can be safely stated that
figurative language is not taken into account in EFL classrooms in Extremadura. The way
of presenting lexical items does not consider the relationship between their different senses.
Teaching in Pre-school and early Primary school years is mainly focused on lexis (specific
semantic fields such as colour, body parts, weather terms or numbers), and commands
(stand up, sit down, point up, point down, open and close the window) which are usually
introduced via Total Physical Response (TPR) activities. In order to make their learning
67
more attractive, these phrases are included in songs, games or combine both techniques and
are taught via TPR. This method seems to be very popular among teachers probably due to
its obvious advantages in classroom management and entertaining the children. However,
learners do not have the full range of opportunities of interacting with the physical
environment in order to match their experiences with linguistic forms. TPR activities
usually over-practise, for example, certain movements and actions (stand up, sit down, turn
around, point to the window or point to the door) and do not promote interaction with the
environment or relational aspects of language. For instance, when prepositions are
introduced in these course books, they seem to be chosen on the basis of opposition and
canonical position, for example, stand up-sit down, rather than by following the order of
spatial preposition in first language acquisition (Piaget and Inhelder 1956, Johnston and
Slobin 1979 or Bowerman and Choi 2001): containment (in), contiguity and support (on)
and occlusion (under) are the earliest to emerge, followed by the notion of proximity (next
to, beside, between), and finally projective relationship (in front of, behind). In these
studies, carried out on the development of locative expressions in children, early
prepositional usages are closely tied to the relational aspects, which express the extensive
relationship between a subject and an object via a verb and a preposition. That is, the object
of a preposition seems to be particularly salient for young children, although this is not the
aspect that TPR activities allow children to explore. The result of this practice is that very
often children do not even recognise familiar phrases such as turn around out of the context
of the activity. It seems that the teaching of prepositions at early stages of EFL can be aided
by maximising the opportunity to manipulate objects, relating them to other objects in
various spatial frames, and particularly to the children’s own bodies. This way of
approaching meaning via the opportunity of experiencing and manipulating, accompanied
by verbal commentary in English, would clarify the “core” meanings of prepositions and
lay the foundations for later extensions in other areas.
68
III. THINKING AND SPEAKING FIGURATIVELY IN
CHILDHOOD
Children’s figurative competence in the L1
1. CHILDREN’S FIGURATIVE COMPETENCE IN THE L1
The development of children’s competence with metaphor has been a major focus
of interest in first language acquisition studies. However, the treatment of the phenomenon
in this discipline differs to a great extent from that of cognitive linguistics. The major
difference is, perhaps, that most researchers working on child language studies seem to
consider the presence of some pre-existing similarity between the two elements involved as
necessary for a metaphor to exist. Cognitive linguists, on the other hand, do not conceive
metaphor as being motivated by pre-existing similarity. Rather, in their view, metaphor or
metonymy themselves organise concepts with respect to one another. Thus, in order to
understand an abstract concept, we use another concept that is more concrete. Our
experiences with the physical world serve as a natural and logical foundation for the
comprehension of more abstract notions. Nevertheless some cognitive linguistic approaches
recognise the existence of some metaphors in which the two elements are cognitively
linked due to their actual similarities or to the human capacity to impose resemblance
between them. In this sense, Grady (1999) distinguishes between this type of metaphor,
which he calls ‘resemblance’ metaphor, and ‘correlation’ metaphors. The latter are
experientially motivated, that is, directly grounded in aspects of our experience and,
therefore, more primary and universal, according to Grady.
In the research literature into children’s figurative competence, there is still is a lack
of studies on the ubiquitous, entrenched metonymical and metaphorical extensions of core
lexemes, which have not been systematically analysed from a cognitive linguistic
perspective either44. It seems that most authors concentrate almost exclusively on metaphor
and deal with very specific aspects such as the role of context and familiarity in children’s
production of idioms, attribute saliency and metaphor interpretation at different ages, or
44
For significantly valuable exceptions see C. Johnson 1999; Rice 2003 or Nerlich, Todd and Clarke 2003.
different factors in children’s understanding of idioms, to mention only a few. Furthermore,
there is little consensus either on the nature of the phenomenon to be studied45, or on
research methodologies. The different research agendas or theoretical perspectives on this
field of enquiry give rise less to any one comprehensive theory of children and figurative
language, than to a jigsaw of interlocking perspectives on this phenomenon. Several
‘pieces’ of this jigsaw seem to be particularly salient. First, the need to determine what
children’s figurative competence consists of at different ages, and the debate about the
development of figurative language: whether it is present from earliest ages or, whether it is
an advanced complex cognitive skill. Secondly, the important distinction between
production and comprehension in children’s developing use of figurative language. And
finally, the role played by children’s domain knowledge at different stages in their
understanding (or misunderstanding) of figurative uses. As has been pointed out above, the
research into children’s figurative capacity has mainly focused on metaphor (Billow 1975,
1981; Nippold, Leonard and Kail 1984; Nippold and Sullivan 1987; Vosniadou 1987; Zurer
Pearson 1990; or Cameron 1996, 2003a) and idioms (Gibbs 1987, 1991; Cacciari and
Levorato 1989, 1998; Levorato and Cacciari, 1992 or Abkarian, Jones and West 1992a,
1992b). The predominance of the interest in metaphor is even reflected in the terminology
used. Most authors talk about children’s metaphorical capacity, children’s metaphorical
language, utterances, productions and so on. This may give the erroneous impression that
children’s figurative potential is exclusively metaphorical or that other figurative tropes are
of less interest. However, metonymy and synecdoche have been acknowledged to be
present in children’s language and thought (Nerlich, Clarke and Todd 1999) and children’s
understanding of irony46 has also been studied (Winner 1988). Children’s ability to
45
Gardner, Kircher, Winner and Perkins (1975), for instance, use indiscriminately the labels metaphor and
simile to refer to expressions constructed with the formula ‘as + adjective + as’. As can be also appreciated in
applied metaphor research, terminology is often not clearly defined and, for example, a study of ‘metaphor’
may include simile.
46
The role of irony in language and thought has also been reappraised. For instance, Gibbs (1994) sees irony
as a ‘fundamental figure in the poetics of mind’ rather than only a matter of rhetoric or language. In his view,
we conceptualise events, experiences, and ourselves as ironic, and our language often reflects this mode of
71
understand and produce figurative language is, therefore, not restricted to metaphor.
Levorato and Cacciari (1992: 416-417) offer a view of what children's figurative
competence consists of from a wider perspective. According to these authors, the following
four abilities are involved:
1. The ability to understand the dominant, peripheral and additional related meaning
of a word, its position in a given semantic domain and its paradigmatic and syntagmatic
relations.
2. The ability to suspend a purely literal-referential strategy. This is a prerequisite
not only for figurative language comprehension, but also for most of the linguistic
repertoire (for instance, polysemous words or meaning indeterminacy)
3. The ability to use contextual information in order to construct a coherent
semantic representation and to integrate it with the lexical and semantic information carried
by the figurative expression.
4. The ability to create and understand the figurative uses of a word, a sentence or a
given domain as well as to retrieve the conceptual structures involved.
This view takes into account processing (1, 2 and 4), production (4), and contextual
(3) factors. The role played by the latter in the development of children’s figurative
competence seems, however, to have been particularly neglected in most approaches.
Nevertheless, some scholars (Levorato and Cacciari 1992 or Cameron 1996) have
emphasised the importance of context. Levorato and Cacciari (1992), for instance, suggest
that the process of acquisition of figurative and literal meanings in children are of the same
sort. Children rely on a global elaboration of the information (‘Global Elaboration
Hypothesis’) that incorporates and guides the processing of each piece of information:
word, idiom or sentence. In this sense, context not only makes it possible to suspend the
literal interpretation of the figurative utterance, but it also gives the semantic information
thinking. He illustrates this with the common phrase ‘what lovely weather’ uttered by someone in the middle
of a rainstorm which reflects “the speaker conceptualisation of the incongruity between certain expectations
that the day would be nice and the reality of rain” (ibid., p. 365)
72
necessary in order to assign coherence to the text and to extract the figurative sense, to go
beyond the piece of information and reach the global sense of the text.
Cameron makes the important point that metaphorical expressions are not used in
isolation but within a discourse context. Children's ability to understand and use metaphors
develops alongside their growing linguistic and social abilities and their gradual acquisition
of ‘knowledge of the world’, with discourse context facilitating this process:
Metaphorical language uses may be stored along with the memory of the context,
and thus be available when a similar or related context occurs again. When the
children in this study discuss the metaphors they have collected, there are many
references to the original contexts in which the metaphors were encountered:
principally television cartoons and adverts, but also play situations, books and
teacher talk. The visual images they describe in explicating the metaphors suggest
that not only do they remember the context, but they have also stored images and
words as they were encountered in those contexts. (Cameron 1996: 58)
As will be seen, the children participating in the experimental studies reported in
this dissertation also show this tendency when, for example, they refer to ‘el cabeza del
pelotón de la vuelta ciclista o de una carrera’ (the leader of the group of cyclists or the
leader in a race) to justify why the first car in a line is the head or when they remember a
similar image47 or situation in ‘los dibujos animados’ (cartoons) or ‘vídeo juegos’
(computer games).
Thus, discourse context in relation to figurative language aids the storage and
retrieval of metaphorical utterances. In this sense, discourse context may enrich children’s
‘knowledge of the world’. Besides, it may be involved in both the learning of a new
concept and the linguistic ways of expressing it when it is applied to a different situation,
thus fulfilling the cognitive function of metaphor discussed in the previous section. It also
relates to the socio-cultural function of figurative language: the figurative expressions used
73
in contexts such as adverts or teacher talk may be culturally marked. In contrast, cartoons
may be less local. Many of the cartoons seen by Spanish children, for example, are
American and, therefore, may reflect the cultural practices of that specific community. For
example, the ANGER IS A HEATED FLUID IN CONTAINER metaphor may become familiar to the
Spanish child through the representation of explosion scenarios in this medium.
As regards the development of figurative competence, two views give opposing
accounts for it. The Piagetian-based position considers that figurative language is one of the
highest achievements of cognitive development, dependent upon rich cognitive schemas
not available to an ‘immature’ mind (Piaget and Inhelder 1969; Inhelder and Piaget 1958,
1969). In contrast to this view is the position that figuration comes naturally to young
children (Gardner, Kirchner, Winner and Perkins, 1975; Winner, 1988; Zurer Pearson
1990; Glicksohn and Yafe 1998; Cameron 1991, 1996, 2003a; Nerlich, Clarke and Todd
1999 or C. Johnson 1999). The former view has been empirically supported by, for
example, a study of children’s understanding of proverbs (Inhelder and Piaget, 1958).
Children’s inability to perform the task successfully led these scholars to conclude that the
understanding of metaphor is one of the last facets for language to develop, one which
might even require the structures of formal operations. However, it has been pointed out
that the results of this experimental work are biased due to the overly demanding
methodological techniques employed48, in this particular case, requiring the children to
interpret the proverbs verbally. In fact, Honeck, Sowry and Voegtle (1978) carried out an
47
For a discussion on the importance of images in children’s conception of figuration, see Kövecses (2002:
58)
48
Donaldson (1978) reports a similar problem with Piaget’s experiments to test young children’s ability to
decentre. Piaget and Inhelder (1956) base their claim that children under seven do not have the ability to
decentre on the results of the following experiment (“Mountain task”): three different models of mountains
are provided. The child sits at one end of a table and the experimenter provides a doll that he positions at the
different end. Children are asked to say what the doll sees. However, Hughes (1975) tests the same ability
with an experiment in which he uses a policemen and a boy. Each character can see the other or not
depending on the position. Hughes makes sure the children understand the task before starting testing and the
results are very positive even for the very young children. Donaldson argues that Hughes’s test works because
is “humanly comprehensive” as far as the motives and intentions of the characters are concerned (intentions
of escaping vs. pursuit and capture). Even very young children understand that a naughty boy wants to hide
from a policeman.
74
experiment on 7- to 9-year-olds’ understanding of proverbs with very positive results.
These authors eliminated the problem of verbal interpretation by using two pictures (a
correct one and a foil) that represented two interpretations of the proverb. Psycholinguistic
research of the latter sort based on methodological techniques more suited to children (such
as the avoidance of the use of meta-language and the use of a richer context) has provided
strong evidence for the latter view. In general terms, it is claimed that although it seems to
be obvious that children's potential to understand and produce metaphor develops with age,
it is also true that young children produce and understand some metaphors.
A group of scholars led by Gardner promoted the theory that the process of
development of figurative language follows a U-shaped curve: the willingness to play with
language and create novel metaphors observed in younger children is replaced by a
decrease in the use of figurative language in the first years of school that reflects the literal,
rule-conforming thought inculcated in academic contexts. This is subsequently replaced, at
least in some children and adults, by a more advanced form of metaphorical thinking. This
theory may account for children’s use of language within an educational context. However,
children also use their language in other more ‘informal’ contexts, as when they speak with
their parents, siblings or friends. In fact, Maybin (1991) in the example quoted before (‘I
stick up for my friends’) or in her recordings outside the classroom on her subjects talking
about the ‘taboo’ topic of swopping things at school has found that the use of figurative
language in these contexts is not uncommon:
J: Right ‘cause I swopped with you yesterday (indistinct)
E: I didn’t want to.
J: Yes you goes ‘Let’s have the dog then’ and you gave me out your hand lotion and
you went ‘Black Jack can’t swop back’ and all the rest of it, and then as you got to
calling ‘Are you coming?’, you hunted for me and you said that you wanted the
lotion back. So I took the dog back, you took the lotion back. (Maybin 1991: 45)
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Besides, as has been pointed out above, children throughout their childhood are
exposed to figuration by means of cartoons, songs, stories, adverts, teacher talk, and it
seems unlikely that they learn to benefit from it at an early stage and then, suddenly stop
using it.
It seems that figurative competence is available to children from a very early age
and develops during their childhood along with their linguistic and conceptual knowledge
and their social skills.
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Children’s development in the prodcution of figurative language
2. CHILDREN’S DEVELOPMENT IN THE PRODUCTION OF
FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
The presence of figurative utterances in child language almost as soon as they start
to talk has frequently been recorded (Vosniadou 1987; Nerlich, Clarke and Todd 1999 or
my example of the utterance produced by a 5-year-old on page 3). Piaget himself (1962)
reports on his daughter between the ages of 3:6 and 4:7 saying of winding river, ‘It’s like a
snake’, and of a bent twig, ‘It’s like a machine for putting in petrol’. These types of
utterances are considered by Piaget ‘child metaphors’ as opposed to ‘real metaphors’, and
they are described as nothing more than products of the symbolic, imagistic type of
thinking that characterises the pre-operational stage.
This view encapsulates a central concern in metaphor research: the need for criteria
that allow children’s utterances to be classified as metaphorical or non-metaphorical. After
all, comparing a river with a snake if done by an adult would be regarded as a simile or
metaphor49. Different researchers seem to follow different criteria in this matter, but two
ideas recur in the literature devoted to this topic: the utterance must be based of some kind
of similarity between dissimilar objects or events (e.g. Billow 1981) and the child must be
aware that those two objects belong to different conventional categories. While the former
criterion seems to be widely accepted, special attention has been given to the latter by some
authors to emphasise its importance:
The critical question is not whether young children can see similarity between any
superficially dissimilar objects and events, but between objects and events that
violate children's conventional categories. (Vosniadou 1987: 873)
49
Low (1988) discusses this particular example when pointing out that some vehicles are more acceptable
when they employ a particular word class. He argues that : “One ordinarily says ‘The river snaked (its way)
through the jungle’, but not ‘The river was (like)/resembled a snake’ ”.
77
Thus, in Vosniadou’s view, meeting these two requirements is indispensable if a
child’s utterance is to be classified as a metaphor. Vosniadou and Ortony’s study (1983)
explores whether children are aware of the possibility of establishing similarities among
members of different conventional categories. In order to analyse this, they tested 3- to 6year-old subjects on two tasks. The first was a comparison task in which children had to
complete statements of the form ‘A is like X’, choosing one of two words from a
metaphorical/literal pair, a literal/anomalous pair or a metaphorical/anomalous pair. The
second was a categorisation task in which children completed statements of the form ‘A is
the same kind of thing as X’, choosing only from a metaphorical/literal pair. Children
showed no preference between literal and metaphorical alternatives in the comparison task
but showed a clear preference for literal alternatives in the categorisation task. From their
results, Vosniadou and Ortony conclude that by 4 years of age children know that some
meaningful similarity statements compare items from the same conventional category,
while other meaningful similarity comparisons involve terms from different categories.
Another criterion to decide whether a child utterance is literal or non-literal is
distinguishing over-extensions from pretend-renamings (Winner 1988). Over-extensions
represent instances where a known word is used to refer to an object whose conventional
name the child does not yet know, for instance, the widely-quoted example of a child
calling a horse ‘doggy’. According to Winner, these utterances do not indicate an intention
to violate an established category and, therefore, cannot be considered as metaphors. In
contrast, renamings can be seen to indicate such an intention because they represent
instances where the child already knows what an object is called but chooses to call it
something else.
This distinction does not solve the problem of determining whether a child’s
utterance is literal or non-literal, as Vosniadou (1987) has pointed out. Over-extensions
could qualify as genuine metaphors if the child was aware of the fact that a conventional
category was being violated. Similarly, renamings may not qualify as metaphors if the child
sees the two objects that are being implicitly compared to be literally similar:
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In my view, pretend renamings could be best conceptualized as precursors of
metaphor because, like metaphors, they are based on children's tendencies to impose
a familiar schema on the object world. But this tendency alone does not make a
metaphor. To qualify as a metaphor, the pretend renaming must be motivated by the
perception of some similarity between the objects or events being compared. Indeed,
it appears that although the perception of similarity and the actions of symbolic play
have independent beginnings, they eventually come together to give rise to
similarity-based renamings that have most of the characteristics of real metaphors.
(Vosniadou 1987: 873)
Clark provides an account of over-extension that complements Winner’s and
Vosniadou’s views. From the perspective of L1 acquisition, she describes this phenomenon
as one of the most important ways that a child uses to map the meaning that s/he wants to
express onto a form which s/he has already acquired by “applying it to members of the
adult category and to members of other categories that are perceptually similar” (1993:
33). She distinguishes between two types of over-extensions:
1. Over-inclusions, which consist in extending a term to other entities from the same
taxonomy, for example, when the word ‘dada’ is used for both mother and father. Overinclusions are based on both perceptual similarity and conceptual contiguity and they are
the basis for the construction of taxonomies.
2. Analogical extensions appear when children use a term for objects from other
taxonomies on the basis of perceptual similarity (e.g. ‘comb’ for ‘centipede’.) These
extensions are based on recognizing and construing similarities. They can be, thus,
regarded as the training-ground for use of metaphors.
As has been noted earlier, these accounts which are based on pre-existing similarity
between two elements contrast with C. Johnson’s (1999) conception of the acquisition of
metaphorical language by children. In his view, children acquire metaphorical concepts
naturally and unconsciously by early conflations of two domains of experience.
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Nerlich, Clarke and Todd (1999) see over-extensions, from a pragmatic point of
view, as communicative strategies used by children which can be based on metaphorical,
metonymical and synecdochical relationships. They accordingly classify them into three
types:
1. Synecdochical. These are over-inclusions that exploit relations such as conceptual
contiguity inside a taxonymy (E.g. ‘papa’ for father, grandfather, mother, any man)
2. Metonymical. They consist of over-extensions based on perceptual, spatiotemporal and funcional contiguity. (Eg. ‘Choo-choo’ for trains, airplane, streetcar, trunk)
3. Metaphorical. Analogical extensions based on perceptual similarity are included
here. (E.g. ‘milk bottle’ for milk bottles but also for bottles containing white toothpowder.)
These authors focus on the analysis of metonymy and find that up to age 2:5
children make use of what they called ‘compelled metonymical overextensions’. They are
compelled because they are based on the fact that at this age a child's vocabulary, category
and conceptual systems are still relatively small and unstructured and as soon as the right
word is learned, the use of the over-extension stops. These compelled metonymies, which
are used by children to fill gaps in their limited lexicons contrast with creative metonymies
used to express something new by not using the words, already available, in their lexicons:
Compelled metonymical overextensions normally peter out by the age of 2;5,
although they can still occur as the vocabulary continues to develop. Between age
4;0 and 5;0 one can begin to notice a more creative exploitation of the natural
pathways of meaning which are metaphor and metonymy. (Nerlich, Clarke and Todd
1999: 369)
Within this view, over-extension appears to be a figurative mechanism used in the
early stages of the process of language acquisition. At those stages, children's semantic
systems, as well as their systems of concepts and categories, are still incomplete and
unstructured and will have to be adjusted and modified in the years to come. Over-
80
extension is the mechanism used to fill some gaps. As soon as the right word is learnt, it
stops.
This view raises the thorny issue of what we might call ‘unacceptable’ vs.
‘acceptable’ extensions. Children’s early overextensions are ‘unacceptable’ from an adult
point of view, but as soon as children’s categories match the adults’, they are not regarded
as over-extensions anymore. However, this does not mean that children are not ‘extending’
semantically. As will be seen later, most of the children participating in Study 3 say that the
‘head of the stairs’ is the top part because it is at the top. They are making a metonymical
projection grounded in their knowledge of the human body schema. In this case, their
knowledge of ‘stairs’ and ‘heads’ matches that of an adult and would, therefore, not be
regarded as an over-extension. However, some of them say that ‘the head of line of cars’ is
a police car placed in the middle of the line because its lights are slightly above than the
roofs of the other cars. Here, they are using the same mechanism, but in this case, it does
not apply from an adult’s point of view which relates this use to the first rather than the top.
Thus, as will be seen later, ‘knowledge of the world’ or domain knowledge may play a
fundamental role in the processes of both extending and over-extending.
This brief overview would appear to show that figurative reasoning and language
use is a continuum in a person’s life. In the early stages, creative uses of figuration may be
related to the need to fill gaps in the children’s growing conceptual and linguistic system, as
Nerlich, Clarke and Todd (1999), and Clark (1993) have pointed out. These productions,
strange by adult standards, seem to be common to children, who might simply be using a
mechanism (seeing something in terms of something else) which seems to be available to
them from a very early age. This mechanism will be used throughout their lives as a
fundamental tool for recognition, classification, learning, and even scientific discovery and
creativity (Vosniadou and Ortony 1989, Gentner 2003) and, consequently, when enriching
vocabulary in both their mother tongue and a second or foreign language. At the same time,
children are being exposed to conventional figurative forms as they become integrated into
society through education, games, stories, television or the internet. These uses establish the
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boundaries between accepted, customary figurative uses of a specific cultural community
and creative, sometimes one-shot uses that an individual may employ and that, if coherent
with metaphorical usage generally, are very likely to be understood by other languageusers. Thus, a fundamental characteristic of human figurative endowment seems to be
continuity: it is present from very early ages and it develops into adult competence as the
fundamental ability of analogical reasoning that, in some individuals, might reach its
heights in the form of scientific discovery or literary production (Gibbs 1994).
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Children’s development in the understanding of figurative language
3. CHILDREN’S DEVELOPMENT IN THE UNDERSTANDING OF
FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
Although there seems to be a gap between the production and understanding of
figurative expressions –a well-known asymmetry in language acquisition– children’s ability
to understand different figurative uses has been extensively recorded: metaphor (Gardner,
Kircher, Winner and Perkins 1975; Keil 1989; Reynolds and Ortony 1980, Vosniadou,
Ortony, Reynolds and Williamson 1984; Vosniadou 1987; Evans and Gamble 1988; Elbers
1988; Zurer Pearson 1990 or Glicksohn and Yafe 1998); metonymy and synechdoche
(Nerlich, Clarke and Todd 1999) or idioms (Gibbs 1987; Levorato and Cacciari 1992 or
Abkarian, Jones and West 1992a, 1992b).
As pointed out above, these studies have provided counter-arguments to earlier
findings (Inhelder and Piaget 1958, Billow 1975) that children cannot understand figurative
expressions before reaching a particular developmental stage. Most of these studies use
experimental means of uncovering children's competence in the figurative domain
removing difficulties from the task which have biased the results. For example, Piaget’s
study of proverb comprehension (Inhelder and Piaget 1958) or Billow’s (1975) analysis of
the processing of similarity and proportional metaphors at different ages are very complex
for children: the presentation of isolated sentences without a context or the fact that the
children are asked to give meta-linguistic responses do not facilitate the task. In an attempt
to correct the latter shortcoming, Zurer Pearson (1990), for instance, tests 3- to 5-year-olds
understanding of verbal metaphor using ‘elicited repetition’. Three types of sentences were
provided: metaphorical (‘The radio growled’), literal (‘The child was thirsty’) and
anomalous (‘Turn off the fork’). Children, as young as three years old, could repeat and
remember both literal and metaphorical sentences, but had problems with the anomalous
ones. Thus, according to Zurer Pearson, in the processing of these three types of sentences,
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children seemed to be looking for meaning and, therefore, they could not remember the
meaningless anomalous sentence. Metaphorical meaning proves not to be strange for them
and, even the youngest children can repeat these utterances. In fact, they seem to be able to
process them on a par with literal language.
Other techniques employed have involved the use of stories, usually with a multiple
choice task at the end (Reynolds and Ortony 1980; Vosniadou Ortony, Reynolds and
Williamson 1984; Gibbs 1987 or Levorato and Cacciari 1992); employing toys to enact
stories (Gentner and Toupin 1986) or using pictures (Gentner 1977; Honeck, Sowry and
Voegtle 1978 or Glicksohn and Yafe 1998). As has been pointed out above, the use of these
supporting, ‘child-friendly’ contexts helps the child understand the task they are expected
to perform in a way which is consistent with Donaldson’s findings.
Once contextual variables and the use of meta-language are controlled, there appear
to be two main reasons for comprehension failure in the specific case of metaphorical
statements. In the first place, children may fail to realise that a particular metaphoricallymotivated utterance must be interpreted figuratively and, thus, attempt a literal
interpretation instead (Vosniadou 1987), as Piaget proposed. Secondly, they may fail to see
the similarity between the metaphorical vehicle and topic (Winner 1988, Cameron 1996).
One possible explanation for the latter source of miscomprehension is that what might be a
salient feature50 of the topic or vehicle for an adult, might not be so for a child. Vosniadou
and Ortony (1983) and Evans and Gamble (1988) concluded that perceptual properties of
50
As is well-known, Ortony proposed the so-called Salience-Imbalance model to account for the processing
of similarity-based (1993) comparisons. According to this model, the comprehension of similarity metaphors
depends crucially on the saliency of the attributes (or predicates) assigned to the vehicle term. Thus, both
literal and non-literal comparisons are understood by means of searching the salient predicates of the vehicle
that determine the interpretation of the utterance. This process applies to the two types of comparisons, but
there is a substantial difference in their nature: while in the literal comparisons both the vehicle and the topic
share some high salient predicates (e.g. Encyclopaedias are dictionaries), in similes, high-salient predicates of
the vehicle are low-salient predicates of the topic (e.g. Encyclopedias are gold-mines). In this example, a high
salient predicate of gold-mines, i.e they are ‘precious’ and ‘valuable’ is a low salient predicate of
encyclopaedias. This explains that the reversal of a metaphoric comparison prompts changes in meaning. His
best-known example is the copula ‘billboards are warts’ as opposed to ‘warts are billboards’. Since the
salient features of the vehicle is what determines the interpretation of the metaphor, ‘wart’ is what determines
the ground in the first example while in the second is ‘billboards’, hence the difference of meaning.
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objects are more salient for young children than for adults, who tend to focus more on
casual, structural and functional attributes. In Evans and Gamble’s study, for instance,
while older children and adults listed ‘fight in wars’ and ‘carries weapons’ as important
characteristics of soldiers, young children mentioned ‘marches’, ‘wears a black and red
uniform’ or ‘stand straight’. That is, attribute saliency differs in important ways between
children and adults.
It may also be the case that children have problems with the type of similarity.
Winner (1988) develops a model of metaphor understanding which is based on three steps:
1. Detection of non-literal intent.
2. Detection of the relation between sentence and speaker meanings.
3. Detection of speaker meaning, that is, detecting that the speaker implies a relation
of similarity between what he says and what he means.
Any such stage-model of metaphor comprehension (e.g. Searle 1979) comes up
against the problem that psycholinguistic research has shown that adults do not process
metaphorical utterances literally unless the context leads them to do so (Gibbs 1992).
However, as Giora’s Graded Hypothesis (1997, 1999) suggests, the shape model of
metaphor processing may become operative when speakers are not familiar with a
metaphorical usage. In this sense, Winner’s notion adapts to children’s unfamiliarity with
novel metaphors.
According to Winner, children are able to recognize metaphors as non-literally
intended (the task of step 1) and to infer a meaning based on similarity (the task of step 2),
but that they infer the wrong kind of similarity: ‘What children most often do is find a
sensory similarity between topic and vehicle when a nonsensory, relational similarity is at
issue’ (Winner 1988: 36). She defines non-sensory metaphors as those based on similarity
that is not apprehended by our senses. They can be divided into: relational and
psychological-physical metaphors. The former are based on similarities between objects,
situations, or events that are physically dissimilar, but, owing to parallel internal structures,
function in a similar way (e.g. ‘clouds’ and ‘sponges’ which function to hold and then
85
release water). Psychological-physical metaphors are based on a resemblance between the
sensory attributes of a physical object, perceived through any sensory modality, and
psychological, non-sensory attributes of a person (e.g. cheerful people are ‘sunny’, or
cranky people are ‘sour’).
Gentner and Stuart (1983) reach similar conclusions. Their subjects (5- and 6-year
olds, 9- and 10-year-olds and adults) were presented with three types of metaphor:
‘attribute’ metaphors (which would be considered sensory metaphors by Winner, for
example, ‘A cloud is like a marshmallow’) ‘relational’ (e.g. ‘A camera is like a tape
recorder’), and metaphors combining both kinds of similarity. Despite the fact that the task
of paraphrasing is a meta-linguistic one, 5-year-olds had no difficulty explaining the
similarity underlying the sensory metaphors. In fact, they performed as well as adults. The
only developmental difference found was that these children offered fewer relational
interpretations for both the relational and the dual-grounded metaphors than did older
children. This, again, suggests that children had more difficulty perceiving (or at least
explaining) relational metaphors than those based on sensory similarities.
The evidence offered by these studies suggests that children’s perception of the
properties that relate topic and vehicle changes with development, with perceptual or
sensory links coming into action first, followed by relational or functional links, and then
physical-psychological links. There are two possible accounts for these findings. On the
one hand, children may be not be able to perceive the kinds of similarities on which nonsensory metaphors are based. On the other hand, failure may be due simply to insufficient
knowledge of the vehicle and/or topic domain, thus limiting the kinds of connections
between topic and vehicle that children perceive. Support for the first hypothesis would
lead to the conclusion that metaphorical ability is not fully developed until a certain age.
Children could only grasp metaphors based on sensory similarities. In contrast, support for
the second hypothesis would suggest that when the child has sufficiently developed
knowledge of the elements being linked, they are able to interpret the metaphor even if the
ground is non-sensory (Keil 1989).
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This latter issue has been recurrently examined in the literature on children’s
understanding of figurative language. Several scholars (Carey 1985, Keil 1989, Winner
1988, Gentner 1989, Vosniadou 1989 or Cameron 1996) have argued that children’s
‘misunderstanding’ of metaphors would not be due to their lack of metaphorical capacity
but to their developing ‘knowledge of the world’, particularly, the lack of ‘domain
knowledge’. These two notions refers to how children’s knowledge of concepts and events
and their relations among them become enriched in response to different inputs and
experiences (their own social experiences with other people and the world that surrounds
them, including all sort of inputs they are exposed to: the explanations provided by their
parents, teachers, siblings or friends but also stories, cartoons, TV programmes or the
Internet). For example, the knowledge of ‘dog’ may include the following notions: fourlegged animal, that barks, it can be a pet, it may also be aggressive or there are very
different breeds. There is some shared-knowledge (cultural within a community) about a
concept but also each individual may have a particular view of ‘dogs’ due to a specific
experience with them. Children are in the process of developing this knowledge and,
therefore, although even very young children may have the competence to perceive all of
the kinds of similarities that adults perceive, they may lack articulated knowledge of the
domains from which either the topic or vehicle is drawn, and thus fail to see the similarity
between the topic and vehicle. One cannot know which aspects of the vehicle domain to
map onto the topic domain if little is known about one or both domains. In this account, the
confusion has nothing to do with an inability to recognise the similarity underlying the
metaphor. In order to test the hypothesis that problems in metaphor comprehension are the
result of limited domain knowledge, Keil (1989) uses non-sensory metaphors based on
domains that are familiar to children. He shows that when lack of knowledge was not
present, children demonstrate no difficulty in understanding non-sensory metaphors. He
also argues that comprehension of metaphor depends not only on a familiarity with the
referents of the topic and vehicle, but also on an awareness of each of the larger domains to
which the topic and vehicle belong. For instance, because the distinction between animate
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and inanimate objects is acquired before that between physical and non-physical objects,
animate/inanimate metaphors will be correctly interpreted before physical/non-physical
metaphors. Furthermore, once children showed understanding of one metaphor juxtaposing
two domains, they understood most metaphors involving the same domains: either children
understood practically none of the metaphors of a particular type, or they understood all (or
almost all) of them.
Studies on children’s development of conceptual domains will therefore clarify the
domain differentiations which children are able to establish at different stages. This idea is
especially relevant if the problem is approached from a cognitive linguistic perspective. If
we accept the cognitive view of metaphor that our abstract reasoning is based on our
understanding of concrete concepts via a metaphorical projection from source/concrete to
target/abstract domains, then any methodology that aims to enhance this projection needs to
take into account what kind of domain differentiation a child is capable of at various ages.
Finally, contextual factors in relation to domain knowledge are especially relevant
to support children’s understanding of figurative utterances. Cameron (1996) argues that
discourse context (which, according to her would include situational context (participants,
situation and goals), the immediate linguistic context of the metaphor, and the textual or
interactional context of the metaphor) ‘can contribute towards accessing and selecting
domain knowledge’ (Cameron 1996: 54). She establishes the following features of
metaphorical language in its discourse context:
(1) The Topic is usually strongly featured in the immediate discourse context, and
the introduction of the Vehicle comes as a contrast, thus priming the need for a nonliteral interpretation.
(2) The introduction of the incongruous Vehicle term is highlighted through
clause/turn position, stress, pausing, etc.
(3) The range of possible interpretations of the Vehicle term is constrained by
explicit inclusion of relevant features of the Topic domain that are to be linked with
the Vehicle domain.
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(4) Repetition and relexicalisation of a single Vehicle, or the inclusion of more than
one Vehicle, constrains the range of possible features drawn on in interpretation.
(5) The meaning of the metaphor can be negotiated between participants.
(6) (4) and (5) may result in the same metaphor being reformulated in different
grammatical forms, and in difficult syntax being made more accessible.
(Cameron, 1996:57)
Thus, in everyday life children are very likely to interact with adults or more
experienced peers in order to get the information they need to understand a metaphorical
comparison. This situation can be reproduced in the classroom. The teacher can mediate
offering some information about the attributes of the vehicle and how they might relate to
the topic to help the child or the language learner to understand figurative language.
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PART TWO:
APPLICATION
I.
STUDY 1. THREE SEMANTIC EXTENSIONS OF
HAND
Study 1. Three semantic extensions of HAND
Study 1 was designed to analyse whether 7-, 9-, and 11- year-old EFL learners’
were able to identify three semantic extensions of
HAND
(give me a hand, the hands of a
watch/clock and hand it to me) and to explore what kind of reasoning was involved in the
children’s interpretation of these figurative meanings. In the selection of the lexical items to
be explored in this and the other two studies, the aim was to choose core lexemes that were
first, highly polysemous, secondly, frequent in English and, finally, appropriate in their
figurative and literal senses for children’s communicative interactions in the EFL
classroom.
In the first place, the polysemous wealth of hand is illustrated in the 85 different
uses of this lexical item recorded in the Collins COBUILD Dictionary. These uses are
classified into the two main entries (single nominal and phrase uses, and verbal uses),
followed by compounds with hand and phrasal verbs. The first entry (single nominal and
phrase uses) consists of the prototypical meaning of
HAND
(“your hands are the part of
your body at the end of your arms. Each hand has four fingers and a thumb”), 10 semantic
extensions (in which the hands of a watch/clock is included), 3 phrases with a preposition
and hand (for example, at hand or by hand) and 41 idiomatic phrases (such as change
hands, eating out of your hand, wash your hands of or lend someone a hand, but give me a
hand is not recorded). The second entry (verbal uses) includes conversions of
HAND
as a
verb, such as hand it to somebody, meaning “pass it to somebody” and the phrase you have
to hand it to her or you’ve got to hand it to them, which expresses approval or admiration
for someone. There are also 7 phrasal verbs recorded (for instance, hand on, hand down,
hand over or hand back) and 21 compound sub-entries that include strings such as dab
hand, field hand, hand-luggage or the combination hand- + past participle (indicating that
something has been made by hand rather than by machines), which further increases the
productiveness of this lexical item.
Secondly, the nominal and verbal uses of HAND are highly frequent in English. The
Collins COBUILD Dictionary marks the noun entry with the highest frequency band and
gives 4 out of 5 points to the verb entry.
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Finally, the three expressions chosen for the experiment (give me a hand, the hands
of a watch and hand it to me) are appropriate candidates for young children’s
communicative needs in the context of the EFL classroom. Telling the time, asking for help
or asking to pass objects around will be part of what Breen (1985) identifies as the ‘unique
social context of the classroom’ in Primary school. For example, teachers refer to the hands
of the watch or clock when explaining how they point to the dials, showing the time.
Similarly, they may use the phrase give me/someone a hand to ask for the pupils’
collaboration in a task. They may also talk about photocopies or hand-outs or ask the
children to hand in their homework.
All three conventional uses of
HAND
are figurative in that none refer to that part of
the body “at the end of the arms with four fingers and a thumb”. The figurative meaning of
each use is different, as is also the lexico-grammatical realisation of the figurative transfer
they illustrate. In the first place, these figurative uses differ in that while the hands of a
watch and hand it to me are realised by a single word (nominal and verbal hand), the
meaning conveyed in give me a hand is expressed by a multi-word, semi-fixed unit.
Secondly, these figurative extensions are realised as a nominal (the hands of a watch), a
verb (hand it to me) and a fossilised ditransitive phrase (give me a hand). Both the nominal
and verbal forms display the regular grammatical behaviour of nouns and verbs, with
variations being possible, such as, ‘the long hand on my watch has fallen off’ (singular
form) or ‘it was handed to me’ (passive voice)51. In contrast, the flexibility of give me a
hand is restricted and limited to tense modifications of the verb, for example, ‘I’ll give you
a hand’ or ‘he gave me a hand’ but does not allow passivisation ‘*a hand was given to me’.
In fact, ‘give’ can be replaced by another verb, ‘lend’ (‘lend me a hand’) and still convey
the same figurative meaning. The indirect object slot can be filled by other forms (e.g.,
‘John’, ‘him’, ‘the teacher’). However, it must be realised by a nominal referring to a
person or people, like other ditransitive constructions. The other main constituent, ‘hand’,
51
Passive/active contrasts are considered one of the tests for giving a notion of idiomaticity (for further
discussion, see, for example, Schenk 1995 or Moon 1998.)
93
is syntactically fixed: neither the plural form (‘*he gave me two hands’) or the insertion of
other determiners (‘*give me the/this/some/your hand) are possible.
As regards the semantic features that characterise these three figurative uses, it
seems clear that in the cases of hand it to me and give me a hand, there is a mapping within
the same conceptual domain that gives rise to these two expressions and, therefore, they are
metonymically motivated. According to Radden and Kövecses’s definition (1999:21):
Metonymy is a cognitive process in which one conceptual entity, the vehicle,
provides mental access to another conceptual entity, the target, within the same
idealized cognitive model.
In these two semantic extensions of HAND, the vehicle is HAND and the target would
be FUNCTION OF THE HUMAN HAND (DOING), in this case ASSISTANCE BY MEANS OF THE HAND
within the Idealized Cognitive Model (ICM) of ‘the human hand’. Thus, the function of the
human hand plays a key role motivating give me a hand and hand it to me. According to
this analysis, these two expressions would be linguistic instantiations of a conceptual
metonymy that could be expressed as
HAND FOR DOING
THAT IS TYPICALLY DONE WITH THE HAND.
as a special case of the more general
or more specifically,
This conceptual metonymy could be considered
BODY PART FOR FUNCTION.
discusses the conventional metonymy which he casts as
FUNCTION,
SOMETHING
Barcelona (2000b: 11)
BODY PART FOR (MANNER OF)
in the example “she caught the Minister’s ear and persuaded him to accept her
plan” (EAR
FOR ATTENTION).
Kövecses (2002: 207-210) offers an alternative conceptual
metonymy that could also account for these linguistic instantiations: THE HAND STANDS FOR
THE ACTIVITY
which, according to him, is a special case of the general
THE INSTRUMENT
USED IN AN ACTIVITY STANDS FOR THE ACTIVITY.
The case of give me a hand may be different because, apart from this metonymy,
there may be a synecdoche involved in its semantics –HAND
specific case of the general
PART FOR WHOLE,
94
FOR PERSON–
which is a
also illustrated in expressions such as all
hands on deck. The notion of ‘helping’ is fundamental in the phrase give me a hand and, in
this sense, HAND can be considered to stand for the person that helps.
In a chapter devoted to the metaphorical and metonymical motivation of idiomatic
expressions, Kövecses (2002: 207-210) discusses the semantics of idioms related to
HAND
and lists a series of conceptual metonymies that underlie some idiomatic meanings52.
Although he does not specifically discuss the idiom give me a hand or the figurative
extension realised in hand it to me, they could both be viewed as linguistic realisations of
his conceptual metonymy
THE HAND STANDS FOR THE ACTIVITY
special case of the general
ACTIVITY.
the
MOUTH
THE INSTRUMENT USED IN AN ACTIVITY STANDS FOR THE
In this dissertation, not only the
ACTIVITY
is defined:
which, in his view, is a
DOING
or
INSTRUMENT (HAND, MOUTH
POINTING
in the case of
and HEAD) but also
HAND, SPEAKING
in the case of
and THINKING for HEAD.
In the same work, Kövecses also points out that in order to give an account of these
expressions it is necessary to consider not only the underlying conceptual metonymies but
also conventional knowledge of HAND:
By conventional knowledge as a cognitive mechanism, I simply mean the shared
knowledge that people in a given culture have concerning a conceptual domain like
the human hand. This shared everyday knowledge includes standard information
about the parts, shape, size, use, and function of the human hand, as well as the larger
hierarchy of which it forms a part (hand as a part of the arm, etc). (Kövecses
2002:207)
This conventional knowledge may have motivated the semantic extension of
HAND
in the hands of a watch/clock. In this case, a comparison between the shared standard
information about one specific function of the human hand –pointing or indicating– and the
same function of the device of a watch or clock may have given rise to this semantic
extension. That is, an analogy between two different entities (human hands and parts of
95
watch/clock) arises from the conventional understanding of their respective functions (cf.
Barcelona 2000b). The definition of the hands of a watch or clock provided by the OED,
emphasises this pointing function: “19. The pointer or index which indicates the division of
a dial, esp. that of a clock or watch.”In fact, in the case of the hands of a watch,
HAND
really stands for a part of it, namely, the index finger. Although the comparison is
established across two domains (the human hand and instruments that show the time) and
could, therefore, be considered metaphorical, there is also a metonymical component in it:
the vehicles (the human hand and the hand of a watch or clock) provide mental access to
the target (pointing) within their own ICMs (the human hand and instruments that show the
time). Apart from the shared conventional knowledge that gives rise to the cross-domain
mapping, a conceptual metonymy that could be phrased as
HAND FOR POINTING
is also
behind this semantic extension, illustrating, therefore, Köveceses’s idea that both
conceptual metonymies or metaphors and conventional knowledge play a role in the
motivation of the meaning of a conventional figurative extension.
Two of these three figurative extensions of
HAND
have no counterparts in Spanish.
The syntactic shift of noun to verb in hand it to me is not possible in Spanish and the
preferred realisation for the hands of a watch is agujas (needles) although ‘manecillas’ also
exist. The Spanish realisation ‘agujas’ focuses on shape rather than on function. However,
Spanish has an equivalent multi-word unit, echar una mano for give me a hand.
The differences in the linguistic forms and semantic motivation of the three English
figurative uses of hand chosen provide different challenges to children’s understanding of
them in EFL.
52
Two recent cross-cultural studies on the metonymical and metaphorical motivation of idioms using the
word hand are Csabi (2004) and Szamarasz (2003).
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1. PARTICIPANTS
Ninety-one children (forty-five girls and forty-six boys) in their second, fourth and
sixth year of Primary school participated in this study. There were three groups of secondyears (mean age 7:9, age range from 7:3 to 8:8), a group of fourth-years (mean age 9:9, age
range from 9:5 to 10:4) and a group of sixth-years (mean age 11:8, age range from 11:4 to
12:3). Two of the second-year groups were from the C.P. ‘Delicias’ and consisted of 18 and
14 pupils. The rest of the children attended the C.P. ‘El Vivero’ and there were 25 secondyears, 21 fourth-years and 13 sixth-years. As the sessions took place on different days, the
total number of children that participated in the three parts of this experiment was not the
same, because some children missed one of the sessions. Thus, 90, 88, and 85 children
carried out the tasks to test the interpretation of give me a hand, the hands of a watch and
hand it to me, respectively.
All the participants in this first experiment were Spanish apart from a boy from
Ecuador who had moved to Spain the year before this study took place. Besides, three of
the children had a parent from a different country (Italy, Argentina and Ireland). All the
children spoke Spanish as their mother tongue, except for two who were bilingual, one in
Spanish and Italian and the other one in Spanish and English. The children in both state
schools were from a variety of social and economic backgrounds.
The parents of all participants were informed of the nature and purpose of these
experiments and signed a written agreement to their children’s participating in them.
2. STIMULI AND DESIGN
The semantic extensions of HAND give me a hand, hand it to me and the hands of a
watch were chosen for the experimental task. For each of these three expressions, a
situation or case in which they would be appropriately used was devised, accompanied by a
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multiple-choice answer with three options (see Appendix A). Taking into account the
children’s age and the fact that their attention span is limited, the three situations aimed to
be as short and clear as possible and to use situations that would make sense to young
children. In the multiple-choice answer, hand was obviously included as the correct option
and the two foils were other body parts. In most cases these other body parts were head and
mouth but foot was also used with one of the 7-year-old group in cases 2 (the hands of a
watch) and 3 (hand it to me). The cases were presented in Spanish and the multiple-choice
answers in English. The children’s choices were thus constrained to the body part which
would be the most likely candidate for use in these situations, in order to explore the kind
of reasoning that the children would use in figurative extensions. Evidently, had the study
been focused on other concerns, such a procedure would not have been appropriate.
Nevertheless, multiple-choice tasks have proved to be a better alternative than other
measures of children’s comprehension of figurative language:
Paraphrase and explanation are poor measures of metaphor comprehension because
they impose linguistic or metacognitive demands well in excess of those required for
metaphor comprehension alone (...) Children demonstrate a greater understanding of
metaphor in multiple-choice or enactment tasks than in paraphrase tasks, presumably
because the former impose fewer linguistic and metacognitive demands than the
latter. (Vosniadou 1987: 877)
3. PROCEDURE
The children were tested in groups (between 3 and 5 subjects) in a quiet area of their
school. As has been pointed out, it was decided to work with groups for several reasons. In
the first place, the participants feel comfortable, working in a very similar context to that of
their usual classroom with their classmates. Besides, it also promotes the kind of interaction
among its members that may give rise to discussions on collective experience. Furthermore,
these experimental tasks are designed to test children’s ability to apprehend figurative
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meanings and, as has been argued, negotiation of meaning with adults or peers is an
important factor in children’s understanding of concepts. Finally, the classroom itself is the
most natural context for experimental work to be carried out. However, working with
groups can also pose some problems. The most obvious is that it may lead to ‘group
thinking’ or polarised opinion and that some children may imitate or reproduce a partner’s
answer. Imitation would imply the choice of the same answer and the use of the same
wording when justifying an explanation. Absolute mimicry of this type is almost nonexistent in the data analysed. Some children may say that they agree with a partner or that
they think the same but, in fact, come up with a different or complementary answer to the
previous one. This is illustrated in the following group exchange:
C153: “ ‘head’ porque la cabeza es para pensar”
C1: ‘head’ because the head is for thinking
C2: “ ‘mouth’ porque se habla de cosas”
C2: ‘mouth’ because you speak about things
C3: “ ‘hand’ porque se trabaja – se cogen cosas – se puede hacer de todo”
C3: ‘hand’ because you work – you pick up things – you can do all sorts of things
C4: “ ‘mouth’ porque se puede hablar”
C4: ‘mouth’ because you can speak
C5: “ ‘hand’ por lo mismo que Juan porque con ella puedes hacer de todo – puedes escribir –
puedes coger cosas – puedes hacer de todo”
C5: ‘hand’ for the same reason as Juan because you can do all sorts of things with it –you
can write – you can pick up things – you can do all sort of things
53
As noted in the transcription conventions (see appendix D), ‘C’ stands for ‘child’ and ‘R’ for ‘researcher’.
When there is more than one child, numbers are used, e.g., C1, C2 and so on.
99
In this interaction, child 5 chooses the same answer that had been selected by child
3 and although he says that he does so for the same reason, in fact, his answer is more
specific: he does not mention that the hand is used to work as child 3 did, but rather that
you use it for writing.
It seems, therefore, that most of the time children agree with, rather than imitate, a
partner’s answer. Agreeing with a peer can be considered as a consequence of negotiation
of meaning rather than simple imitation. The first answer can initiate a group interpretation
or bias the ensuing discussion, but the other participants do not simply mimic but share
views. In this sense, the first answer opens up a possibility which further answers may
expand or contradict. In the above example, the first three children initiate three different
interpretations using the three possible answers (head, mouth and hand). Child 4 agrees
with child 2, and child 5 expands the answer provided by child 3. This shows an interaction
among the group members which is normal in classroom context and a constant in learning.
Learners are social cognitive beings who benefit from this type of interaction.
Thirteen sessions were necessary to test all the children. The average duration of
each session was 45 minutes and more than one group was tested in each. Only the oldest
children (11-year-olds) completed the three cases of which the study consisted of during the
same session. The rest of the children did only one each day, so three different sessions
carried out on different days were needed for each of the sub-groups in which the forms
were divided.
The three cases were presented in a different order to each sub-group and the
children were not told the correct answer until they had all finished. Quite a few showed
interest in knowing the correct phrase, so it was agreed with both teachers to have a session
with each form in which I went through all the situations again with them and provided the
appropriate answers.
The experimental sessions were divided into three main blocks: warm-up activities,
the experiment itself and ‘reward’ time. In the first block, two warm-up activities were
100
carried out. The first one consisted in asking the children their name, age and birthday in
English. These are simple questions that are learned and practised very often as classroom
routines, so being able to answer them helped the children to relax, to feel more confident
and to understand they were going to be using their English.
The second activity was aimed at checking which vocabulary items related to the
body parts they had actually mastered and to reinforce their knowledge of the literal
meanings of the words hand, head, mouth and foot. As has been pointed out, the semantic
field of body parts is introduced at very early stages of EFL. In fact, the text books for 4year-olds used in both schools promote active learning of head, hand and leg. At the same
stage, mouth, arm, body and eye were included as passive vocabulary. This, however, does
not guarantee the children’s mastery of these forms. In fact, these vocabulary items do not
appear again in the set texts used with these children, designed by the same publishing
house, until the second year of Primary school, that is, when the children are 7 years old.
Thus, teachers may choose either to recycle these lexical items in the classroom in the
meantime, or postpone further work on them until the second year.
A thorough analysis of the children’s learning of vocabulary at these stages, which
implies a longitudinal study, is beyond the scope of this dissertation. However, checking
the children’s mastery of the ‘core’ meanings of the lexical items chosen was a necessary
first step in the procedure. Children will obviously not be able to understand a metaphorical
or metonymical extension of a word if they do not know its basic meaning. The
understanding of the concrete meaning of certain words may well be taken for granted in
the children’s native language but it is obviously not so in a foreign language as in this
case. For example, the children sometimes confused some of the English words, especially
head and hand, or produced ambiguous forms such as /he/ or /ha:/. In these cases, gestures
typically used in classroom communication (pointing to the body parts in question) were
used to clarify the learner’s communicative intention.
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The second block of the session was the experiment itself. Some introductory
remarks aimed at gaining the children’s active collaboration in the task and recognising its
challenge were made. Thus, I usually introduced this part by saying something like:
“Bueno, pues ahora os voy a hacer unas preguntas relacionadas con las ‘body
parts’. Os tenéis que concentrar y pensar bien porque, a lo mejor, os parecen que son un
poquito difíciles, pero yo creo que sois muy listos y os lo vais a saber todo.” (Well, now
I’m going to ask you a few things related to ‘body parts’. You’ll need to concentrate and
think carefully because you may find them a bit difficult, but I think you are very clever
and will know all the answers.)
After this, one of the situations was presented with the accompanying multiplechoice answer (see Appendix A), ensuring comprehension and providing clarification when
requested. In most cases, one or more of the children took the initiative and offered
answers, and in this case the children took turns in providing their answers. Those who did
not participate freely were asked directly. When there were no ‘volunteers’, all answers
were elicited directly. Some of the children required longer than the others to provide an
answer, but only on very few occasions did a child not complete the task. All this process,
like the rest of the session, was carried out orally. The children never had to produce or
recognise the written forms of any of the words. This second block of the session was taperecorded to be transcribed later. Transcription is orthographic and does not record overlaps
or length of pauses (for transcription conventions see Appendix D). The transcriptions have
been translated into English as literally as possible.
On completion of the task, all the children were thanked and told that as a reward,
we would play a game and that they might get ‘a little pressie’. This usually consisted in
guessing games related to their normal class work. The aim of this ‘reward’ time was to
make the experimental sessions enjoyable for the children, in order to ensure their on-going
cooperation over the months in which the studies would be carried out.
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4. RESULTS
As noted above, due to the nature of the samples elicited (verbal explanations) in
this and the other two studies, an individual analysis of all the answers was the most
appropriate methodology. This is because only a qualitative analysis of the children’s
responses would shed any light on the research questions posed: whether young Spanish
learners of EFL are able to apprehend the three figurative extensions of hand give me a
hand, the hands of a watch/clock and hand it to me and the kind of reasoning that plays a
role in these children’s recognition of these semantic extensions. A quantitative analysis of
the data was also carried out because, as pointed out by Silverman (2001), quantification is
also useful to survey the whole corpus data and for the research to revise accuracy of their
impressions about the data. However, as will be seen in the discussion of the data, statistics
were not able to capture the complexity of the results of this experimental research. In most
cases, the qualitative analysis rectifies quantitative results and clarifies the data.
4.1 SEVEN-YEAR-OLDS
A quantitative analysis of the answers provided by the 7-year-olds offers the results
shown in Table 1.1 below. The word hand was chosen as the correct option by 46%, 70%
and 83% of the children in cases number 1, 2 and 3 respectively. In the three cases, a higher
percentage of children chose hand in preference to the other options: head, mouth, foot.
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Seven-year-olds
100%
80%
60%
40%
20%
0%
Hand
Head
Mouth
Foot
give me a hand
46%
21%
32%
the hands of a watch
70%
14%
14%
2%
hand it to me
83%
6%
9%
2%
In case 1 (give me a hand), hand was chosen by 46% of the children, followed by
mouth (32%) and head (21%). In case 2 (the hands of a watch), 70% of the children opted
for hand, and 14%, 14% and 2% decided on head, mouth and foot, respectively. Finally, in
case 3 (hand it to me), hand was clearly the preferred option (83%), followed by head
(6%), mouth (9%) and foot (2%). As was explained in the section devoted to the stimuli and
design of the experiment, foot was only used with one of the second-year forms in cases 2
(the hands of a watch) and 3 (hand it to me), so the percentages related to foot cannot be
compared with the three other answers because it was not an option in all cases.
These data seem to indicate that the most accessible meaning for the children is the
one present in case 3 (hand it to me) recognised by 83%, of the children. This is followed
by case 2 (the hands of a watch) in which hand was chosen by 70% and finally it seems
that the phrase the children found hardest to identify is give me a hand (case 1) which was
only identified by 46%. However, this quantitative analysis alone is misleading, as a
detailed examination of the answers sheds a different light on the choices made and
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clarifies the type of strategies these children use in their reasoning, as will be seen in the
following three sections.
4.1.1 CASE 1. GIVE ME A HAND
Case 1 (give me a hand) not only offers the lowest percentage of correct answers
(46%, 26 out of 56) but also the most heterogeneous ones. Despite this heterogeneity, there
is a common feature in most of the answers provided by the children: they are based on an
identification of the body part with its function. In the case of the correct answers, this type
of reasoning underlies 23 out of the total 26 (88%):
<1> C: “ ‘hand’ porque las cosas se hacen con la mano”
C: ‘hand’ because you do things with your hands
Some of these answers are quite general and simply state that you do things with
your hands or that in order to help, you need to use your hands. A few of them also refer to
things that can be generally done using our hands, mainly “coger cosas” (pick up things)
or “trabajar” (work):
<2> C: “ ‘hand’ porque con ella puedes hacer de todo – puedes escribir – puedes coger
cosas – puedes trabajar”
C: ‘hand’ because you can do all sorts of things with it – you can write – you can pick up
things – you can work
<3> C: “ ‘hand’ porque con la mano se ayuda mejor y se hacen las cosas más rápido”
C: ‘hand’ because you help better with your hand and do things quicker
<4> C1: “ ‘give me a hand’ porque ayudar a algo no lo vas a hacer ni con la boca ni con la
cabeza”
C1 and C2 [simultaneously]: “es mejor con la mano”
105
R: “por ejemplo ¿qué? – ¿por ejemplo ayudar a qué?”
C1: “ayudar a llevar algo – pues con la boca tendrías que [gestos] – y con la cabeza tendrías
que ir [gestos] – y con la mano tendrías que ir así [gestos]”
C1: ‘give me a hand’ because if you help to do something you don’t do it with your mouth or
head
C1 and C2 [simultaneously]: it’s better with your hand
R: what for example? – helping to do what for example?
C1: helping to carry something – ‘cos with your mouth you’ll have to [gestures] – and with
your head you’ll have to go [gestures] – and with your hand you’ll have to go like this
[gestures]
<5> C: “ ‘hand’ porque podemos hacer más cosas – es la parte del cuerpo que se puede
mover más – se puede hacer más cosas”
C: ‘hand’ because we can do more things – it’s the body part that you can move most easily
– you can do more things
Other answers are more specific and refer to things children usually do with their
hands such as “escribir” (write), “colorear” (colour), “manualidades” (craftwork) or
“jugar con el ordenador” (play on the computer), showing very specific domain reasoning:
<6> C: “porque si no sabes escribir se lo dices a un amigo y te ayuda a escribir”
C: because if you can’t write you ask a friend and s/he helps you write
<7> C1: “ ‘hand’ – porque se puede escribir cartas”
C2: “y hacer los deberes ¡que si no!”
C1: “y hacer manualidades”
C1: ‘hand’ – because you can write letters
C2: and do your homework or you’ll be in trouble!
C1: and do craftwork
106
<8> C: “ ‘hand’ porque te ayuda a escribir y a dibujar y a pintar”
C: ‘hand’ because it helps you to write and draw and colour
<9> C1: “ ‘hand’ porque es la mano y sirve –”
C2: “para escribir Daniel”
C1: “para escribir”
C2: “para comer”
R: “déjalo Tina que él está pensando”
C1: “para comer y para jugar al ordenador”
C1: ‘hand’ because it is ‘mano’ and you can use it –
C2: to write Daniel
C1: to write
C2: to eat
R: leave him Tina he’s thinking
C1: to eat and to play on the computer
However, the identification of the body part with one of its functions was also
responsible for ‘incorrect’ solutions:
<10> C: “ ‘head’ – porque la cabeza es para pensar”
C: head – because you think with your head
<11> C: “ ‘mouth’ porque se puede hablar se habla de cosas”
C: ‘mouth’ because you can speak you speak about things
It seems that when presented with case 1 (‘Si necesito que me ayudéis a hacer algo,
¿cómo creéis que os lo voy a pedir en inglés?’ - If I need your help to do something, how
do you think I will ask for it in English?) different children focused on different parts of the
107
situation. The prevailing answers are hand (46%) and mouth (32%). As has been seen, the
most common reason for choosing one or the other is related to the function of these body
parts (FUNCTION
special cases:
FOR BODY PART).
This general metonymy would, therefore, give rise to
HAND FOR DOING, HEAD FOR THINKING
and
MOUTH FOR SPEAKING.
MOUTH
was related to speaking in 15 out of 18 answers:
<12> C: “porque la boca dice palabras porque nosotros queremos”
C: because our mouth says the words we want
<13> C: “con ‘mouth’ porque puedes decir las cosas – por ejemplo ‘ahora te voy a ayudar’ ”
C: with ‘mouth’ because you can say things – for example ‘I’ll help you in a minute’
<14> C: “ ‘mouth’ porque tienes que hablar – porque no vas a ayudar a la gente sin hablar –
porque él o ella si no sabe alguna palabra se la dices tú”
C: ‘mouth’ because you’ve got to speak – you can’t help people if you don’t speak – because
if he or she doesn’t know a word you can tell them
HEAD is similarly correlated with thinking in 10 out of 12 answers. The children that
chose head justified the relation between
HEAD
and help by arguing that you need to think
to help somebody:
<15> C: “ ‘head’ porque si tú estás pensando – vamos a suponer – que no sabes 9 x 9 y te
pueden ayudar –te pueden decir cuántos son y se piensa con la cabeza”
C: ‘head’ because if you are thinking – for example – that you don’t know 9 times 9 and you
can get some help – somebody can tell you the answer and you need your head to think
<16> C: “ ‘head’ porque si tienes que hacer un examen entonces en la mano no está el
cerebro – el cerebro está en la cabeza”
C: ‘head’ because if you have to sit an exam your brain is not in your hand – your brain is in
your head
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<17> C: “ ‘head’ porque umm – porque el cerebro umm – el cerebro te dice las órdenes y tú
las haces”
C: ‘head’ because mmm – because your brain mmm – your brain gives you commands and
you carry them out
Finally, as has been seen in examples <1> to <9> above, HAND was clearly related
with doing in 23 out of 26 answers.
The use of a different reasoning strategy appears in the three remaining answers that
selected hand. These three children in the same subgroup referred to the equivalent phrase
‘échame una mano’ in Spanish to justify their choice:
<18> C: “ ‘hand’ porque – muchas veces – algunas veces la gente dice ‘¿me echas una
mano?’ y es igual que ayudar”
C: ‘hand’ because often – sometimes – people say ‘will you give me a hand?’ and it’s the
same as helping
<19> C: “ ‘hand’ por lo mismo que ha dicho Lolo – porque a veces dice la gente ‘échame una
mano’ ”
C: ‘hand’ for the same reason as Lolo – because sometimes people say ‘give me a hand’
<20> C: “ ‘hand’ porque a veces dice la gente que si me echas una mano”
C: ‘hand’ because sometimes people ask you to give them a hand
This is a clear example of facilitating an interpretation by one group member who
initiates the explanation. However the other two members of the group did not follow up
this explanation. They both chose ‘mouth’ and focused on
MOUTH FOR SPEAKING
(“uno
cuando habla dice las cosas por la boca” – when someone talks, s/he says things through
the mouth.) As will be seen later, one of the children uses a similar strategy in case 2. She
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resorts to her L1 linguistic knowledge and comes up with the word ‘manecilla’ (little hand)
to refer to the hands of the watch (example <36>). In this case, none of her group-mates
follows up the explanation she initiates. Thus, it seems that a child’s answer may remind
the others of a connection that they may follow up if they find it sensible, or discard if they
ignore it or do not agree with it.
4.1.2 CASE 2. THE HANDS OF A WATCH
Case 2 (the hands of a watch) shows the greatest disparity of results depending on
the type of analysis (quantitative or qualitative) applied to the data. The quantification of
the number of children that chose hand in case 2 (the hands of a watch) overestimates their
comprehension of the figurative motivation for this use. Although 70% of the children
selected the right option, an examination of their reasons to justify their choice shows that
these ‘correct’ answers are often a result of reasoning based on the physical contiguity of a
watch and the body part. In fact, 59% (23 out of 39) of the correct answers are based on this
type of reasoning:
<21> C: “ ‘hand’ porque el reloj se pone en la mano”
C: ‘hand’ because you wear your watch on your hand
<22> C: “ ‘hand’ porque todos los relojes se ponen en la muñeca”
C: ‘hand’ because all watches are worn on the wrist
<23> C: “ ‘hand’ porque por aquí [se toca la muñeca] se pone el reloj y está muy cerca de la
mano”
C: ‘hand’ because you wear your watch here [touches wrist] and it’s very close to your hand
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Although from an adult perspective this answer may not seem to be logical or
motivated, it is very interesting that 23 different children based their answers on this
reasoning.
The search for similarity, on the other hand, motivated other ‘correct’ answers, thus
illustrating a different strategy to interpret the situation. Three of the children justified their
choice of hand by comparing different parts of the watch (strap, face) with body parts
(arms, wrists and fingers) in creative similes:
<24> C: “porque la cuerda es igual que la muñeca porque es redonda y larga”
C: because the strap is the same as your wrist because it is round and long
<25> C: “porque lo del reloj [señalando la esfera] es redondo como si fuera el brazo – como
los dedos [señalando las agujas]”
C: because this thing on the watch [pointing to the face] is round as if it was an arm – like the
fingers [pointing to the hands of the watch]
<26> C: “porque se parecen las agujas a las manos”
R: “tú crees que se parecen las agujas a las manos – ¿y cómo se parecen Andrés?”
C: “como – el deo (dedo) – las puntas a los deos (dedos) y la del reloj [señalando la cuerda]
a los brazos”
C: because the needles [hands of the watch] look like hands
R: you think the needles [hands of the watch] look like hands – and how do they look alike
Andrés?
C: like – the finger – the ends like fingers and that thing on the watch [pointing the strap] like
arms
In these cases, the constraints on the possible answers may have prompted the
children’s search for analogies.
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In two other cases, we find similes that compare the hands of a watch with a salient
aspect of the hand, namely, fingers. This leads to a simile based on the similarity of shape:
<27> C: “porque los dedos parecen agujas”
C: because fingers look like needles [hands of the watch]
<28> C: “porque los dedos de las manos se parecen a las agujas”
C: because the fingers on your hand look like the needles [hands of the watch]
Furthermore, children established comparisons to justify their choices. For example,
in one case human fingers and the hands of a watch (‘needles’) are compared in terms of
size:
<29> C: “porque algunos dedos son más grandes que otros y las agujas – algunas son más
pequeñas y otras más grandes”
C: because some fingers are bigger than others and the needles [hands of a watch] – some
are smaller and others are bigger
Movement, according to three of the children, is also a feature shared by both
human hands and the hands of watches by means of which they can be compared. In fact,
the children’s gestures (a sweeping motion with the lower arm) seemed to relate this
movement not so much with the hand itself, but with the arm, as clear from <32>:
<30> C: “ ‘hand’ porque las agujas del reloj – los ojos digo las manos se pueden mover así
en círculo – y la boca ni la cabeza se pueden mover”
C: ‘hand’ because the needles [hands of the watch] – the eyes I mean the hands can move
making circles – and neither mouths nor heads can move
<31> C: “yo – igual que Mila – eso es lo que iba a decir”
R: “pero ¿me lo dices con tus palabras – otra vez?”
C: “pues porque las agujas se mueven y nosotros también movemos las manos en círculo”
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C: I – the same as Mila – that’s what I was going to say
R: but can you tell me in your own words – again?
C: well because the needles [hands of a watch] move and we also move our hands in circles
<32> C: “ ‘hand’ – pues porque el brazo lo podemos mover como una aguja – por ejemplo
como la pequeña”
C: ‘hand’ – because we can move our arm in the same way a needle [hand of a watch]
moves – for example the short hand
The three participants were in the same subgroup which may have encouraged the
follow-up answers. However, as will be seen in some of the 9- and 11-year-olds’ answers,
the movement of the hands of the watch seems to be particularly salient for these children.
The similar function of both human hands and the hands of a watch to point, signal
or indicate was also present in some of the children’s answers. Three children in two
different subgroups argued:
<33> C: “ ‘hands’ porque indican como las manos – como cuando es – pues ahí – por
ejemplo pone la hora y hacen así [gesto señalando] – pues mira qué hora es”
C: ‘hands’ because they indicate like hands – as when it is – there – for example it tells you
the time and they go like this [pointing gesture] – look what time it is
<34> C: “ ‘hands’ porque la mano puede ser como una abuja (aguja) de reloj que puede
apuntar”
C: ‘hands’ because a hand can be like a needle [hand of a watch] that can point
<35> C: “ ‘hands’ porque es que las manos son como punteros – como punteros los que
tienen los relojes”
R: “¿la mano entera?”
C: “¡no! tres dedos – como tienen los relojes”
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C: hands because the hands are like pointers – like the pointers in watches
R: the whole hand?
C: no! three fingers – the same as in watches
As illustrated in the above examples, most children concentrate on the hands of the
watch despite using the word ‘aguja’ (needle).
Finally, only one participant thought of the existence of the word ‘manecillas’ in
Spanish to refer to the hands of a watch, as the reason why hand was the correct answer:
<36> C: “ ‘hands’ porque en español como manecilla se parece a mano y ‘hand’ es mano”
C: ‘hands’ because in Spanish ‘manecilla’ is similar to ‘mano’ and hand is ‘mano’
Some of these types of reasoning strategies are also present in the children’s
justifications for the selection of the foils (head, mouth or foot). For example, 5 out of the 8
children that chose head, used comparisons to justify their answers. Two of them (in the
same subgroup) compared the hands of the watch with hairs:
<37> C: “ ‘heads’ porque creo que los pelos son las agujas”
C: heads because I think that the hairs are the hands of the watch (needles)
<38> C: “es que me lo ha quitao (quitado) Lidia”
R: “no importa – tú repítelo”
C: “ ‘head’ porque creo que el pelo son las agujas”
C: Lidia has taken my answer
R: it doesn’t matter – you say it again.
C: ‘head’ because I think that hair are the hands of the watch.
The three other comparisons linked the round shape of the face of a watch and a
human head:
<39> C: “ ‘head’ porque esto [la esfera] es redondo como la cabeza”
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C: ‘head’ because this [the face] is round like a head
<40> C: “ ‘head’ porque es redondo y parece la cabeza”
C: ‘head’ because it is round and looks like a head.
Of the two remaining answers, one was based on the identification of the function of
HEAD
(thinking) and HEAD itself:
<41> C: “ ‘head’ porque pensamos qué hora es con la cabeza”
C: ‘head’ because we think what time it is using our head
And the last one was a comparison based on the property of movement:
<42> C: “ ‘head’ porque es que la ‘head’ se puede mover así – el cuello [gesto]”
C: ‘head’ because you can move your ‘head’ like this – your neck [gesture]
This property of the hands of the watch seems to be salient to the children. As
discussed above, three of the answers that chose hand were also based on this type of
reasoning.
In the case of the answers that preferred mouth, finding similarity between two
entities is also the most widely used strategy (6 out of 8 answers illustrate this). 5 of them
are creative similes in which the hands of a watch are compared with parts of the mouth
(teeth and tongue):
<43> C: “ ‘mouth’ porque parece que [se ríe] un trocino (trocito) de esto [la aguja] – si lo
cortas – un cuadrado de un diente – si lo cortas – si se te rompe la aguja”
R: “si se te rompe aguja te parece la forma del diente”
C: ‘mouth’ because it looks like [laughing] a little bit of this [the hand of the watch] – if you cut
it out – a square of a tooth – if you cut it out – if the hand breaks
R: if the hand of the watch breaks – it looks like the shape of a tooth to you
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<44> C: “ ‘mouth’ por esto – que parece un diente
R: “pero ¿qué parece un diente? ¿las agujas o los numeritos?”
C: “no – porque las dos parecen un diente”
C: ‘mouth’ because of this – that looks like a tooth
R: but what looks like a tooth? the hands or the little numbers?
C: no – because both of them look like a tooth
<45> C: “ ‘mouths’ porque la lengua se parece mucho a las agujas y los dientes a los
números”
C: mouths because our tongue is very similar to the hands of a watch and teeth to the
numbers.
Finally, the hands of a watch and the mouth were compared in terms of the sound
they make (THE SOUND FOR THE INSTRUMENT) in one of the answers:
<46> C: “porque hace [emitiendo el sonido] tic-tac”
C: because it sounds [making the sound with his mouth] tick-tock
4.1.3 CASE 3. HAND IT TO ME
Case 3 (Hand it to me) provides the most uniform data from both a qualitative and a
quantitative perspective. In 93% (42 out of 45) of the correct answers, the choice of hand
was justified in the same way:
<47> C: “porque cuando damos algo lo hacemos con la mano”
C: because when we give something out we use our hand
The high percentage of correct answers and justifications in this particular situation
is even more remarkable if we take into account that these children were only familiar with
the prototypical meaning of
HAND,
that is the noun form, as its verbal use had not been
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exemplified for them by their teachers or the text books. Their answers, therefore, seem to
recognise the underlying metonymical motivation that gives rise to the semantic extension
present in to hand something to somebody. Thus, in this case, as in case 1, they consistently
employ metonymical reasoning in preference to other strategies such as transfer from the
L1. In the case of hand it to me, their abstract reasoning is based on their concrete
sensorimotor experiences related to the manipulation of objects. Their answers are clear in
this respect, things are handed to somebody or given out using the hands:
<48> C: “ ‘hand’ porque normalmente las cosas se dan con la mano”
C: ‘hand’ because you normally use your hand to give things out
<49> C: “ ‘hand’ porque te la da – con la mano – que agarra él eso y te lo da”
C: ‘hand’ because s/he hands it to you – with her/his hand – s/he picks that up and hands it
to you
<50> C: “ ‘hand’ porque si no no – porque si no tuviera mano no podría cogerlo”
C: ‘hand’ because otherwise I couldn’t – because if I didn’t have a hand I wouldn’t be able to
pick it up
<51> C: “ ‘hand porque si no tenemos mano ¿cómo lo vamos a pasar o como lo cogemos?”
C: ‘hand’ because if we haven’t got a hand how are we going to pass it or pick it up?
<52> C1: “lo mismo que Alberto”
R: “¿y qué es?”
C1: “¡pero yo se lo he dicho!”
R: “bueno – dímelo tú a mí ahora [risas] ¿te lo ha dicho Alberto?”
C2: “noooo”
R: “ya lo pensabas ¿no?”
C2: [asiente]
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C1: “y yo también lo pensaba – porque coges el libro y se da con la mano”
C1: the same thing as Alberto
R: and what’s that?
C1: but I’ve told him!
R: well – you tell me now [laughters] has he told you Alberto?
C2: noooo
R: you’d already thought about it, hadn’t you?
C2: [he nods his head]
C1: and I’d already thought about it too – because you pick up the book and give it with your
hand
Discarding the other body parts on the basis of experience that tells them that heads,
mouths or feet are not usually employed to hand things to others is also reflected in some
answers:
<53> C: “ ‘hand’ porque es más fácil que con la cabeza – se lo das así [gesture]”
C: ‘hand’ because with your hand is easier than with your head – you give it like this [gesture]
<54> C: “porque – ¡como quieres que lo coja! ¿con la mano o con el pie?”
C: because – how do you want me to hold it! with my hand or with my foot?
<55> C: “no voy a coger así el papel [señalando el pie]”
C: I can’t hold it like this [pointing to his foot]
<56> C: “ ‘hand’ porque se da con la mano – tú se lo das con la mano ¡no con el pie ni con la
cabeza ni con la boca!”
C: ‘hand’ because you hand it with your hand – you hand it to him/her with your hand not with
your foot or head or mouth!
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<57> C: “ ‘hand’ porque con hand te lo puedo dar y con las demás cosas – ¡no te lo voy a
dar con la boca ni con la cabeza!”
C: ‘hand’ because I can hand it to you with my hand and with the other things – I can’t hand it
to you with my mouth or head!
As regards the explanations for choosing head and mouth, all of them were also
based on the two metonymies that had already appeared in the previous two situations
(HEAD FOR THINKING and MOUTH FOR SPEAKING). Thus, according to these children, you ask
somebody, using your mouth, to hand something to you:
<58> C: “ ‘mouth’ porque has tenido que hablar para decírselo porque si no – no te vas a
quedar callado y te lo va a dar”
C: ‘mouth’ because you’ve talked to tell him/her because if you don’t – you can’t keep quiet
and expect him/her to hand it to you
<59> C: “con ‘mouth’ porque se lo dices y ella te lo da”
R: “se lo dices con ‘mouth’ y ella te lo da”
C: with ‘mouth’ because you tell her and she hands it to you
A: you tell her with your ‘mouth’ and she hands it to you
Similarly, you need to think in order to do anything:
<60> C: “ ‘head’ porque pensamos con ella”
R: “pero es pasar una cosa”
C: “sí”
R: “pero ¿tú crees que pensamos?”
C: “pero pensamos para pasar cualquier cosa ¿no? y para hacer cualquier cosa”
C: ‘head’ because we think with it
R: but it’s to pass something
C: yes
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R: but do you think we think?
C: but we need to think to pass anything don’t we? and to do anything
<61> C: “con ‘head’ ”
R: “con ‘head’ ¿por qué?”
C: “por lo mismo que Alicia”
R: “por lo mismo que Alicia Rodríguez – y ¿qué es lo que ha dicho Alicia?”
C: “eh – que es lo que piensa y dices – pos (pues) lo que piensas pos (pues) lo dices”
C: with ‘head’
R: with ‘head’ why?
C: for the same reason as Alicia
R: for the same reason as Alicia Rodríguez – and what has Alicia said?
C: er – it’s what you think and say – so what you think you say it
4.1.4 DISCUSSION
All the examples discussed above illustrate the presence of figuration and the
capacity to establish mappings between two elements in the children’s reasoning about an
L2 at age seven. The results of this study show that these particular children in this
particular context are able to set up links via metonymy and metaphor between the different
uses of a lexeme if they are provided with an appropriate stimulus to do so, and that they
search for similarity and contiguity in their reasoning. Linguistically, this is reflected in
their ability to use metaphorical comparisons, creative similes and utterances grounded in
metonymy. Instances of the last type are the most frequent throughout the three situations
designed for this study. Thus, the three preferred metonymies are conventional and
illustrate the sharing of a common cultural background. They all are instances of the
schema
FUNCTION FOR BODY PART: HAND FOR DOING, HEAD FOR THINKING
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and
MOUTH FOR
SPEAKING.
Examples <1> to <5> and <47> to <57> illustrate the first of these metonymies
in cases 1 and 3 respectively. Linguistic instantiations of the metonymy
THINKING
HEAD FOR
appear in case 1 (examples <15> to <17>) case 2 (example <41>) and case 3
(examples <60> and <61>). Finally,
MOUTH FOR SPEAKING
is linguistically realised in
examples <11> to <14>, <46> and <58> and <59> in cases 1, 2 and 3 respectively.
Another conventional metonymy (HAND
FOR POINTING),
which underlies the
semantic extension the hands of a watch or clock, appears in examples <33> to <35> in
case 2.
It is interesting to note that the children’s answers are often determined by their
knowledge of concrete scenarios familiar to them, such as doing homework, or writing
(examples <6>, <8>, <9>), playing on the computer (example <9>), doing craftwork
(example <7>) or learning their tables (example <15>). This type of knowledge can be
considered to be part of what Nguyen and Murphy (2003: 1783) call ‘script knowledge’
which they define as “a schema for a routine event (e.g., going to the doctor, seeing a
movie)” and seems to play a very important role in children’s reasoning at this age.
Children’s capacity to establish analogies is linguistically realised in comparisons
and similes. These are mainly creative and show their searching for similarity. Although
instances of similes and comparisons only appear in case 2 (the hands of a watch), there is a
significant number of them (13 out of 56). They refer to the three body parts in question:
HAND
(examples <24> to <29>),
HEAD
(<37> to <40>) and
MOUTH
(<43> to <45>), and
they are mainly based on similarity of shape. This use of creative similes and comparisons
tends to replicate first language studies. That is, when provided with evidence that a
figurative expression exists in language, these children reason about it.
The frequency of metonymy-based utterances in the three cases, particularly in case
3 in which metonymy underlies 93% of all answers (50 out of 54), indicates that this
mechanism plays an important role in these children’s understanding of these semantic
extensions of
HAND.
Moreover, it also seems to show that they consistently reason
metonymically in preference to other strategies. For instance, although the phrase give me a
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hand has an equivalent in Spanish (‘échame una mano’), these children rarely resort to
linguistic reasoning based on their L1 knowledge. Only three (out of 56) of the children in
the experiment used this to support their choice of hand (examples <18> <19> <20>). If the
children were transferring from their mother tongue into English, the meaning of give me a
hand would be very clear to them. However, the data reveal that, in fact, this is the most
difficult of the three phrases for them to comprehend. On the other hand, hand it to me,
which has no equivalent in Spanish (the noun ‘mano’ cannot be verbalised), is more
accessible. These children cannot be transferring from Spanish into English in this
particular case. Instead, their abstract reasoning is based on their concrete sensorimotor
experiences related to the manipulation of objects, as their answers in this respect illustrate
(examples <47> to <57>). Thus, their understanding of the figurative meaning of
HAND
conveyed in hand it to me seems to be based on this experiential correlation.
4.2 NINE-YEAR-OLDS
The 9-year-olds’ answers were also analysed from a quantitative and qualitative
perspective. The quantitative results indicate that hand was selected as the correct option by
over 50% of the children in all cases: 52% in case 1 (give me a hand), 58% in Case 2 (the
hands of a watch) and 89% in Case 3 (hand it to me). The rest of the answers are
distributed as follows: in case 1, mouth was the second preferred option (29%), followed by
head (19%); and both head and mouth were chosen by the same number of children (21%
and 5%, respectively) in cases 2 and 3 by. All the results are shown in Table 1.2.
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Nine-year-olds
100%
80%
60%
40%
20%
0%
Hand
Head
Mouth
give me a hand
52%
19%
29%
58%
21%
21%
hand it to me
89%
5%
5%
These quantitative data are similar to those of the previous age group in the sense
that the most accessible phrase for these children seems to be hand it to me, which was
identified by 89%, followed by the hands of a watch (58%) and give me a hand (52%).
However, the percentages of correct answers in cases 1 (give me a hand) and 2 (the hands
of a watch) are more uniform compared to those of the 7 year-olds, which showed great
disparity between the 70% correct answers in the case of the hands of watch and the 46%
in the case of give me a hand.
As with the 7-year-olds, a qualitative analysis is necessary to determine the number
of appropriate responses and to clarify the reasoning strategies behind the correct and
incorrect answers.
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An examination of the correct answers in case 1 (give me a hand) shows that the
main reasoning strategy behind the children’s responses is the identification of the body
part with its function. 8 out of the 11 answers that choose hand are based on this type of
reasoning. These answers are very similar to those provided by the 7-year-olds and related
to the metonymy HAND
FOR DOING.
Most of them state that you do things with your hands
or that in order to help, you need to use your hands:
<62> C: “ ‘hand’ porque ayudar – pues se ayuda con las manos”
C: ‘hand’ because help – ‘cos you help with your hands
<63> C: “ ‘hand’ porque con las manos se puede ayudar”
C: ‘hand’ because you can help with your hands
Some of the children also mention things that can be generally done using our
hands, mainly “trabajar” (work) or “coger cosas” (pick up things):
<64> C: “yo también ‘hand’ porque con las manos se trabaja”
C: I also choose ‘hand’ because you work with your hands
<65> C: “ ‘hand’ porque es más fácil – uno no va a coger algo si no utiliza las manos”
C: ‘hand’ because it’s easier – you can’t pick up anything if you don’t use your hands
Two out of the 11 children that opted for hand did so on the basis of a different
strategy: a cross-linguistic comparison that had also been present in 3 of the 7-year-olds’
answers. Thus:
<66> C: “ ‘hand’ porque en italiano se dice ‘dame una mano’ – ‘dame una mano’ y en
español se dice ‘échame una mano’ que es lo mismo y – entonces será ‘hand’ porque se
parecen los idiomas y – como todos derivan del latín”
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C: ‘hand’ because in Italian you can say ‘dame una mano’ – ‘dame una mano’ and in Spanish
you can say ‘échame una mano’ and it’s the same thing – so it’ll be ‘hand’ because
languages are similar and – they all are derived from Latin
<67> C: “ ‘give me a hand’ porque puedes decir échame un mano”
C: ‘give me a hand’ because you can say ‘échame una mano’
These two children were in two different subgroups and, therefore, the imitation
factor is discarded. Example <66> was produced by the Italian bilingual that took part in
the experiment. This example shows a very clear meta-linguistic awareness of this
participant who used not only her knowledge of Italian and Spanish, but also generalised
the notion that Italian and Spanish are derived from Latin to English. She finds the
equivalent linguistic expressions in Spanish (‘échame una mano’) and Italian (‘dame una
mano’) and concludes that it must be the same in English (‘give me a hand’).
As in the previous case, the identification of the body part with its function was also
responsible for incorrect answers. 83% of the ‘mouth-answers’ were grounded in this
reasoning strategy (MOUTH FOR SPEAKING):
<68> C: “la boca”
R: “tú crees que ‘mouth’ ¿por qué?”
R: “porque con ella se puede hablar – nos comunicamos con los demás y nos escuchan”
C: ‘mouth’
R: why do you think is ‘mouth’?
C: because we can speak with it – we communicate with other people and they listen to us
<69> C: “ ‘mouth’ porque te comunicas bien – aunque con las manos también te comunicas
bien pero yo creo que es mejor hablar”
C: mouth because you communicate OK – although you can also communicate OK with your
hands – but I think that speaking is better.
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<70> C: “ ‘mouth’ porque me lo pides y con la mano no lo puedes pedir ni con la cabeza
tampoco”
C: ‘mouth’ because you are asking me and you can’t ask me using you hand or head
These examples illustrate that when presented with case 1, these children focus on
the asking for help rather than on the action of helping itself. This had also appeared in
some of the 7-year-olds’ answers (see, for instance, <13> and <14>)
Although the metonymies related to
FOR SPEAKING)
HAND (HAND FOR DOING)
and
MOUTH (MOUTH
used by the 7-year-olds were almost exactly replicated by the 9-year-olds,
there is no trace of the metonymy related to
HEAD (HEAD FOR THINKING)
in their answers.
Of the four children that selected this answer, two in the same subgroup based their
explanation on a different reasoning strategy: a perceived phonological similarity with help.
<71> C: “ ‘head’ porque se parece a ‘help!’ ”
C: ‘head’ because it’s similar to ‘help!’
<72> C: “como lo que ha dicho Mar – head se parece a help!”
C: the same as Mar head – it’s similar to help!
An examination of the ‘hand-answers’ provided by the children in relation to case 2
(the hands of a watch) shows that they widely resorted to comparison and metonymy. As
regards the former, some of these children found similarity between the hands of a watch
and human hands, arms or fingers in terms of their shape and produced creative similes in
their explanations:
<73> C: “ ‘hands’ porque tienen – como es – como la forma de los brazos”
C: ‘hands’ because they’ve got – it’s like – like the shape of your arms
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<74> C: “pues igual porque se parecen mucho a las agujas [señalándose el brazo]”
R: “porque se parecen mucho – son las agujas – pero te estabas señalando a qué se
parecían”
C: “al [se toca la mano y dedos]”
C: the same because they look a lot like needles [the hands of a watch] [pointing to his arm]”
R: because they look a lot like – they are like needles [the hands of a watch] – but you were
pointing to the part they look like
C: like [touches his hand and fingers]
<75> C: “ ‘hands’ porque – por la misma razón – porque se parece mucho a la forma de esta
parte [mueve los dedos]”
C: ‘hands’ because – for the same reason – because they look a lot like the shape of this part
[moves fingers]
On the other hand, the similar function of both human hands and the hands of a
watch to indicate or point (HAND FOR POINTING) was the reason for choosing hand in other
cases (4 out of 11) :
<76> C: “ ‘hand’ porque indican la hora qué es como haciendo [mueve los dos brazos como
si fuesen las agujas de un reloj señalando] – las manecillas – las manos te van diciendo los
minutos y las horas”
C: hand because they indicate what time it is by making [moves her two arms as if they were
the hands of a watch pointing] – the ‘manecillas’ – the ‘manos’ tell you the minutes and the
hours
<77> C: “ ‘arms’ ”
R: “ ‘arms’ no – ‘hands’ ‘head’ o ‘mouth’ – tú dices ‘arms’ brazos ¿por qué dices ‘arm’ de
todas maneras?”
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C: “porque con los brazos así [con los brazos semi-doblados y moviendo uno de ellos] se
mueven y señalan”
R: “lo que pasa es que ‘arms’ no es posible – es otra de las partes”
C: “ ‘hands’ porque señalan – igual que nosotros señalamos con la mano”
C: ‘arms’
R: not ‘arms’ – ‘hands’ ‘head’ or ‘mouth’ – you say ‘arms’ brazos why do you say ‘arm’
anyway?
C: because with your arms like this [doing a sweeping motion with his lower arm] they move
and point
R: but ‘arms’ is not possible – it’s another part
C: ‘hands’ because they signal – just as we signal with our hand
<78> C: “ ‘hand’ – por lo mismo porque la aguja señala igual que una persona – ¡ay no me
sé explicar bien!”
C: hand – for the same reason because the needle [hand of a watch] points the same as a
person does – oh I can’t explain properly!
Example <77> illustrates an interesting strategy. This child focused on the pointing
function of the hands of the watch and searched for the matching entity that shared that
function. For him, that entity was not the human hand but, rather, the arm and he gave that
answer using the English word for it, even though arm was not one of the given options. He
even justified his answer saying that arms move round and point and illustrated it with a
sweeping motion with his lower arm. When he was reminded that arm was not among the
possible answers, he discarded mouth and head and chose hand using the same reason to
justify his answer: hands are also used to point.
One of the children gave both explanations: the similarity of shape and the shared
function, illustrating a combination of both types of reasoning:
<79> C: “ ‘hand’ porque la mano se parece a una aguja y es con la que señala”
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C: ‘hand’ because the hand looks like a needle [hand of a watch] and it is the part that points
Finally, the existence of the word ‘manecilla’ in Spanish was argued by only one of
the children as the reason for choosing ‘hand’:
<80> C: “en castellano se llaman manecillas – no sólo se llaman agujas también se pueden
llamar manecillas”
R: “también se pueden llamar manecillas – y tú crees que esa puede ser la razón ¿no?”
C: “bueno eso es una pista para aprender que se llaman así”
C: in Spanish they are called ‘manecillas’ – not only ‘agujas’ but they can also be called
‘manecillas’
R: they can also be called ‘manecillas’ – and you think that might be the reason don’t you?
C: well that’s a clue to learn that they are called that
This was again the Italian bilingual child who is using exactly the same strategy she
used in Case 1: her knowledge of more than one language. Her final comment suggests that
she commonly uses this strategy in her language learning experiences: the fact that the
same name exists in two languages is “una pista para aprender que se llaman así” (“a clue
to learn that they are called like that”)54.
The justifications for selecting HEAD were very heterogenous but, at the same time,
most of them were based on reasoning strategies that had been present in these children’s
previous answers and in those provided by the 7-year-olds. Thus, the movement of the
hands of a watch was compared with the movement of the head in two answers:
<81> C: “ ‘head’ porque como las agujas giran y la cabeza también puede girar así [gesto]”
C: ‘head’ because the hands of a watch go round and the head can also go round like this
[gesture]
54
In fact, she comes from a home where, because of the father’s occupation, there is likely to be a great deal
of meta-linguistic talk.
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<82> C: “ ‘head’ por la cabeza también – porque se puede mover”
C: ‘head’ because the head too – because it can move
And the round shape of both the face of a watch and a human head served as the
basis for a comparison:
<83> C: “ ‘head’ porque como la cabeza es redonda y esto es redondo y además la cabeza
se puede mover”
C: ‘head’ because the head is round and this is round and besides the head can move
Finally, a new justification was also provided by one of these children based on the
idea that the HEAD is the leading part:
<84> C: “ ‘heads’ – no sé – porque una de ellas es la cabeza del grupo porque es la que va
dando más vueltas”
C: heads – I don’t know – because one of them is the head of the group because it’s going
round and round more
In contrast, the selection of
answers given (same subgroup):
MOUTH
was based on the same reason in the four
THE FUNCTION FOR THE PART (MOUTH FOR SPEAKING)
relation with the main property of a watch (it tells you the time):
<85> C: “puede con la boca”
R: “que se llamen ‘mouth’ ”
C: “porque se puede decir la hora y otros nos escuchan”
C: it may be with mouth
R: that they are called ‘mouth’
C: because you can tell the time and others listen to us
<86> C: “ ‘mouth’ porque con ella puedes decir la hora”
C: ‘mouth’ because you can tell the time with it
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in
<87> C: “ ‘mouth’ porque lo dices con la boca”
C: ‘mouth’ because you say it with your mouth
As with the previous year group, the number of correct answers in Case 3 was the
highest (89%, 16 out of 18 answers) and the justification of the choice of HAND (in 11 out
of 16 cases) was also based on concrete sensorimotor experiences related the manipulation
of objects. Their answers are strikingly similar to those of the seven-year-olds:
<88> C: “ ‘hand’, porque ¡no te lo voy a dar con la boca ni con el pie! – se da con la mano”
C: ‘hand’ because I can’t give it to you with my mouth or foot! – it’s given with the hand
<89> C: “yo también con ‘hand’ porque con la mano se puede dar – con la cabeza ni con la
boca tampoco”
C: me too ‘hand’ because with your hand you can give – not with your head or mouth either
<90> C: “con ‘hand’ también porque te lo da con la mano y no te lo puede dar ni con la
cabeza – ni con la boca”
C: with ‘hand’ too because he gives it to you with his hand and he can’t give it to you with his
head – or his mouth
<91> C: “ ‘hand’ porque con la mano te voy a dar el papel”
C: hand because I’ll give you the piece of paper with my hand
<92> C: “ ‘hand it’ porque con la mano puedes dar cosas y llevarlas así”
C: ‘hand it’ because with your hand you can give things and carry them like this
<93> R: “María ¿qué pasa? que dice: ‘¡me lo has copiao (copiado)!’ ”
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C: “ ‘hand’ porque – porque – lo que ha dicho Andrés que –
R: “lo que ha dicho Andrés – ‘hand’ – y por la misma razón decías – y ¿cuál es la razón?”
C: “es con la parte que se coge”
R: “María what’s the matter? that she’s saying: ‘you’ve copied me!’
C: ‘hand’ because – because – what Andrés said that –
R: what Andrés said – ‘hand’ – and for the same reason you said – and what’s the reason?
C: it’s the part you pick it up with
The remaining 5 answers (a whole subgroup) gave a very specific reason for
choosing HAND: you may also need to use your hands to communicate.
<94> C: “ ‘hand’ te puedes comunicar bastante bien haciendo gestos – hay –a veces que no
te entiendan pero puedes hacer esos gestos y te entienden”
C: ‘hand’ because you can communicate quite well by making gestures – there are –
sometimes you may not be understood but you can make gestures and people understand
you
<95> C: “ ‘hand’ también – por lo mismo que ha dicho José María que te puedes comunicar”
C: “ ‘hand’ too – for the same reason as José María because you can communicate”
<96> C: “ ‘hand’ también – porque es un medio de comunicación para también los mudos –
también con las manos”
C: ‘hand’ too – because it is a means for communication for dumb people too – with your
hands too
<97> C: “con las manos”
R: “con ‘hand’ con ‘hand it to me’ ”
C: “lo que ha dicho María porque si eres mudo – no puedes – tienes que comunicar por
medio de gestos – pedir”
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C: with the hands
R: with ‘hand’ with ‘hand it to me’
C: the same as María has said because if you are dumb – you can’t – you’ve got to
communicate by means of gestures – asking
<98> C: “ ‘hand’ porque con las manos – con los gestos puedes pedirle el papel – puedes
hacerle así [mueve las manos] y pa’ (para) que te dé el papel”
C: ‘hand’ because with the hands – with gestures you can ask for the piece of paper – you
can do like this [moves hands] and so that s/he gives you the piece of paper
It is worth noting these answers for two reasons. On the one hand, it is very
infrequent that all the children in the same subgroup should agree on the same answer and
on the same justification. On the other, the justification for this answer is fairly uncommon
as well. Although there are some examples in this and other age groups that focused on the
asking for something rather than the action itself, they mainly occurred in Case 1 (give me a
hand) and they all chose mouth. In this particular case, they have all chosen hand as an
alternative means for communication in general (<94>, <95> and <98>) or for people who
cannot speak (<96> and <97>). For some reason (possibly learning about sign language in
recent classes) these children seem to be especially aware of different means for
communication.
4.2.4 DISCUSSION
The results of this age group show that a high percentage of these children could
identify the three figurative extensions in question and that, in this process of identification,
they were able to perceive the links of the different senses of a lexeme on the basis of
experiential correlations grounded mainly in metonymy. They were also able to match
attributes or functions of two concepts on the basis of similarity or contiguity. These
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strategies were present in both the correct and incorrect interpretations of the three
situations.
As in the case of the 7-year-olds, the matching of the three body parts presented
with their function was the most widely employed strategy especially in cases 3 (hand it to
me) and 1 (give me a hand). Most of the ‘hand’-answers (11 out of 16) in case 3 are based
on the children’s experiences when passing things to others (examples <88> to <93>). As
regards case 1, metonymy underlies 73% (8 out of 11) of the answers that selected hand
(HAND FOR DOING, examples <62> to <65>) and 83% (5 out of 6) of the ‘mouth’- responses
(MOUTH FOR SPEAKING). So far, these results do not seem to differ much from those of the
7-year-olds. However, several differences can be pointed out. In the first place, while the 7year-olds generalise the schema BODY PART FOR FUNCTION to the three options given (hand,
mouth and head), the 9-year-olds only use the first two. In their answers, there are no
examples that instantiate linguistically the metonymy
linguistic realisations of
HAND FOR DOING
HEAD FOR THINKING.
Secondly, the
produced by the 9-year-olds refer to general
activities that can be carried out using the hands, mainly working and picking up things
(examples <62>, <63>). None of their answers refer to the concrete scenarios familiar to
children (for example, doing homework, playing on the computer, doing craftwork or
learning their tables) that were so frequent in the 7-year-olds’ explanations. In this sense, it
seems that in their reasoning, the 7-year-olds are more dependent on the ‘here and now’,
that is, on experiences they have had recently or frequently while the 9-year-olds do not
need to rely so much on this concrete knowledge. Finally, in the 9-year-olds’ explanations
regarding case 2 (the hands of a watch), there is no trace of the 7-year-olds’ preferred
justification (“porque el reloj se pone en la mano” – because you wear your watch on your
hand). In this particular semantic extension, the 9-year-olds mainly focused on the shared
function of the human hands and the hands of a watch for pointing (4 answers, examples
from <76> to <78>) or on the similarity of shape between the two concepts (examples from
<73> to <75>). In fact, examples of the children’s search for similarity mainly appear in
case 2 and are linguistically realised as creative similes that establish comparisons between
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the hands of the watch and the human hands, arms or fingers in terms of their shape (<73>
to <75>). These examples are less numerous than those provided by the 7-year-olds and the
comparisons are not so creative. The features they match are, however, very similar to
those that the 7-year-olds focused on: the similar shape of the arms or fingers and the hands
of the watch. Furthermore, in the case of the 7-year-olds the instances of comparisons and
similes well outnumber the instances of metonymy-based utterances (20/5). In contrast, in
the 9-year-olds’ results, the number of examples of both types are balanced (8/8). The 7year-olds seem to be more willing to use language creatively even when it is grounded in
metonymy, as illustrated in example <46> (THE SOUND FOR THE INSTRUMENT).
From the data obtained, it seems that in their interpretations of the semantic
extensions of an English word they know, these 9-year-olds are able to transfer from literal
to figurative meaning through metaphor and, especially, metonymy. As in the case of the 7year-olds, they also use figurative reasoning in preference to other strategies such as
resorting to their L1 knowledge. Only in three examples <66> and <67> in case 1 and <80>
in case 2 is the choice justified in terms of the existence of an equivalent phrase in the L1,
and in fact, two of them were produced by the same child who showed an acute metalinguistic awareness.
4.3 ELEVEN-YEAR-OLDS
As with the two previous age groups, the answers provided by the 11-year-olds
were also analysed from a quantitative perspective. The results of this analysis are shown in
the Table 1.3.
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Table 1.3 Quantitative results of Study 1 (11-year-olds)
Eleven-year-olds
100%
80%
60%
40%
20%
0%
Hand
Head
Mouth
give me a hand
92%
0%
8%
70%
15%
15%
hand it to me
85%
0%
15%
As can be seen, hand was the preferred option in the three cases with very high
percentages: 92% in case 1 (give me a hand), 85% in case 3 (hand it to me) and 70% in
case 2 (the hands of a watch). As regards the two foils, head was discarded by all the
participants in case 1 and mouth was only chosen by 8%. In case 2, both foils were chosen
by the same number of children (15%). Finally, in case 3, 15% of the children decided on
mouth, and head was unanimously rejected.
These results vary a great deal from those obtained with the other two age groups.
The 11-year-olds seem to find that the easiest phrase to identify is give me a hand which, as
seen in the quantitative results. This expression was the least accessible for the other two
groups. Hand it to me takes second place with a percentage (85%) that is quite similar to
the percentage obtained by both the 7-year-olds (83%) and the 9-year-olds (89%). And
finally, the hands of a watch occupies the last position.
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In this particular case, the complementing qualitative analysis of the children’s
answers will not only rectify the quantitative data and clarify the children’s reasoning
strategies, but will also give some clues to understanding these differences.
A detailed examination of the reasons given by the children for choosing hand as
the correct answer in case 1 (Give me a hand) shows that the most widely employed
reasoning strategy is a cross-language comparison (in 67% of the cases). The existence of
an equivalent phrase in Spanish, échame una mano, was the reason given by the children
for deciding on hand:
<99> C: “yo ‘hand’ porque la expresión es la misma en español que en inglés – en español
es ‘échame una mano’ pues supongo que también será igual en inglés”
C: ‘hand’ I think because it’s the same expression in Spanish and English – in Spanish
‘échame una mano’ so I guess it’ll be the same in English
<100> C: “la mano porque es como ‘échame un mano’ ¿no? pues igual – pues ‘give me a
hand’ – es lo mismo”
C: hand because it’s like ‘échame una mano’ isn’t it? the same thing – it’s ‘give me a hand’
then – it’s the same
<101> “ ‘hand’ porque en español es parecido a ‘échame una mano’ ”
‘hand’ because it’s similar to ‘échame una mano’ in Spanish
Reasoning based on the identification of the body part with its function is also
present in the 11-year-olds answers but in a lower percentage (25%). The same metonymy
used by the other age groups (HAND FOR DOING) is also employed:
<102> C: “yo ‘give me your hand’ – que como tú ayudas con las manos – ¡yo que sé!”
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R: “no no si lo estás haciendo bien – sigue explicando”
C: “con la boca no porque – ¡cómo vas a ayudar hablando!”
C: ‘give me a hand’ I think – ‘cos as you help with your hands – I don’t know!
R: no no you’re doing fine – keep on explaining
C: it can’t be mouth because – how are you going to help by talking!
<103> C: “ ‘échame una mano’ porque lo puedes ayudar tú con – contigo – si te echa una
mano porque pones tus manos pa (para) ayudarle – más o menos”
C: ‘give me a hand’ because you can help him with – with you – if he gives you a hand
because you put your hands to help him – more or less
From the three metonymies that were so common in the 7-year-olds’ answers (HAND
FOR DOING, MOUTH FOR SPEAKING
and HEAD
FOR THINKING),
only the first two appeared in
the 11-year-olds’ responses, the same that the 9-year-olds had employed. In fact, head was
completely discarded in their answers. The child that decided on mouth gave a justification
that had already appeared in the other age groups: you need to use your mouth in order to
ask for help.
<104> C: “ ‘mouth’ porque se pide con la boca la ayuda ¿no? – si dices ‘give me’ – estás
pidiendo ayuda”
C: ‘mouth’ because you ask for it with your mouth, don’t you? – if you say ‘give me’ – you are
asking for help
In case 2, hand is also the preferred answer (9 out 13). Two of the children
explicitly said that the shared function of the human hands and the hands of watch (HAND
FOR POINTING)
was their reason for choosing hand:
<105> C: “ ‘hand’ porque marcan las horas como si estuvieran – como si fueran tres manos”
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C: ‘hand’ because they point to the hours as if they were – as if they were three hands
<106> C: “las manos porque sí – porque – lo mismo es más fácil señalar con las manos”
C: the hands because it just is – because – the same it’s easier to point with the hands
The remaining seven children based their answers on the similar movement of the
hands of the watch and the human hands, but they hinted at the pointing function:
<107> C: “yo creo que se llaman ‘hands’ porque el movimiento parece como el de estar así
con la mano [mueve las dos manos como si señalasen las horas] poco más o menos”
C: I think they are called ‘hands’ because the movement is similar to doing this with your
hand [moves hands as if they were pointing to the numbers] more or less
<108> C: “ ‘hand’ por la misma razón ”
R: “¿y cuál es la razón?”
C: “pues que cuando tú mueves la mano parece que son las agujas de un reloj”
C: ‘hand’ for the same reason
R: and what’s the reason?
C: that when you move your hand it seems that they are the hands of a watch
<109>C: “yo igual – ‘hand’ por el movimiento de las manos cuando haces así [mueve los
brazos] – así o así un poco doblao (doblado) [dobla el brazo] – es lo mismo”
C: me too – ‘hand’ because of the movement of the hands when you do like this [moves his
arms] – this or this a bit bent [bends his arm] – it’s the same
<110> C: “yo creo que también por la misma razón que Álvaro porque cuando tú – las agujas
se – son como las manos ¿no? que tú las puedes mover como si fuesen agujas”
R: “vale”
C: “y algunos relojes tienen dos agujas igual que como si fuesen dos manos”
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C: I think that for the same reason as Álvaro because when you – the hands of a watch – are
like hands aren’t they that you can move as if they were the hands of a watch
R: all right
C: and some watches have two hands (‘needles’) as if they were two hands
As regards those children that decided on mouth, they produced two creative similes
based on shape:
<111> C: “mouths – porque es como si hablaran las horas – ¡es una tontería!”
R: “no bueno – cada uno – ¿tú piensas que es una tontería José?”
C: “hombre”
R: “entonces ¿por qué lo has dicho?”
C: “¡ah! también porque cuando son las tres y diez – como una boca”
C: ‘mouths’ – because it is as if the hours talk – that’s silly!
R: well no – each of you – do you think that’s silly José?
C: yes
R: why did you say so then?
C: oh! and also because when it’s ten past three – like a mouth
<112> C: “yo ‘mouth’ porque parecen bocas cuando se ponen en distintas horas”
C: ‘mouth’ because they look like mouth when they are placed in different positions
The child who chose head also used this strategy and uttered a simile based on the
round shape of the head and the watch:
<113> C: “‘head’ porque un reloj es redondo como una cabeza [se ríe]”
C: ‘head’ because a watch is round like a head [laughs]
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In case 3 (hand it to me) the majority of the children (11 out of 13) chose hand as
the correct answer and all of them justified this by saying that you use your hand to pass
something to others:
<114> C: “ ‘hand’ porque te pasa con la mano”
C: ‘hand’ because s/he passes it to you with the hand
<115> “ ‘hand’ porque cuando me cogen el papel – se supone que lo coges con la mano”
C: ‘hand’ because when they take the piece of paper from me – you’re supposed to take it
with your hand
Most of the answers (7 out of 9) show that these children are employing a
discarding strategy based on their experience of manipulating and passing things to others
from which they know that neither the mouth or the head are employed in these actions:
<116> C: “ ‘hand’ porque te lo pasa con la mano ¿no? no te lo pasa con la boca ni así
[gesture] con la cabeza”
C: ‘hand’ because s/he passes it to you with the hand doesn’t she? s/he doesn’t pass it to
you with the mouth or like this [gesture] with the head
<117> C: “yo con la mano también porque te lo va a pasar con la mano – no te lo puede
pasar con la cabeza”
C: with hand too because s/he is going to pass it to you with the hand – s/he can’t pass it with
the head
<118> C: igual”
R: “también – dímelo con tus palabras – por qué crees”
C: “porque con la cabeza no se lo vas a poder pasar ni con la boca tampoco”
C: the same
141
R: the same – tell me in your own words – why you think that
C: because you can’t pass it with the head or mouth
The two remaining children chose mouth and focused on the asking part of the
situation:
<119> “yo creo que se pide con la boca porque si tú hablas con la boca – para pedir algo”
I think that people ask with their mouth because if you speak with your mouth – to ask for
something
4.3.4 DISCUSSION
The results of the 11-year-olds offer very high scores of identification of the
semantic extensions of HAND in the phrases give me a hand, the hands of a watch and hand
it to me. This is particularly evident in the case of the multi-word, semi-fixed idiom give me
a hand which was the hardest phrase to identify for the 7- and 9-year-olds and the most
accessible for the 11-year-olds. The individual analysis of their answers shows that their
preferred argumentation when dealing with give me a hand is based on cross-language
comparison. Thus, 67% of the children that choose hand as the correct answer in this
situation justify their choice resorting to the equivalent idiomatic phrase in Spanish
‘échame una mano’ (examples <99> to <101>). The strategy that had been marginal in the
other groups is the most widely employed by the 11-year-olds. In contrast, the matching of
the body parts with their functions, which had been fairly frequent in the 7- and 9-yearolds’ answers, appears less frequently in the 11-years’ answers. However, when it appears,
it is reflected in the use of exactly the same conventional metonymies employed by the 7and 9-year-olds: HAND FOR DOING (in 25% of the justifications, examples <102> to <104>)
and MOUTH FOR SPEAKING (example <104>, focusing on the ‘asking’ part of the situation).
This shows a great deal of systematicity in the children’s use of this reasoning process. In
the identification of this particular semantic extension (give me a hand), two different
strategies are employed: cross-linguistic comparison and figurative reasoning based on the
142
matching of two elements within the same domain (the human hand and its function). Both
of them lead the children to the correct identification of the figurative phrase. The use of
one of these strategies instead of the other may be explained in terms of different learning
styles or the encouragement of one in preference of the other in the classroom. In fact,
attention to meta-language, linguistic forms and meanings is highly encouraged in the
Spanish educational system from early Primary school. This may explain the children’s
increasing awareness of the linguistic forms. Interestingly, in the case of hand it to me, for
which there is no linguistic equivalent in Spanish, the vast majority of the 11-year-olds
resort to metonymy for their interpretation, as the younger children had done, which also
leads them to the correct interpretation of the figurative extension. Their explanations are
also based on their experiences of manipulating and passing things and their awareness of
the functions of the different body parts (examples <116> to <118>). Both strategies
(figurative reasoning and interlingual identification) are available to them and they resort to
former in the absence of the latter.
Finally, as in the previous two groups, their answers regarding case 2 (the hands of
a watch) contain examples of their search for similarity that are linguistically realised
mainly in similes based on the movement of the hands of a watch (examples <107> to
<110>). There are also instances of creative similes established on the basis of shape
(examples <111> to <113>). As in the case of the 9-year-olds, the function of pointing
shared by the human hands and the hands of a watch is also argued in two answers
(examples <105> and <106>).
4.4 GENERAL DISCUSSION
The results of this experiment offer insights that can shed some light on the two
research questions posed at the beginning of the study. As regards the first (are 7-, 9- and
11-year-olds able to identify the three semantic extensions of
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HAND:
give me a hand, the
hands of a watch and hand it to me?), the quantification of the participants’ selection of
hand can be seen in Table 1.4.
Table 1.4 Quantitative results of Study 1 (Participants’ selection of hand)
Participants' selection of hand
100%
80%
60%
40%
20%
0%
7-year-olds
9-year-olds
11-year-olds
give me a hand
46%
52%
92%
70%
58%
70%
hand it to me
83%
89%
85%
Apart from the 7-year-olds in the case of the expression give me a hand, the
percentage of identification of the three semantic extensions is above 50% in all groups and
for the three semantic extensions. Especially remarkable is the children’s recognition of the
phrase hand it to me that was identified by over 80% of the participants in the three age
groups. The 11-year-olds’ identification of give me hand, with 92% of the participants
providing the correct answer, is also noteworthy.
These results, however, need to be complemented by a detailed examination of the
individual answers. As has been argued, the analysis of the children’s justifications for their
choices rectifies these quantitative findings to a certain extent and offers some answers for
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the second research question addressed (what kind of reasoning is involved in the
children’s understanding of these figurative meanings?)
The main conclusion that can be drawn from the individual analysis of the samples
elicited is that, in general terms, these children extensively reason figuratively when
attempting to understand these three semantic extensions of
HAND.
This is particularly
evident in case 3 (hand it to me) which presents the most uniform data across the three age
groups, not only in the number of correct responses (over 80% in the three groups), but also
in the interpretation strategy employed in most cases (the matching of
HAND
with its
function to pick up and give out things, grounded in the children experiences of
manipulating and passing things, as illustrated in examples from <47> to <57>, from <88>
to <93> and from <116> to <118>). The clearly embodied nature of this semantic extension
seems to facilitate its comprehension by a very high percentage of children in the three age
groups, despite the fact that this particular use involves a syntactic shift. The children focus
on the meaning of the figurative extension and succeed in its identification.
The results regarding the semantic extension give me a hand are, however, more
heterogeneous. In the first place, the percentage of children that identify it varies
significantly across the three age groups, as has been noted. Besides, apart from figurative
reasoning there is another strategy also employed in this case: interlingual identification. In
some cases, children resort to their L1 knowledge to reason about their L2. The use of one
of these strategies in preference to the other seems to be determined by three main factors:
age, the dissimilar nature of the three semantic extensions in question and some children’s
ability to regard language as a system, comparable with other systems. Interlingual
identification is mainly used in case 1 (give me a hand) by the 11-year-olds, although it is
also employed marginally by the 7- and 9-year-olds: 12% of the 7-year-olds (3 out of 26
children that chose hand, examples <18> <19> <20>) and 18% of the 9-year-olds (2 out of
12, examples <66> and <67>) as opposed to 66%55 of the 11-year-olds (8 out of 12,
55
These percentages are calculated in relation to the children that chose hand as the correct answer not the
total number of participants in each group.
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examples <99> to <101>). This seems to indicate a developmental pattern in the use of this
strategy, probably encouraged by the educational system, which in the case of this
particular expression is helpful. The children’s answers indicate that some of them are
clearly aware of language earlier than others. In fact, one of the 9-year-olds that employs
this type of analysis applies it to both give me a hand (example <66>) and the hands of a
watch (example <80>) and shows in her comments a marked linguistic awareness. The 11year-olds’ answers also reflect the different preferences of children of the same age:
although 66% use their L1 knowledge to reason about this phrase in their L2, 25% of the
answers are still grounded in metonymy. Furthermore, they use exactly the same
conventional metonymies employed by the 7- and 9-year-olds:
MOUTH FOR SPEAKING.
HAND FOR DOING
and
Both types of reasoning are helpful in the case of this particular
figurative use. In general, therefore, it seems that when interlingual identification is
possible (give me a hand has a counterpart in Spanish), its use is favoured by older children
(11-year-olds) as opposed to 7- and 9-year-olds, and by learners with a clear awareness of
the language system, as opposed to other learners.
The results of case 2 (the hands of a watch) show no instances of interlingual
identification in the 11-year-olds’ answers and only one child in each of the other two
groups resorts to this strategy (examples <36> and <80>). The rest of the children in the
three age groups employ analogical reasoning which is linguistically realised mainly in
very creative similes and comparisons (for instance, <24> to <29>, <73> to <75> or <111>
to <113>) and some instances of the awareness of the pointing function shared by both the
hands of a watch and human hands (examples <33> to <35>, <76> to <78> or <105> and
<106>).
The results of Study 1 indicate that, when provided with the opportunity to do so, 7, 9- and 11-year-old Spanish learners employ metonymy and metaphor in order to interpret
the semantic extensions of
HAND.
The linguistic realisations of these mental mechanisms
can be creative, as in the case of the creative similes and comparisons, or conventional, as
illustrated in the metonymies based on the identification of the body parts with their
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functions. Furthermore, the utterances the children produce are in most cases systematic,
although the 7-year-olds’ productions are the most creative. In this sense, they frequently
use the same conventional metonymies (mainly
SPEAKING)
HAND FOR DOING
and
MOUTH FOR
and even the one that only appears in the 7-year-olds’ answers is a
generalisation of the same pattern (HEAD
FOR THINKING).
The comparisons they establish
are also systematic. For instance, although the 9-year-olds do not use similes as often and
creatively as the 7-year-olds, they focus on the same features to match topic and vehicle
(similar shape of the arm or finger with the hands of the watch) when they do.
This awareness of the function of different body parts coincides with Nagy’s (1953)
findings of children’s body knowledge at different ages. According to this author, first the
child knows no internal organ and thinks about the processes in terms of the whole person
(you eat, you breathe). When the young child comes to know some internal organs, each is
assigned a static function: the heart is for love, the lungs are for breathing, the stomach is
for eating, and the brain is for thinking. Next, the organs are more widely differentiated as
an explanation for each function is given in terms of the properties of its organ: the heart is
a pump that causes the blood to circulate, the stomach is a container for food, and so on.
Next, the child builds a coherent system: the functioning of all of the organs is
conceptualized in terms of the movement of tangible substances such as food, air, and
blood. This stage of understanding is reached around age 9. The final stages involves
understanding that bodily substances are transformed into different kinds of things (e.g.
food is used for energy, after having been broken down into other substances and
transported through the body via the circulatory system.) The 7-year-olds participating in
this study have overcome the first stage and are clearly aware of the static function of each
organ presented to them, as their explanations show:
SPEAKING
HAND FOR DOING, MOUTH FOR
and HEAD FOR THINKING.
Apart from figurative reasoning, some of these children resort to interlingual
identification when attempting to understand and explain these figurative uses. However,
this interpretation strategy is only useful in very specific semantic extensions (those that
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have a counterpart in the mother tongue) and seems to be only available to ‘older’ learners
(11-year-olds) or those learners who are specially aware of language. As has been noted,
this linguistic awareness has been traditionally promoted in the Spanish educational system
and also in the methodological techniques employed to teach EFL, in which translation
from English into Spanish and vice versa has been often employed. In contrast, reasoning
based on metonymy and metaphor help to clarify semantic extensions that have no
counterparts in the L1 and is available to most learners, according to the results of this
study. Interestingly, in the case of the semantic extension hand it to me, even the 11-yearolds, who had extensively employed interlingual identification to explain the figurative use
give me a hand, resorted to metonymy in order to explain this verbal use of HAND. In fact,
the ability to see language as a system and compare it with another would, in this case,
impede learners’ understanding of this use. However, the 11-year-olds ignored in this case
the syntactic shift to focus on the semantics of the figurative extension.
Furthermore, the results of this study show that children’s figurative reasoning is
influenced by different types of knowledge at different ages, what some authors have called
‘their developing knowledge of the world’ (Keil 1989 or Cameron 1996). This growing
knowledge may lead them to wrong conclusions. For instance, the 7-year-olds are heavily
dependent on script knowledge that leads them to conclusions such as you say give me a
mouth because “tienes que hablar – porque no vas a ayudar a la gente sin hablar – porque
él o ella si no sabe alguna palabra se la dices tú” (you’ve got to speak – you can’t help
people if you don’t speak – because if he or she doesn’t know a word you can tell them). In
the case of the 9-year-olds, recent knowledge acquired through classroom work seems to
influence their reasoning as illustrated in examples (<94> to <97>) in which they refer to the
functions of the hands as an alternative means for communication in general or for people
who cannot speak.
The results of this study contrast with those obtained with native children in their
L1. For instance, Gentner and Stuart (1983) find that 5-year-olds have no difficulty
explaining the similarity underlying attribute metaphors (‘a cloud is a marshmallow’), but
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cannot paraphrase relational metaphors that are based on functional properties (‘a camera is
like a tape recorder’). Similarly, Vosniadou and Ortony (1983) and Evans and Gamble
(1988) conclude that perceptual properties of objects are more salient to young children
than to adults, who tend to focus more on casual, structural and functional attributes. All
these studies test children’s comprehension of a very specific type of metaphorical
comparison that, in fact, take the linguistic forms of a simile expressed as ‘A is like B’ or
‘A is B’. Furthermore, the children’s answers are analysed in terms of their ability to
‘perceive’ a pre-existing similarity which may be sensory (in the case of attributes) or nonsensory (when they have to match functions).
In contrast, the figurative uses explored in this first study and, in fact, in the other
two, are different and more in the line of those studied by Nerlich, Todd and Clarke (2003),
C. Johnson (1999) or Rice (2003). In the first place, the figurative uses analysed here are
conventional semantic extensions of a core lexeme. Besides, their semantic motivation is
not necessarily based on a pre-existing similarity between two elements. In fact, give me a
hand and hand it to me may be well motivated by experiential correlations, in the sense that
Radden (2000) points out. The results indicate that, although some children’s explanations
reflect the searching for similarity between two different elements (for instance, some of
their answers as regards the hands of a watch), most of their responses show their
awareness of the functions of the elements presented (HAND,
HEAD
often, leads them to the correct interpretation of the figurative use.
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and
MOUTH)
that, very
II.
STUDY 2. A SEMANTIC EXTENSION OF MOUTH
Study 2. A semantic extension of MOUTH
Study 2 was designed to explore 7-, 9- and 11-year-olds’ understanding of the
semantic extension not open one’s mouth of the core lexical item
MOUTH.
As in the
previous and following studies, MOUTH was chosen for its appropriacy for children of these
ages and because it is a highly polysemous and highly frequent lexical item in English. Preschool and Primary school children can be exposed to the most general meaning of this
phrase (‘not say anything’), for example, in the context of the classroom when they are
asked to keep quiet. This phrase also encapsulates another notion that is familiar to them: to
keep quiet about something they do not want another person, usually an adult, to find out
about. It may also have connotations of group solidarity when there is more than one child
involved: they share a secret that they conceal from grown-ups. These last two connotations
have been taken into account in the design of the stimuli for this experiment (see appendix
B) and underlie some of the children’s answers, as will be seen in the results. Regarding the
other two factors, the Collins COBUILD Dictionary gives
MOUTH
4 out of 5 points in the
frequency band and records 16 different uses of this word. These 16 uses are classified into
9 main entries and 7 compounds that comprise strings combining adjective and nominal
mouth (e.g. bad mouth), nominal mouth and noun (e.g. mouth organ) and noun-prepositionnominal mouth and noun (e.g. foot-and-mouth disease). The 9 main entries include the
prototypical meaning of
MOUTH
(“your mouth is the area of your face where your lips are
or the space behind your lips where your teeth and tongue are”) and nominal, verbal and
multi-word semantic extensions. The eighth entry records the definition of not open one’s
mouth: “if you say that someone does not open their mouth, you are emphasizing that they
never say anything at all”. The New Oxford Dictionary of English also records the
affirmative form of this idiom, labelled ‘informal’. The meaning provided for the phrase in
the affirmative form is more neutral in comparison to the Collins COBUILD Dictionary
definition: “say something: sorry, I’ll never open my mouth about you again”. This
semantic extension is, therefore, conventional in English and recorded as such in
dictionaries. From a syntactic point of view, not open one’s mouth is a multi-word, semifixed idiom. It allows a great deal of flexibility including tense, person and number
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modifications (‘I won’t open my mouth’, ‘she wouldn’t open her mouth’, ‘they didn’t open
their mouths’).
The choice of the negative form of this linguistic form for the experimental task
posed some problems for the participants. Studies into the development of negatives in
Spanish learners of English (Cazden, Cancino, Rosansky and Schumann 1975; or
Butterworth and Hatch 1978 or Schumann 1979) have shown that the production of ‘don’t’
is quite advanced. As is well-known, the normal sequence of production for the negative
form starts with initial negative utterances characterised by external negation: ‘No I like’.
In the second stage, internal negation develops, that is, the negative particle is moved inside
the utterance: ‘I no like’. At this stage ‘not’ and ‘don’t’ start to be used, so the three forms
co-exist. A third stage involves negative attachment to modal verbs and in a fourth final
stage the target rule for negation is reached.56 The answers of the children participating in
Study 2 illustrate different stages in the acquisition of the negative form, as will be seen.
From a semantic point of view, this idiomatic expression can be considered
semantically transparent because the relationship between the constituent parts contributes
to the unitary meaning of the expression. In the typology of idiomatic expressions in terms
of semantic features proposed by Gibbs and his colleagues, this expression would be
considered normally decomposable. The syntactic behaviour of this phrase supports these
scholars’ idea that normally decomposable idioms have a great deal of syntactic flexibility.
As regards its conceptual basis, not open one’s mouth is metonymically motivated.
Barcelona’s proposed conceptual metonymy
BODY PART FOR
(MANNER
OF) FUNCTION,
discussed in the previous experiment, can account for this linguistic instantiation.
Furthermore, Radden (2001) pays particular attention to the role played by metonymy in
the understanding of our articulation organs (throat, tongue, mouth, teeth and lips) as
‘language’ and ‘speaking’ in different languages. MOUTH
considered a special case of Radden’s
FOR SPEAKING
SPEECH ORGAN FOR SPEAKING
56
can, thus, be
that he relates to
This developmental order has also been observed in Japanese, German and Norwegian learners of English
(see, for example, Ravem 1968; Milon 1974; Wode 1976 or Adams 1978)
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INSTRUMENT FOR ACTION.
The notion of conventional knowledge pointed out by Kövecses
(2002), in this case, clearly related to Johnson’s concept of embodiment (1987, 1992), also
plays a very important role in the understanding of this metonymical phrase. Our
knowledge of the function of the mouth and the physical need to open our mouths in order
to produce sounds and speech and the impossibility of speaking when it is closed also
provides an embodied basis that accounts for the meaning of not open one’s mouth.
This figurative extension of
MOUTH
has a counterpart in Spanish no abrir (alguien)
la boca which is recorded in the DRAE and defined as: ‘callar cuando se debería hablar’
(to keep quiet when you should speak). The requirement to speak, however, is not salient in
the English expression.
The two main aims of this study were very similar to those of Study 1. In the first
place, this study was design to explore whether 7-, 9- and 11-year-old Spanish learners of
EFL were able to identify a figurative extension (not open one’s mouth) of the English
word
MOUTH,
the prototypical meaning of which they knew. The second aim of this study
was to analyse the kind of reasoning that plays a role in these children’s understanding of
this semantic extension. The stimuli with which the children were provided was, however,
quite different to those used in Study 1. Rather than simply using oral input and everyday
situations, the children were presented with a short story supported by visual cues.
1. PARTICIPANTS
Eighty-eight children (forty-four girls and forty-four boys) in their second, fourth
and sixth years of Primary school took part in this study. They were all from the same year
groups that had carried out the previous experiment. However, three of the children in
Study 1 did not participate in Study 2 and the task was given to them at a different time of
the year. Thus, the number of children and their mean ages varied with regard to the first
study. There were three groups of second-years (mean age 7:9, age range from 7:3 to 8:7), a
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group of fourth-years (mean age 10:0, age range from 9:6 to 10:4) and a group of sixthyears (mean age 11:8, age range from 11:4 to 12:3). Two of the second-year groups were
from the C.P. ‘Delicias’ and, in this case, consisted of 16 and 13 pupils. The rest of the
children attended the C.P. ‘El Vivero’ and there were 24 second-years, 22 fourth-years and
13 sixth-years.
As has been pointed out, most of the children were the same as those that had
participated in Study 1. However, it must be said that the boy from Ecuador was one of the
children that did not take part in this study and therefore, in this case, all the children were
Spanish. On the other hand, their linguistic and socio-economic situation was the same as
in the previous experiment: all the children spoke Spanish as their mother tongue, except
for the two bilinguals (Spanish-Italian and Spanish-English) and they all came from a
variety of social and economic backgrounds.
The phrase not open one’s mouth was selected for this experimental task and two
types of stimuli were designed: a short story and three story strips (see Appendix B) that
illustrate its contents. The story was written in English and told to the children in this
language with the visual support of the story strips in order to facilitate its comprehension.
The short story provides a discourse context in which the use of not open one’s mouth is
suitable. This phrase is the closing remark given by the story-teller and encapsulates the
protagonists’ final reaction to the situation. A comprehension question with two options in
Spanish, also provided in Appendix B, accompanied the short story. One of the options was
a literal paraphrase of the idiomatic expression adapted to the story contents (“los niños se
quedaron callados” – the children kept quiet) and the other was a distractor (“la madre
culpa a Michael” – the mother blames Michael)
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Short stories or brief paragraphs with idioms and their literal paraphrases placed at
the end of them have been employed with adults to explore the underlying conceptual
motivation of these phrases and the comprehension of literal and figurative language (for
example, Cacciari and Tabossi 1988, Gibbs and O’Brien 1990, Gibbs 1992 or Keysar and
Bly 1995). This technique has also been use with children by, for instance, Gibbs (1987) in
an experiment designed to analyse the role that context, frozenness versus flexibility and
transparency versus opaqueness play in children’s understanding of idioms. In a similar
vein, Cacciari and Levorato (1989) or Levorato and Cacciari (1992 and 1995) used the
same procedure to test the role of different factors such as context or familiarity in
children’s understanding and production of idiomatic expressions. In general, the use of
stories has been very popular among researchers working with children in their native
language (see, for instance, Reynolds and Ortony 1980; Vosniadou, Ortony, Reynolds and
Williamson 1984; Johnson 1984; Gentner and Toupin 1986 or Nerlich, Clarke and Todd
1999). In some studies, especially those carried out with younger learners, the short stories
are enacted by toy characters57 and the use of pictures may be also combined with the
contents of the stories58 The main advantages of short stories are that they provide a context
to illustrate the meaning of the idiomatic expressions and that children are usually familiar
with this genre from their parents and teachers.
3. PROCEDURE
Unlike Study 1 in which the children were divided into small groups for the task,
Study 2 was carried out as a whole-group activity. The children were in their normal
classroom with their teacher and the researcher. By this time, they were so used to having
the researcher in class helping out their teachers that they accepted the activity as part of
their classroom routines. Besides, the format of the experiment was also familiar to them
57
Vosniadou, Ortony, Reynolds and Williamson (1984), Johnson (1984) or Gentner and Toupin (1986)
155
since stories are used in the Spanish Language and EFL classrooms from Pre-school years.
Thus, the general environment was exactly the same as what they were used in a average
school day in their EFL lesson. However, the story was introduced to them by the teacher
as a special treat they would have that day and it was made clear to them that they would
have to answer a question about the story at the end of it. Since they had recently revised
the language of body parts in order to be able to carry out Study 1, it was considered that it
was not necessary to reinforce this vocabulary again. They were told the story for the first
time slowly, repeating some sentences and relating the contents to the story strips. After
this, they were given a sheet of paper each and asked to write their name on it. Meanwhile
the comprehension question was written on the blackboard and they were requested to copy
it down. It was explained to them that one of the answers was the ending of the story and
that after listening to it again, they would have to decide which one was correct and circle
it. They listened to the story again and were given some time to mark their answers. When
all of them had finished, they were individually asked to explain the reason why they had
chosen one answer or another. Their explanations were tape-recorded to be analysed later.
The third group of 7-year-olds that was given the task (C.P ‘Vivero’) and the 9-year-old
group were the most numerous and especially noisy, so in the final stage of the
experimental task, the children were asked to draw their own picture of the story while their
classmates were being asked to explain their choice.
The whole activity was completed in a session of approximately fifty minutes with
each group. Thus, five sessions were necessary to test all the children.
4. RESULTS
The experimental task produced two types of data to be analysed and compared:
written data (the sheets of paper in which the children marked their answers) and oral data
58
Nerlich, Clarke and Todd (1999) use pictures to test children’s understanding of metonymy
156
(their verbal explanations). As in Study 1, the children’s responses were quantified and this
quantification was complemented by an individual analysis of the verbal samples elicited.
This qualitative analysis of the children’s explanations shed some light on the kind of
reasoning these children used in their attempt to understand the semantic extension of
MOUTH.
4.1 SEVEN-YEAR-OLDS
4.1.1 NOT OPEN ONE’S MOUTH
The results of the 7-year-olds’ performance in the task differ greatly from one group
to another. For this reason, it seems relevant to present the group results separately.
The first group that was given the task was one of the ‘C.P. Delicias’ groups (from
here onwards ‘Delicias A’). The quantification of their answers provides the results shown
in Table 2.1.
Table 2.1. Quantitative results of Study 2 (7-year-olds. ‘Delicias A’)
Seven-year-olds ( 'Delicias A' )
6%
94%
Los niños se quedan callados
La madre culpa a Michael
The vast majority of the children (94% - 15 children) chose the literal paraphrase of
not open one’s mouth (“los niños se quedan callados” - the children keep quiet) and only
one child selected the distractor. The individual analysis of the answers allows their
classification into three main types. In the first place, there are some children that focus on
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the situation in the story and make their own inferences about the protagonists’ behaviour.
They mainly stress two aspects of the situation. On the one hand, five answers (33%) are
focused on solidarity between the two protagonists to avoid one of them being blamed:
<1> C: “los niños se quedan callados”
R: “¿por qué?”
C: “porque si dicen que alguien – que alguno de ellos ha sido – pos (pues) le echan la culpa
a uno de ellos”
C. the children keep quiet
R: why
C: because if they say that somebody –that it’s one of them’s fault – then one of them is
blamed for it
R: “¿y por qué crees que los niños se quedan callados – Alba?”
C: “para que no le eche a ninguno la culpa”
C: the children keep quiet
R: and why do you think that the children keep quiet – Alba?
C: so that neither of them is blamed for it
On the other hand, three children (20%) explicitly mention the presence of the
mother and the protagonists’ attempt to avoid her punishment:
R: “porque habían sido ellos – para que no – para que la madre no lo sepa quien ha sido”
R: why?
R: because it was their fault –so that they don’t – so that their mother won’t know whose fault
it is
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<4> C: “que los niños se quedan callados”
C: “porque no quieren que la madre les riña”
R: why?
C: because they don’t want their mother to tell them off
The second type of answers are those in which some kind of reference to MOUTH is
made. Five of the answers (33 %) fell into this type:
C: “porque es que al final como has dicho – los niños – algo the ‘mouth’ – yo pienso que es
eso”
R: “Y qué tiene – ¿qué es ‘mouth’?”
C: “ ‘boca’ ”
R: “¿y qué crees que he dicho de ‘mouth’?”
C: “que los niños se quedaron callados”
R: why?
C: because at the end as you said – the children – something about ‘mouth’ – I think that’s
why
R: and what’s that got – what’s ‘mouth’?
C: ‘boca’
R: and what did I say about ‘mouth’?
C: that the children keep quiet
This child identified the word ‘mouth’ and related it to ‘quedarse callados’ (keep
quiet) but could not establish the nature of that relation.
159
<6>C: “los niños se quedan callados”
C: “porque – lo mismo que ha dicho Leticia – que le suena algo de ‘mouth’ – y que – y que –
a ver”
R: “tranquila – ha dicho ‘mouth’ – ¿qué tiene que ver ‘mouth’ con callarse?”
C: “pues que con la boca – con ‘mouth’ – umm – con ‘mouth’ – es como – puedes estar
hablando y puedes estar callado”
R: why?
C: ‘cos –for the same reason as Leticia – that something about ‘mouth’ sounds familiar to her
– and that –and that –let’s see
R: don’t worry – she said ‘mouth’ –what’s ‘mouth’ got to do with keeping quiet?
C: ‘cos with mouth –with ‘mouth’ –mmm –with ‘mouth’ – it’s like –you can be talking and you
can be quiet.
The child that produced <6> explicitly referred to her conventional knowledge of
the function of the mouth (“puedes estar hablando y puedes estar callado” - you can be
talking and you can be quiet) using both the English and Spanish words (“con la boca –
con ‘mouth’ ” – with mouth – with ‘mouth’).
Finally, in the two remaining answers the children used the visual support, that is
the drawings representing the situation, to justify their answers:
C: “que los niños se quedan callados porque en el cuento viene claro que se han quedado
callados cuando ha venío (venido) la madre”
R: “y –¿dónde viene claro en el cuento?”
C: “lo dice en la última hoja”
R: “en la última hoja – en el dibujo ¿no?”
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C: “sí”
R: why?
C: the children keep quiet because it’s clear in the story that the children kept quiet when the
mother came
R: and – where in the story is that clear?
C: it says it on the last page
R: on the last page –in the drawing you mean?
C: yes
This child also uses a metaphor which is, in fact, based on a personification, when
he talks about the drawings: “lo dice en la última hoja” (it says it on the last page). He uses
the verb ‘say’ which is a conventional personification used to talk about reading material
(e.g. the book says) to talk about images as if he was ‘reading’ them.
These results contrast with those in the other group from ‘C.P. Delicias’ (from here
onwards ‘Delicias B’). From a quantitative point of view, ten children (77%) chose the foil
(“la madre culpa a Michael” – the mother blames Michael) and only three (23%) decided
on the literal paraphrase (see Table 2.2 below). The qualitative analysis of the answers
shows that the children in ‘Delicias B’ used very similar strategies to those employed by
the previous group when attempting to understand not open one’s mouth: relying on their
knowledge of similar situations or making inferences from the visual support provided.
161
Table 2.2. Quantitative results of Study 2 (7-year-olds. ‘Delicias B’)
Seven-year-olds ( 'Delicias B' )
23%
77%
However, none of the answers reflect the identification of the word mouth and its
relation to the idiomatic phrase not open one’s mouth at the end of the story. This seems to
indicate that the first two interpretation strategies may lead to both correct or incorrect
responses and only the children who pick the linguistic cue ‘mouth’ are able to produce
correctly motivated answers.
The three children who decided on the literal paraphrase of the idiomatic expression
based their explanations on the same analysis employed by ‘Delicias A’. Resorting to their
own ideas about the behaviour of the children in the story, two of the participants appealed
to group solidarity and concluded that the children in the story did not say anything to
conceal the truth from their mother:
<8> C: “la B”
R: “la B ¿por qué?”
C: “porque así no le echa la madre la culpa a los niños”
C: answer B
R: why answer B?
C: so that the mother doesn’t blame the children
<9> C: “los niños se quedan callados – para que la madre no sepa quién es”
162
C: the children keep quiet –so that the mother doesn’t know whose fault it is.
The remaining child used the support given to them by the story strips and said:
<10> C: “los niños se quedan callados – porque estaban quietos en el dibujo”
C: the children were quiet – because they didn’t move in the drawing
The children that selected the foil also employed very similar arguments. In this
sense, five children made their own inferences about the story and the protagonists’
behaviour but, in this case they did not focus on the children but rather on the mother.
Three of them said that the mother had to blame Michael because it was his fault:
<11> C: “la madre culpa a /mıt∫el/ ”
R: “Michael – ¿por qué?”
C: “porque mancha la cama”
C: the mother blames /mıt∫el/
R: Michael – why?
C: because he stains the bed
<12> C: “la madre culpa a Michael porque si ha manchado él esto pues entonces le tendrá
que reñir – y no a la niña porque ella no lo ha manchado”
C: the mother blames Michael because if he stained this then she’ll have to tell him off – and
not the girl because she didn’t stain it.
The other two children concentrated even more carefully on the character of the
mother and thought of the possible consequences of the action for her:
<13> C: “la madre culpa a Marco”
R: “a Michael”
163
C: “porque la cama – como hay sangre – ha hecho sangre – la madre como tiene – ella
siempre lo limpia – tiene que limpiarlo todo sola entonces le tendrá que reñir y – además
parece que tiene el dedo así”
C: the mother blames Marco
R: Michael
C: because the bed – there’s blood – he’s made blood – the mother’s got – she always
cleans it –she’s got to clean everything on her own so she’ll have to tell him off and – besides
it looks as if she had her finger like this
<14> C: “la madre culpa a Michael porque ha manchado – la cama – el edredón y vale
mucho dinero”
C: the mother blames Michael because he’s stained –the bed –the duvet and it costs a lot of
money
Example <14> does not explicitly mention the figure of the mother, but the fact that
the duvet is ‘very expensive’ actually affects her rather than the children. This comment
sounds like a parent’s remark to make children’s aware of the value of things and to
encourage them to take care of their own things. The stereotype of the mother as cleaner
(“tiene que limpiarlo todo sola” – she’s got to clean everything on her own) is illustrated in
example <13>. The same example also includes the other main strategy these children
employed to justify their answers: the reliance on the visual support. Three of the children’s
responses are based on this kind of reasoning:
<15> C: “la madre culpa a Michael porque en el dibujo se ve que aparece la madre haciendo
así [pointing] con el dedo”
C: the mother blames Michael because in the drawing you can see the mother doing like this
[pointing] with her finger
<16> C: “Igual que Noelia”
164
R: “¿qué ha dicho Noelia que no me acuerdo?”
C: “que por el dibujo – que parece que está haciendo así [pointing] con el dedo”
R: “y señalando a Michael – ¿no? luego os voy a enseñar el dibujo otra vez”
C: the same as Noelia
R: what did Noelia said? I can’t remember
C: ‘cos of the drawing –it looks as if she’s doing like this [pointing] with her finger
R: pointing at Michael – isn’t she? I’ll show you the drawing again later.
As can be noticed, this reliance on the visual support is quite different from that
employed by the children in the previous group (example <7>) or in example <10> in this
group because these are actually based on their inferences about the story rather than on the
real visual cues. In the drawing of the mother that appears in the third story strip, the lady
represented is not pointing at the boy (see Appendix B).
Study 2 was finally replicated with the group in the C.P. ‘El Vivero’ (from here
onwards ‘Vivero’). Table 2.3 below shows the results of the quantitative analysis of their
answers:
Table 2.3. Quantitative results of Study 2 (7-year-olds. ‘Vivero’ )
Seven-year-olds ( 'Vivero' )
0%
100%
All the children in this group chose the literal paraphrase of not open one’s mouth.
A detailed examination of the children’s answers shows the use of the same strategies that
165
had recurrently appeared in the two previous groups. In fact, they employed exactly the
same three strategies used by the children in ‘Delicias A’. The most recurrent in this case is
making their own inferences about the behaviour of the children in the story. These
children, unlike the children in the first group, focused only on a very specific scenario: the
children did not open their mouths to avoid being told off by their mother. Sixteen children
(64%) gave this explanation :
<17> C: “se quedan callados para que su madre no les riña si le oye”
C: they keep quiet so that their mother will not tell them off if she hears them
<18> C: “porque se quedaron callados para que la madre no supiera que – que ellos hayan
hecho eso”
C: they kept quiet so that their mother didn’t know that – that they did it
<19> C: “porque se quedó – se quedaron callados para que su madre no les echara la
bronca”
C: because he kept – they kept quiet so that their mother didn’t give them a ticking-off
Secondly, five of the children noticed the word mouth and related to the children
being quiet. Some of these explanations reflect how they struggled to put their ideas across
and how some of them interacted with each other:
<20> C1 [Juan]: “porque tú decías algo en el cuento que es de ‘mouth’ ”
R: “de ‘mouth’ y ¿qué decía yo de ‘mouth’ – Juan?”
C1: “pues que se quedaban callados”
R: “Alberto antes lo ha dicho pero no me lo ha querido decir cuando yo lo he dicho ¿que he
dicho yo de ‘mouth’ Alberto? cuando yo lo estaba diciendo lo has dicho tú: ¡se quedan
callados!”
C2 [Alberto]: “Claro porque umm – decías tú que – que – umm que se estaban quedando
callados”
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R: “¿y no sabes como lo decía? – en inglés”
C2: [niega con la cabeza]
C1 [Juan]: because you said something in the story about ‘mouth’
R: about ‘mouth’ and what did I say about ‘mouth’ – Juan?
C1: that they kept quiet
R: Alberto said it before but he didn’t want to tell me when I told him what did I say about
‘mouth’ Alberto? When I was saying it you said: they kept quiet!
C2 [Alberto]: sure ‘cos mmm – you said that – that – that – mmm that they were keeping
quiet
R: and don’t you know how I said it? – in English
C2: [shakes his head]
The process of understanding the idiomatic phrase in particular and the short story
in general is complex and dynamic. It is obvious that the children do not only think about
the reason why they have chosen a specific answer when being directly asked about it but
also when they are listening and trying to comprehend the story. In this sense, in order to
fully understand example <20>, it is necessary to have some background information about
one of the children’s reactions while being told the story. The second time this group listens
to the story, just after I say “the children don’t open their mouth”, C2 [Alberto] exclaims:
“‘mouth’ ¡se quedan callados!”. However, when being asked about his choice and
explanation later on he says:
<21a> R: “a ver Alberto ¿tú cuál has elegido?”
C: “la A – porque es que se quedan callados para que no les castigue su madre”
R: let’s see Alberto which one have you chosen?
C: A – because they keep quiet so that their mother does not punish them
After having been encouraged to think about it he elaborated a bit on his
explanation:
167
<21b> R: “yo a ti antes te he oído decir otra cosa ¿por qué – por qué has dicho antes que se
quedaban callados?”
C: “porque no decían nada”
R: “no decían nada los niños y tú ¿cómo lo sabes?”
C: “porque no – sólo decía la madre”
R: “pero tú ¿por qué lo sabes?”
C: “por los dibujos”
R: “por los dibujos – porque te has fijado en los dibujos ¿y no has escuchado lo que yo he
dicho?”
C: “sí”
R: “sí y ¿qué he dicho?”
C: “es que no me acuerdo”
R: “¿no te acuerdas? bueno –no pasa nada”
R: I heard you saying something else before why – why did you said that they kept quiet
before?
C: because they didn’t say anything
R: the children didn’t say anything and how do you know?
C: because they didn’t – only the mother said it
R: but how do you know?
C: from the drawings
R: from the drawings – because you paid attention to the drawings and didn’t you listen to
what I was saying?
C: yes
R: yes and what did I say?
C: I can’t remember
R: you can’t remember – well it’s all right
168
This time he actually says that the children “no decían nada” (didn’t say anything)
but he relates it to the drawings. Not even after hearing what Juan (C1 in example <20>)
says does he recall what seemed to have been his first thought. However, he is still
obviously interested in the phrase and participates in the second interaction about it:
<22> C1 [María]: “la A porque en los dibujos hasta se quedaron callados – porque dijiste tú
‘open the mouth’ ”
R: “ ‘open the mouth’ ”
C1: “que era callarse”
R: “¿y tú sabes que ‘open the mouth’ es callarse? crees tú – ‘open’ – ¿no?”
C1: “sí”
C2 [Elena]: “no eso es abrir”
R: “ ‘open’ – ¿qué es Elena? ¿qué es ‘open’?”
C3 [Juan]: “cerrar”
R [dirigiéndose a C2]: “lo has dicho ahora – [dirigiéndose a C3] a ver Juan quería decir”
C3 [Juan]: “cerrar”
R: “¿’open’ es cerrar? ¿tú crees? – [asiente] sí y tú María ¿crees que ‘open’ es cerrar? - si yo
digo por ejemplo – Elena dice que no con la cabeza – si yo digo ‘open the door’ ¿qué es?”
C3: “cierra la puerta”
R: “¿cierra?”
C4 [Alberto]: “abre”
R: “por ahí lo ha dicho – Alberto ha dicho abre – entonces ¿cómo puede ser eso? pensadlo
pero no me lo digas todavía - pensadlo como puede ser – voy a terminar primero – ¿vale?”
C1 [María]: answer A because even in the drawings they kept quiet – because you said ‘open
the mouth’
R: ‘open the mouth’
C1: and that was to keep quiet
R: and you know that ‘open the mouth’ is to keep quiet – you think so – ‘open’ – don’ t you?
C1: yes
169
C2 [Elena]: no that’s ‘abrir’59
R: ‘open’ – what is it Elena? what is open?
C3 [Juan]: ‘cerrar’60
R [to C2]: you’ve just said it now – [to C3] let’s see Juan wanted to say
C3: cerrar
R: is open ‘cerrar’? do you think so? [nods] yes –and you María do you think that ‘open’ is
‘cerrar’ – if I say for example – Elena shakes her head – if I say ‘open the door’ what is it?
C3: ‘cierra’ the door
R: ‘cierra’?
C4 [Alberto]: ‘abre’
R: Somebody said it there – Alberto said ‘abre’ –how can that be then? think about it but
don’t tell me anything yet –think about how it can be – I’m going to finish off first – right?
C1 [María] initially says that the children kept quiet because of the drawings but, in
fact, she reproduces most of the phrase used “open the mouth”. She does not seem to have
understood the negative (“don’t”) as neither does C3 [Juan] but they both are convinced
that the children kept quiet and their experience tells them that your mouth is not open
when you are quiet. Since their knowledge of English is still not well developed, they
conclude that ‘open’ means ‘cerrar’. Interestingly, C2 [Elena], who had intervened before
María, realises that ‘open’ means ‘abrir’. Her previous answer is not particularly explicit:
<23> C: “que la A porque – porque tu habías dicho algo de que – de que los niños se
quedaron callados”
C: answer A because – because you had said something about – about the children keeping
quiet
59
60
‘Abrir’ is the word for ‘open’ in Spanish
Cerrar is the word for ‘close’ in Spanish
170
But she is obviously more aware of the linguistic phrase than it may seem at first
sight. It is worth noting that even after these two long discussions (examples <20> and
<22>) none of the remaining nine children referred to MOUTH to justify their answers. Two
of them resorted to the visual support and the rest focused on the idea that the children in
the story wanted to avoid their mum telling them off. These behaviour of the children is
very similar to the way they interacted in Study 1 and, likewise, seems to discard absolute
mimicry in the children’s responses. In Study 2, the children also seem to agree with, rather
than imitate, a partner’s answer and seem to be very strong about their opinions that they
maintain and justify. As in the examples in Study 1, agreeing with a peer can be considered
as a consequence of negotiation of meaning rather than simple imitation. In this case, Juan
is the first to offer the ‘mouth’-explanation and later on there are answers like María’s or
Elena’s which are based on the same idea but elaborated in a different way: María (<22>)
uses the support of the drawings and reproduces most of the phrase in English and Elena’s
(<23>) justification seems to be very general but in the interaction with her peers, she
shows her awareness of the phrase. Before, after and in between there are other children
that offer different explanations.
Finally the reliance on the drawings also appears in three of the children’s answers:
<24> C: “porque – porque en el cuento viene que estaban callados”
R: “¿en el dibujo?”
C: [asiente]
C: because – because it’s shown in the story that they were quiet
R: in the drawing?
C: [nods]
<25> R: “a ver Dani – ¿tú que piensas?”
C: “que se – la A porque – porque – porque en los dibujos se quedan los dos callados”
C: “en los dibujos se quedan los dos callados –muy bien”
R: let’s see Dani – what do you think?
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C: that – answer A – because – because in the drawings they keep quiet
C: in the drawings they both keep quiet – very good
4.1.2 DISCUSSION
The results of this study show that in order to understand the figurative use not open
one’s mouth in the context of a short story told to them in English, these 7-year-old Spanish
learners of EFL employ three main strategies which are systematic and recurrent in their
explanations. First, the most widely employed reasoning is making inferences about the
contents of the story on the basis of their knowledge or experiences in similar situations
(examples <1> to <4> in ‘Delicias A’ ; <8> and <9> and from <11> to <14> in ‘Delicias B’
and <17> to <19> in ‘Vivero’). This type of knowledge can also be considered to be part of
what Nguyen and Murphy (2003) call ‘script knowledge’, which seems to play a very
important role in 7-year-olds’ reasoning, as noted in the discussion of Study 1. The results
of this latter study also provided a great deal of evidence of these children relying on their
knowledge of routine events such as doing homework, learning tables, sitting an exam or
playing on the computer.
The second strategy employed is the reliance on the visual support (drawings)
supplied. The use of pictures illustrating the contents of the stories is ever more common in
EFL text books, especially those designed for very young learners61.
Thus, children, from very early ages are used to this kind of visual support for the
stories in the EFL classroom. The use of this methodological technique is based on the
assumption that at the earliest stages (3, 4 and 5 years of age), children need to rely on
visual cues to understand the contents since they are still not familiar with the linguistic
input. They listen to the stories once and again while being exposed to language and they
are expected to gradually understand the contents and, finally, remember the linguistic
61
The new series of Oxford University Press set texts for pre-school learners in Spain (Treehouse A and B) or
those published by Longman for the same level (Fun English A and B) encourage the use of stories illustrated
by visuals in the EFL classroom.
172
forms. However, in the context of this study, the use of pictures may have actually been
counter-productive. It seems that the visuals distracted the children and prevented them
from concentrating on the linguistic input.
The reliance on the visual and the use of their script knowledge about mothers’
reaction when angry with their children and children doing things they are not supposed to
do may lead to both correct or incorrect responses and does not guarantee the understanding
of the idiomatic expression. This is especially evident in the results from ‘Delicias B’. On
the basis of these two reasoning strategies, 77% of them chose the distractor. In contrast,
the children who picked up the linguistic cue (five children in ‘Delicias A’ and another five
in ‘Vivero’), could identify, understand, and produce to a different extent, the semantic
extension not open one’s mouth, as their explanations show.
Understanding the contents of the story, that is the discourse context in which the
idiomatic expression appears, is a necessary first step in the process of comprehending the
figurative phrase and is accomplished in all the examples that make reference to mouth
(examples <5>, <6>, <20>, <22> and <23>). If children do not understand the story, they
will not be able to comprehend the meaning of the idiomatic ending. However, there are
two cases in this year group that show a clear misunderstanding of the story: the child that
produced example <10> and the child who chose the distractor in Delicias A62. These
children did not fulfil this required first-step and could obviously not understand the
semantic extension of MOUTH with which the story ended.
Once the story has been understood and the linguistic cue recognised, the factor
which seems to aid the children’s understanding of not open one’s mouth is the awareness
of the functions of the mouth (it is open when we speak and closed when we are quiet) and
62
This child gives the following answer:
C: “la madre culpa a Michael”
R: “¿por qué crees que la madre culpa a Michael?”
C: “porque – con – donde – donde estaba meado es donde en el lado donde se acostaba Michael”
C: the mother blames Michael
R: Why do you think that the mother blames Michael?
C: because –with –where –where there was pee on it’s the side where Michael slept
173
its relation to the context of the story. This seems to be implicit in the answers that refer to
mouth and is clearly expressed in example <6>: “puedes estar hablando y puedes estar
callado” (you can be talking and you can be quiet)
Finally, the children’s explanations show that the greatest problems they have with
this semantic extension are with the linguistic forms themselves. They find it hard to
recognise the linguistic encoding of the phrase in English and to reproduce it. The closest
production to the linguistic original is uttered by the child in example <22> (“open the
mouth”). The negation poses problems for them. In fact, none of the children seem to
recognise the negative form ‘don’t’. This coincides with the studies into the acquisition of
the negative form in English by Spanish learners mentioned in the introduction to this study
(Cazden, Cancino, Rosansky and Schumann 1975; or Butterworth and Hatch 1978 or
Schumann 1979). The failure to grasp the negative sense leads some of the children to think
that ‘open’ means ‘cerrar’, as has been noted in the discussions of examples <20> and
<22>. However, their problems with the target form do not imply that the children lack the
tacit understanding of the phrase in this context, as examples <5>, <6> and <7> illustrate.
4.2 NINE-YEAR-OLDS
The results of the quantitative analysis of the 9-year-olds’ answers (see Table 2.4
below), indicate that most of them (21 - 95%) chose the literal paraphrase (“los niños se
quedan callados” – the children kept quiet). Only one child (5%) circled the foil (“la
madre culpa a Michael” – the mother blames Michael)
174
9-year-olds
5%
95%
Most of the children (86% - 19 answers) that chose the literal paraphrase of the
idiomatic expression based their explanation on the identification of MOUTH and its relation
to the contents of the story. In their answers, some of these children used the idiomatic
expression in Spanish with the verb ‘cerrar’:
<26> C: “la B porque al final dice ‘mouth’ – porque dicen que se quedan con la boca cerrada”
C: answer B because ‘mouth’ is said at the end – it says that they stayed with their mouth
closed
Other children employed the literal paraphrase of the idiom:
<27> C: “la B porque tú lo has dicho y porque – igual que Sergio”
R: “igual que Sergio ¿no? ¿y qué es lo que he dicho?”
C: “que – eeh – eeeh Michael y Sarah se quedan callados”
C: answer B because you said it and because –the same as Sergio
R: the same as Sergio and what did I say?
C: that –mmm –mmm Michael and Sarah keep quiet
And some others combined both (<28>):
<28> C: “la B porque he oído en el cuento que Mi –ése /mıt∫el/ ”
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R: “Michael”
C: “Michael y Sarah eh – cierran la boca”
R: “cierran la boca”
C: “se quedan callados”
R: “¿y cómo has entendido tú eso de cierran la boca ¿te acuerdas?”
C: “um [silencio]”
R: “pone cara de umm – no estoy segura – ¿no estás segura?”
C: “no me acuerdo”
R: “¿no te acuerdas? vale”
C: answer B because I’ve heard in the story that Mi –this /mıt∫el/
R: Michael
C: Michael y Sarah eh –close their mouth
R: close their mouth
C: they keep quiet
R: and how did you understand that thing about them closing their mouth can you
remember?
C: mm [silence]
R: she makes a ‘mm’ face – a ‘I’m-not-sure’ face –are you not sure?
C: I can’t remember
R: can you not remember? all right
These three children seem to be clear about the ending of the story but none of them
is able to explain verbally how the literal paraphrase (‘se quedan callados’) or the idiomatic
expression (‘cierran la boca’) they use is related to
MOUTH.
Only the child that produced
example <26> explicitly mentions the word mouth in English. In fact, most of the children
that chose the literal paraphrase identified the word mouth and related it to the contents of
the story but could not explain how the phrase is expressed in English, as the following
examples illustrate:
176
<29> C: “yo creo que es el de Michael y Sarah se quedan callados porque – porque has
dicho tú que cerraban la boca – se quedaban callados”
R: “¿y cómo he dicho yo eso – que cerraban la boca?”
C: “es que no sé exactamente las palabras pero que sí – que decías algo de – como que no
y la palabra ‘boca’ – ‘mouth’ ”
C: I think it’s the Michael and Sarah keep quiet one because – because you said that they
close their mouth – they kept quiet
R: and how did I say that –that they close their mouth?
C: I don’t know the words exactly but I know that you did – you said something about – like
don’t and the word ‘boca’ – ‘mouth’
<30> C: “la B – porque cuando – cuan – cuando le estaba riñendo la madre ninguno habló –
dijiste la palabra ‘mouth’”
C: answer B – because when – wh – when their mother was telling them off none of them
said anything – you said the word ‘mouth’
<31> C: “la B porque al final dicen algo de ‘mouth’ – porque es la que he entendido”
C: answer B because something about ‘mouth’ is said at the end – because it’s what I’ve
understood
However, some of the children produced utterances that are closer to the original
phrase:
<32> C: “he puesto la B porque me ha fijado al final del cuento decía algo de la boca”
R: “y ¿cómo? ¿sabes como lo decía?”
C: “decía ‘no open your mouth’ o algo así”
C: I’ve circled B because I noticed at the end of the story something about mouth was said
R: and how? Do you know how it was said?
C: it was said ‘no open your mouth’ or something like that
177
<33> C: “el B porque lo decía el cuento”
R: “¿qué decía?”
C: “lo decía – que Michael y Sarah – ay – don’t – don’t your mouth’”
C: answer B because it was said in the story
R: what was said?
C: it was said –that Michael and Sarah – oh – ‘don’t’ –‘don’t your mouth’
In two of the remaining answers, the children use the strategy that had been the
most recurrent in the 7-year-olds’ responses: they make their own inferences about the
protagonists’ behaviour.
<34> C: “Michael y Sara se quedan callados – porqueee eh – no sé – a lo mejor piensan que
la madre les iba a reñir y estaban asustados y por eso se quedaron callados”
C: Michael and Sarah keep quiet –because mmm – I don’t know – perhaps they think that
their mother will tell them off and they were afraid of it and that’s why they keep quiet
<35> C: “Sarah – pues no quiere que se entere su madre de que /mit∫ael/ ha hecho todo y le
eche la culpa – y /mit∫ael/ se queda callado para que no le eche la culpa a él”
C: Sarah – because she doesn’t want her mother to find out that /mit∫ael/ has done
everything and blames him – and /mit∫ael/ keeps quiet so that she doesn’t blame him.
Interestingly, their inferences encapsulate the same notions expressed by the 7-yearolds: the protagonists’ attempt to avoid their mother’s ticking-off (example <34>) and the
solidarity between the siblings (example <35>)
The remaining child that chose the literal paraphrase produced an answer that
combined both strategies:
<36> C: “yo he elegido la B porque al final del cuento dice que no abren la boca por miedo o
no sé – por miedo a que les riña la madre a uno o a otro – por eso creo que es la B”
178
R: “la B – y tú sabes ¿cómo lo dice al final del cuento? ¿cómo se dice eso?”
C: “/on ju: klaus mau/”
R: “muy bien gracias”
C: I’ve chosen answer B because at the end of the story it’s said that they don’t open their
mouth because they are afraid or I don’t know –because they are afraid that their mother tells
one or the other off –that’s why I think it’s answer B
R: answer B – and do you know how is it said at the end of the story? how is that said?
C: “/on ju: klaus mau/ ”
R: very good thanks
The stream transcribed as /on ju: klaus mau/ is the learner’s recreation of the stream
don’t open their mouth used in the story. In the utterance he produced, there is no
consonant at syllable onset which would make it identifiable with don’t but, unlike in other
examples, there is at least a syllable. This child produced what he recalled: a syllable (/on/)
+ mouth. But he also knew that there was a slot between them that he filled with (/klaus/)
which is likely to be his recreation of close because he obviously did not understand the
negative meaning.
Finally the child that chose the foil used a different strategy. He recognised and
understood part of the idiomatic phrase ‘open one’s mouth’:
<37> C: “yo – yo – creo que es el A porque dice que – que Michael y Sara abren la boca –
que hablan”
R: “¿sí? ¿y cómo – cómo lo he dicho yo eso?”
C: “con – con ‘open mouth’ ”
R: “a ver explícamelo otra vez”
C: “a ver – que creo que es el A porque Michael y Sarah se han – que dijiste que habían –
que habían – habían abierto la – la boca y pues que la madre – que también he oído que
culpaba a /mit∫el/ y entonces pues he elegido el A por eso”
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R: “el A por eso y ¿cómo lo has oído lo de que la madre culpaba a Michael? – ¿te acuerdas
un poco de eso?”
C: “no sé – bueno es que sólo he puesto el A porque – porque – sabía – porque has dicho
que habían abierto la boca Michael y Sara”
C: I – I – think it’s answer A because it’s said that –that Michael and Sarah open their mouth
–that they speak
R: really? and how did I say that?
C: with – with ‘open mouth’
R: let’s see explain it to me again
C: let’s see – I think it’s answer A because Michael and Sara have – you said that they had –
they had – had opened the – the mouth and also ‘cos the mother – I also heard that she
blamed /mit∫el/ and therefore I chose A for that reason
R: A for that reason and how did you hear that the mother blamed Michael? – do you
remember about it a little bit?
C: I don’t know – well I’ve only chosen A because – because – I knew – because you said
that Michael and Sarah had opened their mouths
Unlike the 7-year-olds in examples <20> and <22>, this child relied above all on his
linguistic knowledge. He tried to further support his answer by saying that he had also
understood that the mother blamed Michael but finally admitted that he did not. He had
discarded the other option on the basis of his linguistic knowledge (open mouth) and his
conventional knowledge of the function of the mouth: if they had opened their mouths
(“habían abierto la boca”) they couldn’t have kept quiet. However, as his linguistic
knowledge was partial and he missed the negative form, the conclusion he reached was
wrong.
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4.2.2 DISCUSSION
The data analysed indicate that most of the 9-year-olds identify the semantic
extension of
MOUTH
conveyed in the idiom not open one’s mouth in the context of a short
story and that, in most cases, their knowledge of the prototypical sense of the core lexical
item MOUTH and their ability to map from literal to figurative meaning via metonymy play a
very important role in the process. Indeed, the majority of these children (19 - 86%) match
the body part MOUTH with the function of speaking or, rather, the impossibility of speaking
when it is closed in order to infer the meaning of the metonymical extension not open one’s
mouth. This contrasts with the 7-year-olds, whose preferred strategies were using their
knowledge of similar situations and relying on the visuals provided. In the 9-year-olds’
explanations there is no trace of the latter strategy and the former is only used by two
children (examples <34> and <35>).
Most of the 9-year-olds are aware of the notion conveyed by the phrase but have
problems in identifying its linguistic encoding in English. Although there are a couple of
children that actually produce a phrase which is close to the English original (examples
<32> and <33>), the majority cannot recall how the phrase is encoded in the target
language (see examples <29> to <31>). Their development of the English negative form is
illustrated in examples <32>, <33> and <36>.
The results of this year-group are fairly homogeneous from both a quantitative and
qualitative perspective. As can be seen in Table 2.5 below, the vast majority of the 11-yearolds (92% - 12 answers) chose the literal paraphrase.
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11-year-olds
8%
92%
Most of the children (11 answers) identified and understood the idiomatic
expression and reproduced it fairly accurately. The closest productions to the original are
two cases in which the children only missed the possesive form:
<38> C: “lo de los niños se quedan callaos (callados) porque dice que –que cierra – no sé
que – que cierra la boca”
R: “que cierra la boca – y ¿cómo lo dice?”
C: “ ‘don’t open the mouth’ ”
C: the children keep quiet because it’s said that – that close – I don’t know – that the mouth
is closed
R: that the mouth is closed –and how is it said?
C: ‘don’t open the mouth’
<39> C: “la B porque dice que no abre la boca”
R: “¿quién lo dice y cómo lo dice?”
C: “ ‘don’t open the mouth’ ”
C: answer B because it’s said that the mouth is not opened
R: who said so and how is it said?
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C: ‘don’t open the mouth’
However, most of the children’s explanation include some kind of inaccuracies in
the L2. Some of the children’s utterances include the use of the wrong word (e.g. boys for
children):
<40> C: “la B porque al final del cuento dices que los niños se quedan callados – vamos que
no quieren abrir la boca”
R: “¿y cómo lo digo?”
C: “ ‘the boys don’t open the mouth’ ”
C: answer B because at the end of the story you say that the children keep quiet – that is
they don’t want to open their mouth
R: and how do I say that?
C: ‘the boys don’t open the mouth’
But the most common inaccuracies have to do with the wrong plural form (<41>) or
negative form without auxiliary verb (<42> and <43>):
<41> C: “la B porque tú has dicho en inglés que los niños se quedan callados”
R: “¿y cómo lo he dicho?”
C: “ ‘the childrens don’t open the mouth’ ”
C: answer B because you said in English that the children keep quiet
R: and how did I said that?
C: ‘the childrens don’t open the mouth’
<42> C: “la B porque los niños se quedaron callados”
C: “porque la madre le dijo ‘no open the mouth’ o algo así”
C: answer B because the children kept quiet
R: why?
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C: because their mother told them ‘no open the mouth’ or something like that
<43> C: “la B – porque los niños no hablan – no abren la boca”
R: “¿y por qué no abren la boca? – ¿cómo sabes que no abren la boca?”
C: “porque eran – ummm porque lo habían hecho los dos”
R: “pero ¿cómo sabes tú que ellos no abren la boca?”
C: “porque lo has dicho”
R: “¿y cómo lo he dicho?”
C: “ ‘they no – no open – don’t open his – they mouth’ ”
C: answer B – because the children do not speak – they don’t open their mouth
R: and why do they not open their mouth? – how do you know that they don’t open their
mouth?
C: because they were –mmm – they had both done it
R: but how do you know that they don’t open their mouths?
C: because you said it
R: and how did I say it?
C: ‘they no – no open –don’t open his –they mouth’
This last example is interesting in two ways. In the first place, the child self-corrects
his mistake with the negative form and also tries with the possessive pronoun although he
still does not produce the desired ‘their’. Besides, there is still a trace of the most frequent
strategy used by the 7-year-olds: the use of his own ideas about the protagonists’ behaviour.
This child initially justified his answer in these terms (“lo habían hecho los dos” – they
had both done it) but then reproduces the idiomatic phrase. This strategy is also employed
by the child who chose the distractor:
<44> C: “porque tienen una parte de culpa los dos niños y – no sé más”
R: “¿no? bueno – tú crees que porque tienen parte de culpa”
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C: “sí porque tienen parte de culpa y no sé me ocurre más – y porque – porque si elige al –
si elige – la madre culpa a /mıt∫el/ ”
R: “a Michael”
C: “tiene – tiene la razón la madre”
C. because both children are partly guilty and – I don’t know what else
R: don’t you? – well you think it’s because they are partly guilty
C: yes because they are partly guilty and I can’t think of anything else – and because –
because –if she chooses the –if she chooses – the mother blames /mıt∫el/
R: Michael
C: she’s –she’s right the mother
Finally, one child uses a strategy that had appeared in the 9-year-olds group (see
example <37>). This child discards the foil option on the basis of what he had actually
understood about the story:
C: “pues porque la madre – la madre viene – la madre no le ha dicho nada al niño – creo yo
que tiene la culpa”
R: “tú no has oído que la madre diga nada a los niños”
C: “sí ha dicho algo pero tampoco lo he entendido bien – pero no le ha dicho al niño que él
tiene la culpa”
R: why?
C: well ‘cos the mother –the mother comes in – the mother didn’t say anything to the boy –I
think it’s his fault
R: you didn’t hear the mother saying anything to the children
C: she did say something but I didn’t understand it well –but she didn’t say anything to the
boy whose fault it is.
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Although in the two cases where this discarding strategy is employed it leads the
children either to the wrong answer (<37>) or the wrong explanation (<45>), its use seems
to indicate a fairly developed reasoning, since more than one factor has to be taken into
account and the inappropriacy of one them leads to the appropriacy of the other. In fact,
discarding is not employed by any of the 7-year-olds, it only appears in the 9- and 11-yearolds’ groups.
4.3.2 DISCUSSION
These results indicate that not only most of the 11-year-olds choose the correct
answer but also that the strategy they employ in most cases is to focus on the linguistic
stimulus provided. However, there is still some trace of the children making inferences
from their knowledge of similar situations in combination with the linguistic paraphrase of
the idiom (example <43>) and in the explanation given by the child who chose the
distractor (examples <44>).
Nevertheless, in most cases, once the linguistic cue is picked up, the 11-year-olds
use their knowledge of
MOUTH
and its functions to interpret the meaning of the
metonymical extension not open one’s mouth. Unlike the majority of the 7- and 9-yearolds, they are able to produce the expression in the target language. As pointed out above,
their problems at the linguistic level are only related to minor grammar or vocabulary
inaccuracies. Their use of internal negation (examples <38> to <41>) together with some
trace of external negation (example <42>) indicates that these children are still developing
the negative form in English.
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The quantification of the children’s selections of the literal paraphrase and the foil
in the task proposed (see Table 2.6), shows that over 75% of the children across the three
age groups chose the literal paraphrase of not to open one’s mouth.
Table 2. 6 . Quantitative results of Study 2 (all the groups)
Group results
100%
80%
60%
40%
20%
0%
7-year-olds
9-year-olds
11-year-olds
Literal paraphrase
79%
95%
92%
Distractor
21%
5%
8%
From the detailed analysis of the children’s explanations in the three year groups, it
seems that there are several steps involved in the understanding of not open one’s mouth in
this particular context (schematised in Table 2.7). First of all, the participants need to
understand the story. This is a required first step in their understanding of the idiomatic
expression. If the participants in the experiment do not understand the story, they will not
be able to comprehend the meaning of the idiomatic ending. It seems that the vocabulary
used in the story and technique employed to tell it (twice and with visual cues) worked for
most children. Apart from the cases of the two 7-year-olds mentioned in the discussion
section of that age group, the rest of the children accomplished this first step. Once they
have understood the story, the children use three different reasoning strategies to deal with
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the task presented to them, namely, deciding on the correct ending of the short story. These
three strategies are inferencing from the context using their script knowledge, relying on the
visual support and focusing on the linguistic cue (mouth). The first two strategies are
employed by most of the 7-year-olds and allow them to justify both the correct answer and
the foil. This accounts for the disparity in the results of the three different 7-year-old
groups: the quantitative results of ‘Delicias A’ and ‘Vivero’ are highly positive (95% and
100% of the children chose the correct answer) while the results in ‘Delicias B’ are the
opposite (77% of the children selected the foil). Age may not be the only factor that
determines the use of these two strategies, the way the stimuli are presented may also play a
role. Most of the 7-year-olds’ explanations are based on the visual cues provided and on
their knowledge about mothers’ and children’s behaviour in specific situations. Having
presented the narrative accompanied by visual strips may have prevented them from
concentrating on the linguistic input. Nevertheless, script knowledge seem to be very
important at this age, as the results of Study 1 show (where the stimuli are presented in a
very different way).
However, there are ten 7-year-olds that use the third reasoning strategy which
actually leads them to understand not open one’s mouth. The focus on the linguistic input
and the identification of mouth increases significantly in the 9- and 11-year-olds: only 19%
of the 7-year-olds employ it whereas it is behind 86% of the 9-year-olds’ answers and 84%
of the 11-year-olds’. All these children identify mouth and are able to match this body part
with the function of speaking or rather, with the impossibility of speaking when it is closed
via metonymy and, thus, they successfully infer the meaning of the idiom not open one’s
mouth. Nevertheless, all the 7-year-olds (examples <5>, <6>, <20>, <22> and <23>) and
most of the 9-year-olds (examples from <26> to <31>) cannot get any further in the
interpretation process, that is, they have problems recognising the linguistic encoding of
this phrase in the L2 and, especially producing it. In the case of the 7-year-olds, their
problems to recognise the negative form even lead them to mismatch meanings and forms
in the L1 and L2 (examples <20> and <22>). However, the rest of the answers show that
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the children understand the figurative use. Thus, the children’s inability to produce the
figurative target form does not imply that they lack the tacit understanding of the
expression.
Some 9-year-olds (examples <32> and <33>) and most of the 11-year-olds
(examples from <37> to <42>) recognise the target metonymical extension and are able to
produce utterances that are very close to the original.
The identification of the participants’ different learning styles (field-dependentindependent or analytic-holistic) might shed more light on these findings. Even a
superficial consideration of the differences in strategies employed by the different learners
(inferencing from context and reliance on the visuals as opposed to focusing on the
linguistic input) seems to point to the advantage that analytic learners have over holistic.
These findings would contradict those of Johnson (1989), Johnson and Rosano (1993) or
Littlemore (2001).
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Figure 2.0 Steps involved in the understanding of not open one’s mouth
Understanding
of the story
Inference
from context
/ script
knowledge
Reliance on
visual
support
Attention to
linguistic
cues (mouth)
correct or incorrect
answers
correct answers
No understanding
of the semantic
extension
‘understanding’ of
the semantic
extension
Identification of mouth
Awareness of its functions
Relation to story contents
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Recognition / recalling of
the linguistic encoding of
the expression in English
III. STUDY 3. FOUR SEMANTIC EXTENSIONS OF
HEAD
Study 3. Four semantic extensions of HEAD
The third study was designed to explore whether 5-, 7-, 9- and 11-year-old EFL
learners’ were able to apprehend four semantic extensions of
HEAD
(the head of a bed, the
head of a hammer, the head of a line of cars and the head of the stairs) and to analyse the
kind of reasoning involved in their understanding of these four figurative uses. As in the
two previous experiments,
HEAD
was chosen for its appropriacy for children of these ages
and because it is a highly polysemous and frequent lexical item in English. In this study,
special attention had to be paid to the fact that children as young as 5 years old were to take
part. In this respect, as well as
HEAD,
the other elements involved in the four semantic
extensions (a bed, a hammer, a line of cars and a staircase) are concrete and familiar to
children of this age. As will be seen later, the design of the experiment (with the use of
photographs) and the procedure (children marking on the photograph and verbally
explaining) also aimed to suit the abilities of such young children in the sense pointed out
by Gentner (1977), Donaldson (1978) or Cameron (1996).
As regards the frequency and polysemous wealth of
HEAD,
the Collins COBUILD
Dictionary marks this lexical item with the highest frequency band and records 61 different
uses. It may also be noted that
HEAD
is used in a large number of expressions which are
explained under other words in the dictionary (for example, the expression off the top of
your head is explained at top). The 61 uses are classified into 46 main entries, a phrasal
verb (head off) and 14 compounds that include combinations of noun and nominal head,
past participle and nominal head or nominal head and preposition strings such as big head,
dead-head or head-on. The 46 entries comprise the prototypical meaning of
HEAD
(‘your
head is the top part of your body, which has your eyes, mouth and brain in it’) and different
semantic extensions which are realised by single nouns or verbs and phraseological units.
The head of a line of cars and the head of the stairs are specifically mentioned. In fact, the
former is the third entry and is defined as: “the head of a line of people or vehicles is the
front of it or the first person or vehicle in the line”. The latter is included as an example of
the sixth entry: “the head of something is the highest or top part of it (e.g. the head of the
stairs)”. The head of a hammer is not explicitly defined or included as an example of any
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definition but it illustrates the seventh entry: “the head of a something long and thin is the
end which is wider than or a different shape from the rest and which is often considered to
be the most important part (e.g. screw heads)”. Finally, although bedhead is recorded in
this dictionary, the periphrastic form is not. The compound noun is defined as: “a board
which is fixed to the end of a bed behind your head.” The New Oxford Dictionary of
English records the phrase the head of a bed as an illustration of the third entry for bed:
“the front, forward, or upper part or end of something, in particular: the upper end of a
table or bed.” The four semantic extensions selected are, therefore, conventional in
English.
From a syntactic point of view, they all are realised by the nominal head which is
the head of a noun phrase modified in all cases by a prepositional phrase of the same type
(the preposition ‘of’, a determiner and a noun)
From a semantic point of view, the lexeme
HEAD
is characterised by its numerous
semantic extensions which form a complex system of meaning relationships. This
complexity is probably motivated by the fact that the human head is very salient in our
perception of others. In fact, people are distinguished from each other by their faces and as
H. Clark (1973) points out, the canonical interaction between human beings is face-to-face.
This saliency seems to affect children in particular. In their early drawings of people, for
example, young children portray individuals with disproportionally large heads. The
conspicuousness of the human head may well be responsible for the fact that the lexeme
HEAD
extends its meaning in varied and complex ways. Some dictionary-recorded
meanings of HEAD are as varied as, for example, ‘a measure of distance’, ‘mind and mental
abilities’, ‘the front part’, ‘the top or highest part’ or ‘the end’. These examples can be
taken as an indication of how highly polysemous this lexical item is. As can be seen, the
relationships of the different semantic extensions and the core meaning (head as body part)
are very complex. In a study of the conceptual structure of the Basque word ‘buru’ (head),
Ibarretxe-Antuñano (2002) records fifteen different uses of this lexical item and analyses
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them as forming a lexical network whose central member is the prototypical sense of ‘buru’
as a body part.
This complexity is also illustrated in the case of the four semantic extensions chosen
for this experiment. In the case of the head of the stairs, the top position on a vertical axis
appears to give rise to the semantic extension. The head of a hammer seems to be
differently motivated. In this case, the similarity of shape and its situation in relation to the
handle as a different part may account for it. In fact, the names of other parts of the head
such as cheek, eye or face are also used to designate different areas of the head of the
hammer (see Figure 3.0 below, taken from the Junior Visual Dictionary)
Figure 3.0
The head of a line of cars may have a metonymical basis grounded in one of the
functions of head: control or leadership. However, the mapping of an animal body schema,
specifically the body of reptiles onto the line of cars may provide a more plausible
explanation for this extension. In fact, this motivation may also account for expressions
such as the head of a convoy or the head of a queue.
Finally, the semantics of the head of a bed is even more complex. Following the
definition of the phrase in the New Oxford Dictionary of English, quoted above, it seems
that the metaphorical mapping of a salient attribute of the human head, namely, being at the
top, to this part of the bed would account for its motivation. However, there is another
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possible underlying motivation of this semantic extension based on physical contiguity,
therefore, making it metonymical: the head of the bed is the part where a person’s head lies
when in bed. The OED includes this notion in its second entry (“II. A thing or part of a
thing resembling a head in form or position”) sub-entry 15: “the upper end of something
on a slope or so regarded; e.g. that end of a lake at which a river enters it; the higher end
of a valley, the inner extremity of a cave, gulf, etc.; that end of a bed, grave, etc. towards
which a person’s head lies; that end of a table at which the chief seat is.” This definition,
which starts by emphasising the resemblance of the top position, recognises the
juxtaposition of the human head with the part of the bed we are dealing with in the specific
definition of the phrase (“that end of a bed, grave, etc. towards which a person’s head
lies”). In a somewhat similar vein, the Collins COBUILD Dictionary, which does not give
a definition for the head of a bed, provides one for the foot of a bed which only takes into
account physical contiguity: “the end nearest to the feet of the person lying in it.”
As has been noted earlier and as illustrated in the discussion of these semantic
extensions of
HEAD,
dictionaries do not seem to take into account the relationship between
the different meanings of this lexeme either in the definitions or in the organisation of the
meanings.
Three of these semantic extensions of
HEAD
have approximate equivalents in
Spanish. The Spanish counterpart for the head of the bed is ‘cabecero/cabecera’, which is a
derivation (root + suffix) from ‘cabeza’ and allows the masculine and feminine form. To
call the metal part of a hammer its head is recorded in the DRAE’s definition of hammer:
“herramienta de percusión, compuesta de una cabeza, por lo común de hierro, y un
mango” (striking tool that consists of a head, generally made of iron, and a handle). And
finally, the notion conveyed in the head of a line of cars is expressed in Spanish phrases
such as ‘encabezar una fila’ (to head a line), ‘el cabeza de carrera’ (the head of a race) or
‘ir en cabeza’ (literally, ‘go in head’). In contrast, there is no equivalent for the head of the
stairs in Spanish.
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1. PARTICIPANTS
A hundred and forty-eight children (seventy-seven girls and seventy-one boys) in
the final year of Pre-school and the second, fourth and sixth year of Primary school took
part in this experiments. There were three forms of pre-schoolers (mean age 5:8, age range
from 5:5 to 6:4 years), three forms of second-years (mean age 8:0, age range from 7:5 to
8:9), a form of fourth-years (mean age 10:0, age range from 9:6 to 10:4) and a form of
sixth-years (mean age 11:9, age range from 11:4 to 12:3). One of the pre-school and two of
the second-years forms were from the C.P. ‘Delicias’ and consisted of 19, 18 and 15
children respectively. The rest of the children attended the C.P. ‘El Vivero’ and there were
two groups of pre-schoolers with 19 and 20 children, 23 second-years, 22 fourth-years and
12 sixth-years. The Primary school groups had participated in the two previous experiment
but for the pre-schoolers it was their first time. All the 5-year-olds were Spanish and spoke
Spanish as their mother tongue, therefore, the general situation of the children’s
nationalities and linguistic and socio-economic background was the same as in Study 1: all
the children were Spanish, apart from a boy from Ecuador, they all spoke Spanish as their
mother tongue except for two bilingual in Spanish and Italian and Spanish and English, and
they came from a variety of social and economic backgrounds.
The four semantic extensions of HEAD mentioned above (the head of a bed, the head
of a hammer, the head of a line of cars and the head of the stairs) were selected for the
experimental task. Because some of the participants were very young (5 years old), the task
could not be excessively demanding. In this sense, neither written forms nor meta-language
could be employed so it was decided to work with a task that was mainly visual and oral.
Four photographs were provided that represented each of the four elements present in the
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semantic extensions: a bed, a hammer, a line of cars and a staircase. Photographs rather
than pictures or drawings were used because it was felt that these represent reality more
accurately than other visual representations, and therefore would lead to fewer problems of
interpretation. In fact, none of the children had any problems identifying the referents.
Indeed, the photographs employed tried to recreate the participants’ reality as faithfully as
possible: the staircase in the photo is the real staircase in one of the two schools and the
photo with the line of cars was taken in the town where the children lived. The four
photographs are presented in Appendix C.
3. PROCEDURE
As in Study 1, the children were tested in small groups (between 3 and 5 children)
in a quiet area of their school. Likewise, group procedure reproduced the classroom context
so that the children felt more comfortable and, therefore, spoke more freely, and, this also
facilitated negotiation of meaning even in the case of the younger learners. The dynamics
of a group of 5-year-olds is illustrated below:
<1> C1: “porque la cabeza está encima de um de la um de la del cuello”
R: “del cuello”
C1: “y porque está encima del cuerpo”
C1: because the head is on top of mm of the mm of the of the neck
R: of the neck
C1: and because it is on the top of the body
<2> C2: “porque es la cabecera de la cama”
R: “¿y eso qué tiene que ver con la cabeza – tú crees?”
C2: [silencio]
R: “¿algo más quieres añadir Sara?”
C2: “no”
197
R: “no – muy bien Sara muy bien”
C2: because it’s the head of the bed
R: and what’s that got to do with head – you think?
C2: [silence]
R: would you like to add anything else Sara?
C2: no
<3> C3: “porque es la cabeza del cuerpo humano”
C3: because it’s the head of the human body
<4> R: “le está diciendo Javier [C3] ‘di lo mismo’ ”
C4: “porque – porque la cabeza está encima del cuerpo”
R: “del cuerpo – Javier ¿tú exactamente por qué has dicho?”
C3: “porque está – porque la cabeza está encima del cuerpo humano”
R: Javier [C3] is telling him ‘say the same thing’
C4: because – because the head is on the top of the body
R: Javier – what did you say exactly?
C3: because it is – because the head is on the top of the human body
<5> C5: “la madera ésta porque es el final de la cama”
C5: this wood because it’s the end of the bed
As in the case of older learners in Study 1, the answer initiated by the first child that
intervenes is followed up by some members but discarded by others. In this case, C1
focuses on the position of the head “encima del cuello / cuerpo” (on top of the neck /
body). C3 and C4 follow up this idea and there is an interesting exchange between them
when C4 is about to speak. C3 seems to be so clear about his explanation that he tries to
persuade C4 to agree with him, and obviously, with C1: “di lo mismo” (say the same
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thing). In fact, C3 had not mentioned the idea of top position until C4 does. It is C4 who
actually goes back to the first answer initiated by C1. In contrast, C2 and C5 give
completely different answers. The explanation provided by C2 illustrates a different
reasoning strategy: use of L1 knowledge. She mentions the phrase “cabecera de la cama”
in Spanish which is the equivalent of the head of the bed. In contrast, the last answer shows
that one participant interprets the image from a different perspective. According to her, the
bedhead is placed at the end of the bed rather than at the first position as most of her peers
view it. This makes sense if we consider that the part of the bed in the photograph which is
closest to the viewer is the foot while the head of the bed is more distant. In fact, the
Collins COBUILD Dictionary records this possible meaning of top: “the top of a street,
garden, bed or table is the end of it that is farthest away form where you usually enter it or
from where you are.” The perspective from which the photographs have been taken may
have motivated answers of this type. It would be interesting to replicate this study with
photographs taken from a different perspective and cross-check the results.
The sessions were divided in the same three blocks as in Study 1: warm-up
activities, experimental task and ‘reward’ time. With the 7-, 9-, and 11-year-olds, the warmup activities consisted in reminding them of the work they had done with body parts in the
two previous experiments, emphasising that the body part they were going to work with
this time was
HEAD.
Their knowledge of
HEAD
was revised and reinforced. In the case of
the 5-year-olds, since they were carrying out an experimental task for the first time, they
did the two warm-up activities devised for Study 1. That is, in the first one the children
were asked their name and age in English. As in the case of older learners, being able to
answer these simple questions that are learned and practised very often as classroom
routines, helped the children to relax, to feel more confident and to understand that they
were going to be using their English. The second activity was aimed at checking which
vocabulary items related to the body parts they knew and to reinforce their knowledge of
the literal meanings of the word head. As pointed out before, the semantic field of body
parts is introduced at very early stages of EFL. In fact, the text books for four-year-olds
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used in both schools promote active learning of head, hand and leg. At the same stage
mouth, arm, body and eye were included as passive vocabulary. Checking the children’s
mastery of the ‘core’ meanings of the lexical items chosen was a necessary first step in the
procedure. Children will obviously not be able to understand a metaphorical or
metonymical extension of a word if they do not know its basic meaning.
The second block of the session –the experiment itself– was started with some
introductory remarks recognising its challenge and further aimed at engaging the children’s
concentration and active collaboration in the task. Afterwards, each child was provided
with a copy of one of the photographs. The identification of the photograph was ensured by
asking them about what each photo represented. In some cases, a short discussion started
because some children talked about a particular element of the photo that was salient to
them. For example, some of them recognised the staircase in their school or talked about a
relative that lived in the particular area of the town pictured in the photograph of the line of
cars. After ensuring the identification of the element, they were given a red pen and asked
to circle or mark with a cross the part of the photograph they thought was the head of the
element presented. The older ones (7-, 9-, and 11-year-olds) were asked to write their
names on their copies. This was done for the 5-year-olds by the researcher. Once they had
all finished, they were asked to explain individually why they had marked a particular part.
The same routine was repeated with the remaining three photographs that were presented in
a random order to each group. The children’s explanations were tape-recorded to be
transcribed, compared with the children’s copies of the photographs, and analysed later.
In order to complete the same routine of the sessions established in Study 1 and
make them more enjoyable for the children, in the third block of the session the children
were thanked for their work and played a guessing game related to their normal class work
in which some of them got little presents.
Twenty sessions were necessary to test all the children. The average duration of
each session was 45 minutes for the 7-, 9- and 11-year-olds and 20 minutes for the 5-yearolds. More than one group was usually tested in each session.
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4. RESULTS
As in the two previous studies, the results of Study 3 were analysed quantitatively
and qualitatively. An individual analysis of the children’s explanations also served to
rectify and clarify the quantitative results in this third study.
4.1 FIVE-YEAR-OLDS
4.1.1 THE HEAD OF A BED
As can be seen in Table 3.1, from a quantitative point of view a very similar number
of children marked the bedhead (45% - 26 children) and the pillow (41% - 24 children) as
the head of the bed. The remaining 8 children (14%) marked other parts of the bed: the
middle part (3), the bottom part (2), over the wooden part (1), under the pillow (1) and the
sheets (1).
the head of a bed
14%
45%
bedhead
pillow
others
41%
An individual analysis of the children’s explanations of the reasons why they had
marked a particular part shows recurrent justifications. Thus, most of the children (57%)
that mark the bedhead justify it by saying that it was the top, highest or first part:
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<6> C: “porque está arriba”
C: because it is on the top
<7> C: “porque esto es lo que tiene la cama más arriba”
because this is the highest thing on the bed
<8> C: “porque es la más alta”
because it is the highest
<9> C1: “porque es la primera”
C2: “y lo más alto”
C1: “y lo más alto”
C1: because it is the first
C2: and the highest
C1: and the highest
One of the children notes that the bedhead is higher than the pillow:
<10> C: “esto [cabecero] porque está más arriba de la almohada”
C: this [bedhead] because it is higher than the pillow
Three children in the same group explicitly referred to the top position of the human
head in relation to the rest of the body (see examples <1>, <3> and <4>).
In one of the explanations given, a child resorts to her knowledge of the L1, and
justifies her answer in terms of the similarity of the head of the bed and ‘la cabecera de la
cama’ (see example <2>). When this child is asked to elaborate on her explanation (“¿algo
más quieres añadir Sara?” – would you like to add anything else Sara?), she cannot. In this
sense, the example illustrates how demanding meta-linguistic tasks are for very young
learners and that although they are able to perform the task successfully they may not be
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able to explain it verbally (Gentner 1977, Donaldson 1978, Vosniadou 1987, Zurer Pearson
1990, or Cameron 1996).
In the answers that marked the pillow, there were two main explanations. The most
frequent (9 answers - 37%) was based on the physical contiguity of the head and pillow:
<11> C: “en la almohada – porque se pone la cabeza”
C: on the pillow – because you lay your head on it
<12> C: “la almohada porque es donde pones ‘head’ ”
C: the pillow because it’s where you lay your ‘head’ on
<13> C: “porque pones la cabeza y estás muy cómoda”
C: because you lay your head and you feel very comfortable
When these children focus on the physical juxtaposition of the human head and the
bedhead or the pillow, they are using a similar strategy to that used by the 7-year-olds in
Case 2 (The hands of a watch) of Study 1 when they said that it was hand because “el reloj
se pone en la mano” (you wear your watch on your hand).
The second preferred justification was the same used in the bedhead answers: the
identification of the head with the top part of a vertical axis. 25% of the children (6
answers) said that it was because that was the top (<14>), highest (<15>) or first part
(<16>):
<14> C: “ésta [almohada] porque es la de arriba”
C: this one [pillow] because it is the top one
<15> C: “la almohada porque está más alta”
C: the pillow because it is situated in a higher position
<16> C: “porque es lo primero de la cama”
C: because it is the first thing on the bed
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Another recurrent way in which the 5-year-olds justify their answers is to relate the
explanation given to something that affects them, usually a experience they have had:
<17> C: “la almohada porque es cuando se acuestan los niños”
C: the pillow because it’s when children go to sleep
<18> C: “porque es cuando ahí se acuestan las mamás”
C: because there it’s when mummies go to sleep
This shows a strong dependence on very specific domain reasoning, also illustrated
in the answers of the 7-year-olds in Study 1. Other explanations given by two of the
children that marked the middle part also illustrate this strategy:
<19> C: “porque así los niños – pues se arropan con la manta”
C: because like that children – cover themselves up with their blanket
<20>C: “porque ahí nos tumbamos la gente para dormir”
C: because there people lie down to sleep
4.1.2 THE HEAD OF A HAMMER
The quantitative analysis of the explanations given by the children about this
photograph provides highly positive results at first sight (see Table 3.2): 96% of the
children marked the metal part as the head of a hammer. Only 2 out of 58 children chose
other parts (the handle of the hammer and the arm of the person who is holding the
hammer).
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the head of a hammer
2%
2%
metal part
handle
arm
96%
The most frequent reason given by the children who chose the metal part was based
on the identification of the top position on a vertical axis shared by the metal part of the
hammer and the human head. In this sense, 25 children (45%) said that the metal part was
the head of the hammer because it was the first (examples <21> and <22>), highest (<23>)
or top part (<24> and <25>):
<21> C: “porque es lo primero”
R: “es lo primero”
C: “y luego esto ya es lo segundo”
R: “el mango es lo segundo”
C: because it’s the first
R: it’s the first
C: and then this is the second
R: the handle is the second
<22> C: “porque como – como – como la esto – es un martillo – que es lo primero pues es la
cabeza”
C: because since – since – since this thingy – it’s a hammer – which is the first so it’s the
head
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<23> C: “porque es la parte un poquito más alta del martillo”
C: because it’s the part of the hammer that is a little bit higher
C: because it’s at the top
<25> “porque está arriba del palo”
C: because it’s on the top of the stick
It is interesting to note that, in the photograph, the hammer is horizontally placed
and therefore, these children were obviously able to identify the top position on a vertical
axis with a rotated image. Some children also established an explicit comparison with the
human head based on their position:
<26> C: “porque es la que está más alta”
R: “¿y qué tiene que ver lo de eso que esté alta con la cabeza tú crees?”
C: “porque la cabeza es la que está más alta del cuerpo”
C: because it is the one that is highest
R: and what’s the relationship between being high and the head do you think?
C: because the head is the highest part in the body
<27> C: “porque esto es – lo que tiene – es como la cabeza”
R: “porque esto es – ¿como la cabeza? ¿y por qué es como la cabeza tú crees?”
C: “porque es lo que está más alto del cuerpo y se parece más la cabeza”
R: “¿y por qué se parece a la cabeza eso – tú crees?”
C: “porque está más alta”
C: because this is –the thing it’s got –it’s like the head
R: because this is –like the head? and why is it like the head do you think?
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C: because it’s the highest thing in the body and it looks more like the head
R: and why does that look like the head –you think?
C: because it’s the highest
Some explanations are also motivated by the same idea but the children cannot
convey their reasoning verbally. In such cases, they either do not say anything <28> or
resort to body language as can be seen in example <29> below:
<28> C: “porque está encima del cuerpo”
R: “¿y qué tiene eso que ver?”
C: [silencio]
R: “qué mas me dices”
C: [silencio]
R: “¿nada más? vale – muy bien”
C: because it’s on top of the body
R: and what’s that got to do with it?
C: [silence]
R: what else can you tell me
C: [silence]
R: nothing else? All right –very good
<29> C: “porque sí – porque está aquí [se toca su propia cabeza] porque está aquí”
C: because it is – because it is here [touches his own head] because it is here
Some of the children’s explanations are based on the matching of features in terms
of similarity of shape:
<30> C: “es que mira – como tiene un redondel que parece la cabeza y está más alta del
cuerpo”
C: ‘cos look – it’s got a round bit that looks like the head and it’s the highest in the body
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<31> C: “porque esto [mango] parece la barriga y esto [parte de metal] la cabeza”
C: because this [handle] looks like the belly and this [metal part] the head
The individual analysis of the children’s explanations also shows that a considerable
number of them (14 out of 56 - 25%) focused on the function of the hammer and the
importance of the metal part in this function. These children provided explanations of the
following type:
<32> C: “aquí [ parte de metal] porque es por donde se machan (clavan) las cosas”
C: here [metal part] because it’s where you hammer things in
<33> C: “la parte de arriba del martillo”
R: “¿y por qué has puesto ahí la cruz? ¿por qué crees que eso es ‘head’?”
C: “porque tienes que clavar el martillo aquí”
C: the top part of the hammer
R: and why have you cross that? Why do you think that this is the ‘head’?
C: because you’ve got to hammer in the hammer here
<34> C: “porque es pa’ (para) clavar la púas (puntas)”
R: “ah – ¿y eso qué tiene que ver con la ‘head’ Mario?”
C: “pues porque esa cabeza está clavando una púa en la silla”
C: because it’s for hammering nails
R: ah – and what’s that got to do with ‘head’ Mario?
C: because that head is hammering a nail into the chair
Finally, it is interesting to note that three children in the same subgroup justify their
choice by saying that the metal part is the main part thus matching one of feature of the
expression included in the Collins COBUILD Dictionary’s definition:
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<35> C: “porque es la parte principal”
C: because it’s the main part
4.1.3 THE HEAD OF A LINE OF CARS
The quantitative results of the interpretations of the head of line of cars are offered
in Table 3.3 below.
the head of a line of cars
first car
7% 5% 5%
police car
42%
12%
last car
front police car
top parts
29%
others
As can be seen, the preferred element was the first car that was marked by 24
children (42%), followed by the police car chosen by 17 children (29%) and the last car that
was selected by 7 pre-schoolers (12%). Some children marked more specific elements such
as the front part of the police car (4 children - 7%) and the top parts of the first and police
car (4 children - 5%). Finally, the remaining 3 children (5%) marked other elements of the
line of cars (5%): the windows of the police car (2) and the wheels of the last car (1). The
most common explanation (46% - 11 answers) given by those children that chose the first
car was the following:
<36> C: “porque está el primero”
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<37> C: “éste – el primero”
R: “¿y por qué has puesto que ese es ‘head’?”
C: “porque es el primero y el que se pone primero es la cabeza”
C: this one – the first
R: and why have you chosen that one as ‘head’?
C: because it’s the first and the one that goes first is the head
<38> C: “porque empieza los coches”
C: because it starts the cars
Indeed, as noted above, the Collins COBUILD Dictionary defines the head of a line
of cars as “the front of it or the first person or vehicle in the line”. The examples above
encapsulate the second part of this definition. The first part is illustrated by the following
explanation given by one of the children, which is also complemented by a creative
metaphor:
<39> C: “porque es la que está delante y porque esto puede ser las piernas [último] esto
puede ser los brazos [coche policía] y esto puede ser la cabeza [first car]”
C: because it’s the one at the front and because this can be the legs [last car] this can be the
arms [police car] and this can be the head [first car]
Other explanations that the children had used with the head of a bed and the head of
a hammer are also present in their answers in relation to the head of a line of cars. For
instance, the second preferred explanation given by the children that chose the first car is
that the first car is in the top position (5 children - 21%):
<40> C: “el primero porque la cabeza es arriba”
C: the first one because the head is at the top
<41> “porque está en la parte de la cabeza”
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because it is situated where the head is
The idea that the head is the highest part was also mentioned in one explanation:
<42> C: “porque es la más alta de todas”
C: because it’s the highest of all the parts
These types of explanations are more likely to have been motivated by an influence
of the answer given to account for the other figurative extensions rather than a real
understanding of the head of line of cars. In fact, a line of cars is a horizontal axis and,
therefore, there is no top part on it. Nevertheless, all the children that chose the top parts of
the first and police car also gave the same explanation:
<43> C: “porque está arriba de la cabeza y la cabeza está arriba”
C: because it’s on top of the head and the head is at the top
<44> C: “porque está encima del primer coche”
R: “porque está encima del primer coche ¿y eso que tiene que ver con ‘head’?”
C: “que la cabeza está encima del cuerpo humano”
C: because it’s on top of the first car
R: because it’s on top of the first car and what’s that got to do with ‘head’?
C: ‘cos the head is on top of the human body
These children also seem to be over-generalising from the explanation given to one
of the figurative uses they have been provided with to the other ones, but in these cases, the
strategy has also conditioned their answers: they have marked the top part of one of the cars
that is actually above the rest of the line. This is a particularly salient feature in the case of
the police car that has the lights on top of the roof.
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In the rest of the children’s explanations in relation to the different parts selected,
there is another recurrent reasoning strategy. Some children focus on an aspect that catches
their attention and reason about it:
<45> C1: “el coche de policía”
R: “¿por qué crees que el de policía es la ‘head’ de la fila?”
C2: “porque yo quiero ser policía de mayor”
C1: “porque las lucecitas me gustan mucho”
C1: The police car
R: why do you think that the police car is the ‘head’ of the line?
C2: because I’d like to be a policeman when I grow up
C1: because I like the like little lights a lot
<46> C: “el del medio porque es el que más me gusta”
C: the middle one because I like it best
<47> C: “porque los que no hacen caso los detiene la policía”
C: because those who don’t pay attention are arrested by the police
<48> C: “[refiriéndose a la ventana del coche de policía] porque así – pues cuando entran en
la cochera entonces si no ven pues no pueden hacerlo pero si tienen un espejo sí”
C: [referring to the window of police car] because like that – when they go into the garage if
can’t see they can’t do it but if they got a mirror they can.
<49> C: “[refiriéndose a las ruedas del coche de policía] porque el motor es lo que hace
funcionar a la rueda”
C: [referring to the wheels of the police car] because the engine it’s what makes the wheel
works
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This type of reasoning is also illustrated in some of the children’s answers referring
the head of a bed and the head of the stairs.
4.1.4 THE HEAD OF THE STAIRS
The quantitative analysis of the children’s verbal explanations about the head of the
stairs shows that most children marked the top part (55%) and the top steps (17%) as the
head of the staircase. A significantly lower percentage chose the bottom part (14%) and the
middle part (7%). Finally, the remaining four answers (7%) referred to the top window (1),
the roof (1) and whole staircase (2).
the head of the stairs
14%
7%
top part
top steps
7%
middle
55%
17%
bottom
others
As with the three previous semantic extensions, the most frequent reason for
marking the top part and the top steps as the head of the stairs was the recognition of its top
position in relation to the rest of the staircase. In the case of the ‘top part’- answers, 18
children (56%) said that this part was the top (examples <50> and <51>), highest (<52>) or
first part (<53> and <54>):
<50> C: “aquí porque es arriba”
C: here because it’s the top
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R: “¿y qué tiene que ver que esté arriba con la cabeza?”
C: [silencio]
R: “¿tú crees qué tiene que ver que esté arriba y ‘head’? ¿no te sale mucho?”
C: [niega con la cabeza]
R: “¿no? bueno no pasa nada”
C: because it’s at the top
R: and what’s the relationship between being at the top and the ‘head’?
C: [silence]
R: what do you think that being at the top has to do with head? can’t you express it?
C: [shakes her head]
R: can you not? it’s all right
<52> “porque está - es la más alta”
because it’s – it’s the highest
<53> “porque es la primera”
because it’s the first
<54> C: “por – por – porque es que los que han hecho esta escalera han querido ponerla la
primera”
R: “¿Y eso que tiene que ver con ‘head’ tú crees?”
C: [se encoge de hombros]
R: “¿no lo tienes muy claro? vale”
C: ‘cos – cos’ – because the people that’ve made this staircase wanted to put it in the first
place
R: and what’s that got to do with ‘head’ do you think?
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C: [shrugs]
R: are you not very clear about it? all right
Examples <51> and <54> illustrate that these children are able to map a feature of
the human head (its top position) to the top part of the staircase but are unable to verbally
explain this relation, as in examples <2> (the head of a bed) and <30>, <31> (the head of a
hammer)
In the case of the top-steps answers, 8 children (out of 10 – 80%) said that the top
steps were at the top <55>, the highest <56> or the first <57>:
<55> C: “porque está encima de las escaleras”
C: because it’s on the top of the stairs
<56> C: “porque está un poco más alto”
C: because it’s a bit higher up
<57> C: “porque es la primera”
Interestingly, in this particular semantic extension, although four children see the
top part of the stairs as the first part, a similar number of them (3 children) consider that the
top part is the end of the stairs:
<58> C: “porque es el final de la escalera y ya no hay más escalera”
R: “y ya no hay más escalera – ¿y eso que tiene que ver con ‘head’ tú crees?”
C: “que es el final de la escalera – está arriba del cuerpo”
C: because it’s the end of the staircase and there’s no more staircase
R: and there’s no more staircase – and what’s that got to do with ‘head’ do you think?
C: ‘cos it’s the end of the staircase –it’s at the top of body
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These children are obviously considering the beginning and the end of the stairs
from a different perspective. They actually share the perspective expressed by the child in
example <5> in relation to the head of the bed.
Finally, as in the case of the head of a line of cars, some answers show that some
children choose an aspect of the photograph that is salient to them in relation to a personal
experience and reason about it:
<59> C: “porque cuando se acaba el colegio – se sale y se baja por las escaleras”
C: because when lessons finish –we go out and go down the stairs
<60> C: “arriba del todo porque por ahí se suben las escaleras y se pone uno al lado de la
pared y está ahí”
C: right at the top because there you go up the stairs and you stand next to the wall and it’s
there
<61>C: “porque siempre subimos más veces cuando vamos con Maite [una de las
profesoras]”
C: because we always go up many times when we go with Maite [one of their teachers]
4.1.5 DISCUSSION
The quantitative results of this study show that, in general, a high percentage of
these 5-year-olds could match the four semantic extensions of
HEAD
with their visual
representations in photographs. Their verbal explanations indicate that in this process of
matching, they were able to perceive the links of the different senses of this lexeme through
metaphor and in metonymy. However, not all of these extensions were equally easy for
them to grasp. Thus, the most accessible seems to be the head of a hammer, in which 96%
of the children marked the metal part as the head, followed by the head of the stairs (55%
of the children marked the top part and 17% the top steps). The head of a line of cars seems
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to present the greatest problems of identification: less than half of the children (42%) chose
the first car. Finally, the case of the head of the bed is more complex because it is difficult
to establish the boundaries of the actual head of a bed. These particular children distinguish
between the pillow (chosen by 45%) and the bedhead (marked by 41%). The definitions
recorded in dictionaries are not very helpful in this regard. Neither the entry in the New
Oxford Dictionary (“the front, forward or upper part or end of something”) nor the one in
the OED (“that end of a bed towards which a person’s head lies”) establish defined
boundaries to determine if the head of the bed consists of the bedhead or the pillow but,
rather, they vaguely point to the area where both elements are situated. These children in
particular, and more clearly the children in other age groups (where they marked the
bedhead, the pillow or both) seem to consider that the head of bed is the area where the
bedhead, the pillow or both of them are.
In their identification of these four semantic extensions, some 5-year-olds showed
that they could match the linguistic expression with its visual representation and reason
about it but were unable to convey their reasoning verbally (see, for instance, examples
<2>, <30>, <31>, <51>, <54>). As has been pointed out this is a common problem that
researchers working with younger children have noted (Donaldson 1978, Vosniadou 1987,
Zurer Pearson 1990, or Cameron 1996). The children’s inability to explain verbally the
figurative use, however, does not imply that they lack the tacit understanding of the
expression, as their answers above show.
Most of the 5-year-olds’ explanations as regards the task presented to them reflect
their ability to reason figuratively and to identify the head of each element with its top part.
Linguistically, they used words such as ‘top’, ‘highest’ or ‘first’. Their explanations point
to the use of their schema of the human head to reason about these elements. In fact, some
of them established explicit comparisons with the human head: examples <1>, <3> and <4>
(the head of a bed), <26> and <27> (the head of the hammer) or <44> (the head of line of
cars).
217
In the case of the staircase, they mainly marked the top part and the top steps and
their answers were grounded in the identification of the top of the staircase with the top
position of the head in 56% and 80% of the answers respectively (examples <50> to <54>
and <55> to <57>). Similarly, 45% of the children argued that the metal part of the hammer
is the head because of its top position (examples <21> to <25>). The hammer in the
photograph is horizontally placed what shows that the children are able to use this
reasoning even with a rotated image. The same justification is provided as regards the head
of the bed, mainly in the ‘bedhead’-answers (57%, examples <6> to <9>) but also in the
‘pillow’-answers (25%, examples <14> to <16>). Finally, it is also present in the head of a
line of cars in those answers that marked the first car (21%, examples <40> to <42>) and in
all those that chose the top parts of the first and police car (examples <43> and <44>).
However, in these last two cases, both the bed and the line of cars are placed on a
horizontal axis and, therefore, there are no top parts to them. In fact, the use of the same
explanation in these cases may have been motivated by an over-generalisation of the
justification given to account for the other semantic extensions. This is especially evident in
the answers that marked the top parts of the cars. The over-generalisation of the same
notion leads them to mark the top parts of the cars that are actually above the rest of the
line, a particularly salient feature in the case of the police car which has the lights on top of
the roof. Cross-checking the explanations given by two of these children shows that their
answers are, in fact, based on the idea that the top position of the human head is shared by
the rest of the elements they marked in the four semantic extensions, as can be seen in
Table 3.5.
Some of their answers also show that they seem to conceive the human body as a
bounded region with a beginning and an end. This is illustrated in some of their
justifications for the four semantic extensions: the head of a bed (example <5> and
Ramón’s answer shown in Table 3.5), the head of a hammer (examples <21> and <22> and
Ramón’s), the head of a line of cars (<36>, <37> and <38>) and the head of the stairs
(<53>, <54>, <58> and both Ramón’s and Juan’s answers in Table 3.5). The beginning is
218
usually related to the top part and, hence to the head. However, example <5> illustrates the
opposite, as has been noted before.
All these explanations are grounded in the children’s ability to link different
meanings of
HEAD
via metaphor, but metonymy also underlies some of their answers. In
this sense, 37% (examples <11> to <13>) of the answers that marked pillow as the head of
the bed are grounded in physical contiguity: the pillow is the head of the bed because is the
part where the head lies. These children appear to be using a similar reasoning to that
employed by the 7-year-olds when they said that the hands of a watch are called hands
because you wear your watch on your hand.
Some of the children’s responses indicate a different, very particular way of
approaching the task. They focus on an element that catches their attention and reason
about it. This strategy is illustrated in the explanations referring to the head of the bed
(examples <17> to <20>), the head of a line of cars (examples <45> to <49>) and the head
of the stairs (examples <59> to <61>). This type of reasoning has been recorded in
experimental studies carried out with children (Werner and Kaplan 1950 or Billow 1975)
and is referred to by Werner and Kaplan as ‘synecdochic processes’. In a study aimed at
testing children’s understanding of similarity and proportional metaphors Billow reports
that some of his subjects might be impressed by an aspect of one of the elements in the
sentence and tried to relate the meaning of the whole sentence to that part. For example, a
child provided with the metaphorical utterance ‘he had a pickle for a nose’ interpreted it as
‘you eat your nose’. In the examples presented here, the linguistic prompts are related to
images and some of the children not only try to reason about an element in the picture that
catches their attention but may also relate it to their own personal experiences.
219
Table 3.5 Cross-check of two 5-year-olds’ answers to the four semantic extensions
Photograph
Subject
Answer
Explanation
Translation into English
hammer
stairs
Juan
Juan
metal part
top
line of cars
Juan
top first car
bed
Juan
bedhead
hammer
Ramón
metal part
stairs
Ramón
top
line of cars
Ramón
top first car
bed
Ramón
bedhead
“porque está arriba del palo”
“porque es el final de la escalera y ya no
hay más escalera (R: ¿y eso que tiene que
ver con ‘head’ tú crees?) que es el final de la
escalera – está arriba del cuerpo”
“porque está arriba de la cabeza y la cabeza
está arriba”
“porque la cabeza está encima de – de la –
de la del cuello (R: del cuello) y porque está
encima del cuerpo”
“porque es el final del martillo (R: ¿y qué
tiene que ver lo del final con la cabeza?)
porque la cabeza está al final del cuerpo
humano”
“porque ya la escalera la ha subido hasta el
final del todo (R: ¿y eso qué tiene que ver
con ‘head’?) porque es la escalera termina
ahí (R: ¿ y eso qué relación tiene con head?)
porque el cuerpo –la cabeza termina ahí”
“porque está encima del primer coche (R: ¿y
eso que relación tiene con head?) que la
cabeza está encima del cuerpo humano”
“la madera esta (R: ¿ por qué crees que es
la madera esa?) porque es el final de la
cama”
because it’s on top of the stick
because it’s the end of the staircase and there
is no more staircase (R: and what’s that got to
do with ‘head’ do you think?) ‘cos it’s the end
of the stairs – it’s on top of the body
because it’s on top of the head and the head is
at the top
because the head is on top of – of the – of the
of the neck (R: of the neck) and because it’s
on top of the body
because it’s the end of the hammer (R: and
what’s that got to do with the end of the
head?) because the head is at the end of the
human body
because the stairs have already been gone up
(R: and what’s that got to do with head?)
because the staircase ends there (R: what’s the
relationship between that and head?) because
the body –the head ends there
because it’s on the top of the first car (R: and
what’s that got to do with ‘head’?) ‘cos the
head is on the top of the human body
this wood (R: why do you think it’s that
wood?) because it’s the end of the bed
220
4.2 SEVEN-YEAR-OLDS
The results of the quantitative analysis of the 7-year-olds’ answers in relation to the
head of a bed (see table 3.6) indicate that apart from one child that marked the whole bed
(2%) the rest of the children focused on the pillow (45% - 25 children), the bedhead (43% 24 children) or both the bedhead and the pillow (11% - 6 children).
the head of a bed
11%
2%
Pillow
45%
bedhead
bedhead & pillow
43%
others
Most of the children that marked the pillow (52% - 13 answers) justified their
answer on the basis of its physical contiguity with the head:
<67>C: “la almohada porque la almohada – para acostarte pones la cabeza en ella”
C: the pillow because the pillow –when you are in bed you lay your head on it
<68> C: “la almohada porque es donde se apoya la cabeza”
C: the pillow because it’s where you lay your head
<69> C: “yo lo mismo que Nacho porque nos acostamos y en vez de poner la cabeza donde
ponemos los pies – la ponemos a donde – en la almohada”
221
C: the same as Nacho because we go to bed and instead of laying our head where we lay
our feet –we lay it on – on the pillow
Example <69> reflects the notions recorded in the Collins COBUILD Dictionary’s
definition of the foot of a bed and the OED’s definition of the head of a bed discussed
before. This awareness of the physical contiguity between the pillow and the head when a
person is in bed was also recurrently present in the answers of those 5-year-olds that chose
the pillow as the head of the bed.
The second preferred explanation reflects an analogy through which the body parts
are mapped onto the different parts of the bed. Seven children (28%) make use of this
analogy in their answers:
<70> C: “la almohada porque es la cabeza – lo demás es el cuerpo y las patas de la cama
son sus pies”
C: the pillow because it’s the head –the rest is the body and the legs63 of the bed are its feet.
<71> C: “la almohada porque esto aquí [señala el centro de la cama] lo que sobra [la colcha
que cae] son como si estuvieras así [estira los brazos]”
R: “los brazos ¿verdad? – ¿como si estuvieras tumbado?”
C: “umm –y aquí la cabeza porque está aquí y alguna gente pues tiene la cabeza así muy –
muy flaca y alargada y aquí los ojos y esto es cuerpo”
R: “los ojos el cabecero – y el cuerpo – el cuerpo de la cama – lo que es el colchón
¿verdad?”
C: the pillow because this thing here [points to the central part of the bed] what is left [the
falling bedcover] it’s as if you were like this [stretches his arms]
63
The conventional Spanish expression “las patas de la cama” which is translated into English as “the legs
of the bed” has actually a wider meaning in Spanish. The DRAE defines “pata” as “1.pie y pierna de los
animales” (foot and leg of animals). This core meaning has a semantic extension also recorded by this
dictionary: “2. pie de un mueble” (foot of a piece of furniture). “Pata” can, therefore, refer to both the foot
and leg of an animal or piece of furniture.
222
R: the arms aren’t they? – as if you were lying down?
C: mmm – and here the head because it’s here and some people have got a head like this
very – very thin and long and here the eyes and this is the body.
R: the eyes the bedhead – and the body – the body of the bed – the mattress isn’t it?
It is interesting to note that unlike the 5-year-olds, only one of the 7-year-olds
justifies his choice by saying that it is the highest part and, in fact, even this answer is
complemented with the notion of physical contiguity:
<72> C: “pues yo he cogido y he señalado la almohada porque cuando lo ves es lo – lo más
alto que hay”
R: “y eso – ¿qué tiene que ver con cabeza? ¿qué relación tiene?”
C: “pues porque es lo primero que se ve –lo más –la parte de – de donde te apoyas la
cabeza que es ‘head’ – por eso”
R: “muy bien”
C: well what I’ve done is mark the pillow because when you see it it’s –it’s the highest thing
R: and that – what’s that got to do with head? what’s the relationship?
C: well ‘cos it’s the first thing you see – the most –the part where – where you lay your
‘cabeza’ which is ‘head’ –that’s why
In contrast, in the case of the answers in which the children mark the bedhead, the
identification of the head with the top of a vertical axis is the most widely employed
justification (9 answers – 38%). The 7-year-olds’ answers are more complex than those of
the 5-year-olds. They not only said that it is the highest part (<75>, <76>, <77> and <78>)
but also mention the fact of being before anything else (<73>) or produce a creative simile
according to which the bedhead resembles a crown (<74>):
<73> C: “eeh –lo he puesto porque lo que está antes de la almohada”
R: “¿y por qué?”
C: “porque está antes de todas las cosas”
223
C: er –I’ve marked it because it’s before the pillow
R: and why?
C: because it’s before anything else
<74> C: “esto”
C: “porque esta cosa parece como una corona aquí”
R: “la madera”
C: this thing
R: why?
C: because this thingy looks like a crown here
C: the wooden part
<75> C1: “lo de la madera”
R: “lo de la madera y ¿por qué?”
C1: “porque es lo más alto que hay”
R: “y eso que relación tiene – que sea alto ¿qué tiene que ver con cabeza? ¿qué relación
tiene?”
C1: “que – que por ahí – hace – hace eso que no te choques con la pared cuando estás
durmiendo y no te despiertes”
C2: “¡pero te chocas con la madera!”
C1: “ya pero no – no duele tanto – la pared más”
C1: the wooden part
R: and why the wooden part?
C1: because it’s the highest thing
R: and what’s the relationship – being high what’s that got to do with head? what’s the
relationship?
224
C1: ‘cos – ‘cos there –it makes –that stops you from bumping into the wall when you’re
sleeping so that you don’t wake up
C2: but you bump into the wood!
C1: I know but it’s not –it’s not as painful –the wall is worse
This example shows that the 7-year-olds’ answers are usually longer, more complex
and elaborated than the 5-year-olds’ that were usually restricted to a short sentence or
phrase. The 7-year-olds seem to realise that they are expected to elaborate on their answers
and they try to do so when explicitly asked to, as in this example. However, they do not
necessarily follow their own argument and may relate their explanation to other aspects. In
this particular case, the bedhead itself seems to be more important for him than its height:
<76> C: “la –la madera porque es donde –lo de más arriba y por eso es la ‘head’ ”
C: the –the wooden part because it’s where –the highest thing and that’s why that’s the
‘head’
<77>C: “porque es lo que está más arriba y la cabeza está más – la cama es como un
cuerpo y entonces eso es la cabeza”
C: because it’s the highest thing and the head it’s more – the bed is like a body so that’s the
head
<78>C: “lo de la madera porque tó (todo) esto es el cuerpo y esto y eso los brazos [colcha
que cae] – lo que ha dicho y ésta es la cabeza y esto el cuello [cabecero] porque es lo más
alto”
C: the wooden part because all this is the body and this and this the arms [falling piece of the
bedcover] –what he said and this is the head and this is the neck [bedhead] because it’s the
highest
225
The last two examples illustrate the combination of the identification of the head as
a top part with the second preferred reasoning strategy in the answers that chose the
wooden part: the analogical mapping of body parts onto parts of the bed. This justification
that was also present in the ‘pillow’-answers is used by 7 children (29 %) in this case:
<79> C: “pues yo también el cabecero porque parece la cabeza y después la almohada es la
boca y lo demás de la cama es el cuerpo”
C: the bedhead too because it looks like the head and then the pillow is the mouth and the
rest of the bed is the body
<80>C1: “esto es porque ésta es la cara – éste es el cuerpo [señalando el centro] y ésta es
la cabeza [señalando el cabecero]”
R: “¿cuál es la cara?”
C1: “la cara es ésta”
R: “la almohada ¿no? y el cuerpo el resto de la cama y la cabeza el cabecero”
C2: “esto – las piernas – son las patas”
R: “ésa es Alba que dice que las piernas son las patas”
C1: it’s this because this is the face – this is the body [pointing to the central part] and this is
the head [pointing to the bedhead]
R: what’s the face?
C1: the face is this
R: the pillow right? and the body the rest of the bed and the head the bedhead
C2: these – the legs64 – are the legs
R: that’s Alba that says that the legs are the legs
<81> C: “pues – lo de la cama – eso la cosita esa – marrón – esa cosita”
R: “el cabecero”
64
See footnote 63 about ‘pata’ (leg)
226
C: “pues porque eso es el cuerpo [señala la parte central] y esto es las tetas que tiene la
mujer [la almohada] – es que es la almohada”
R: “¿esto es el que?”
C: “esto”
R: “el cuerpo y ¿esto?” [almohada]
C: “eso es lo del sujetador que tenía la mujer”
R: “vale y ¿esto?” [cabecero]
C: “eso es la cabeza porque está más arriba de – la cabeza está más arriba que el cuerpo”
R: “muy bien”
C: well –that thing on the bed –that thing that little thing – brown –that little thing
R: the bedhead
C: ‘cos that’s the body [points to the central part] and that’s the breasts that the woman has
[pillow] – ‘cos it’s the pillow
R: this is what?
C: this
R: the body and this? [pillow]
C: that’s the bra that the woman had
R: all right and this? [bedhead]
C: that’s the head because it’s higher
R: very good
Finally, three children justify the choice of the bedhead by pointing out the
linguistic similarity of the derived form ‘cabecero’ and ‘cabeza’:
<82> C: “el cabecero”
R: “y ¿por qué?”
C: “porque me suena el nombre – cabeza de cabecero”
R: “muy bien David”
C: the bedhead
227
R: and why?
C: because the name sounds familiar to me – head from bedhead
R: very good David
<83> C: “yo el cabecero porque parece –suena a cabeza y la almohada parece la cara
porque es rosa”
C: I think it’s the bedhead because it resembles – it sounds like head and the pillow looks like
the face because it’s pink
Example <83> shows the combination of the use of linguistic knowledge in the first
part of the answer with a different strategy: this child establishes a similarity between a
human face and this pillow in terms of colour (pink). Thus, the bedhead is the head of the
bed not only because it sounds similar to head but also because the pillow is the face
because it is pink and, consequently, the bedhead is the head due to its position with regard
to the pillow. In this case, the reasoning is based on actual evidence (the pillow is pink)
rather than on the recalling of general evidence.
As regards the six children that marked both the bedhead and pillow, it is interesting
to note that two of them reflect the preferred justifications for the ‘pillow’-answers
(physical contiguity) and the ‘bedhead’-answers (top position):
<84> C: “ésta”
R: “la almohada y la madera y ¿por qué?”
C: “porque ahí es donde se apoya la cabeza”
R: “porque ahí es donde se apoya la cabeza”
C: this one
R: the pillow and the wooden part and why?
C: because there it’s where you lay your head
R: because there it’s where you lay your head
228
<85>C: “esto porque es lo que más – lo que está más alante (adelante) y es lo más alto”
C. this because it’s the most – the part that’s most at the front and the highest.
The other four explanations are based on the bed-body analogy:
<86> C: “esto [cabecero] porque yo creo que esto parece más de carne que esto – porque a
veces tienen el pelo los niños muy negro y esto son los brazos [colcha] parece y esto es el
cuerpo [centro]”
C: this [bedhead] because I think that this looks more like flesh than this – because
sometimes children have very dark hair and these are the arms [bedcover] it looks like it and
this is the body [central part]
<87> C: “yo esto porque – porque esto parece que son los ojos”
R: “la cabecera – las dos bolitas [extremos superiores] de la cabecera”
C: “y esto luego es como el celebro (cerebro) y esto la boca”
R: “el cerebro es como el centro de la cabecera y la boca la almohada”
C: I think it’s this because –because these look as if they were eyes
R: the bedhead –the two little balls [upper ends] of the bedhead
C: and then this is like the brain and this is the mouth
R: the brain is like the middle of the bedhead and the mouth the pillow
The quantitative results in relation to the head of a hammer are very homogenous:
the majority of the children (53 – 95%) marked the metal part as the head. Only three
children (5%) chose the handle.
229
5%
metal part
handle
95%
As in the case of the 5-year-olds, the most common reason (21 answers – 40%)
given by these children for choosing the metal part is that this part of the hammer is at the
top, highest or first position in relation to the rest of the hammer:
<88> C: “porque es lo más alto del martillo”
C: because it’s the highest thing of the hammer
Some of them explicitly relate it with the top position of the human head:
<89> C: “porque siempre está arriba la cabeza”
C: because the head is always at the top
<90> C: “porque es como si fuera la cabeza del martillo”
R: “y ¿por qué es como si fuera la cabeza del martillo tú crees?”
C: “porque esto es arriba y nosotros también lo tenemos aquí arriba [se toca la cabeza]”
C: because it’s as if it were the head of the hammer
R: and why is it as if it were the head of the hammer?
C: because this is up and we’ve also got it up here [touches his head]
<91> C: “pues la ‘head’ del martillo es lo que tiene arriba porque – porque – vamos la cabeza
la tenemos arriba no la tenemos en – abajo entonces porque como es llana que puede ser el
cuerpo y aquí arriba es la cabeza”
230
C: ‘cos the ‘head’ of the hammer is the top bit because –because – after all we’ve got our
head up here we don’t have it –down and because as it is flat it can be the body and up here
is the head
<92> C: “pues yo creo que también la parte de arriba del martillo porque es como si la parte
de arriba del martillo fuera la cabeza y el palo fuera el cuerpo”
C: well, I also think that it’s top part of the hammer because it’s as if the top part of the
hammer was the head and the stick was the body.
<93>C: “bueno – porque – igual que la de la fila de coches porque la cabeza tiene que estar
arriba ¡no va a estar en el culo!”
R: “¡Patricia!”
C: well – because – the same as with the line of cars because the head has to be at the top
it’s not going to be on the bum!
R: Patricia!
In example <93>, the child explicitly relates her justification to the one given in the
case of the head of a line of cars. As in examples <48> and <49> in the group of 5-yearolds, this explanation may imply that this child is overgeneralising from an explanation
given as regards a previous semantic extension (see Table 3.10, on page 293).
Two of the answers that focused on the notion of being first also emphasised the
size of this part:
<94>C: “porque eso es la parte más grande y porque es lo primero”
C: because that’s the biggest part and the first
<95> C. “porque eso – esto es la parte más grande – es lo primero y que – ¡lo mismo que
Irene!”
C: because that – this is the biggest part – it’s the first and that – the same as Irene!
231
As in the case of the head of a bed, a fairly high number of answers (11 – 21%)
were also based on the matching of parts of the body with parts of the hammer:
<96> C: “ésta porque parece parece – esto la boca y esto – esto es el cuerpo”
R: “¿cuál es la boca?”
C: [señala el pico delgado de la parte metálica]
R: “la punta ¿no? ¿y el cuerpo?”
C: [señala el mango]
R: “El – el palo – el mango”
C: this thing because it looks it looks – this the mouth and this –this is the body
R: what’s the mouth?
C: [points to the thin end of the metal part]
R: the tip you mean and the body?
C: [points to the handle]
R: the – the stick – the handle
Unlike the comparisons established with the different parts of the bed that included
the main parts of the body (head, body, arms and feet), many of these comparisons focused
on head and its parts, for example, hair or face:
<97> C: “lo recto de arriba porque es como si ésta [parte cuadrada] es la cara y lo recto es el
pelo”
R: “y lo recto es el pelo – o sea todo esto es la cabeza y esta parte puntiaguda sería la cara
– según tú”
C: “no –ésta”
R: “ah la parte cuadrada de atrás es la cara y el resto es el pelo y el resto de la cabeza”
C: the top, straight bit because this bit [square part] is as if it was the face and the straight
thin is the hair
232
R: and the straight bit is the hair –that is all this part is the head and this pointing part would
be the face –according to you
C: no –this one
R: ah the back – square part is the face and the rest is the hair and the rest of the head
<98> C: “el hierro éste”
C: “porque se parece a una cabeza”
R: “¿en qué se parece?”
C: “porque esto es como un – el flequillo”
R: “la parte de delante es el flequillo”
C: “sí”
C: this iron bit here
R: why?
C: because it looks like a head
R: how does it look like it?
C: because this is like a –the fringe
R: the front part is the fringe
C: yes
Some of the comparisons are even more creative and relate the head of a hammer
with the head of different animals (dog, giraffe):
<99> C: “esto porque parece un perro – éste el hocico”
R: “¿eso parece un que?”
C: “un perro”
R: “¿un perro?”
C: “éste el hocico [parte puntiaguda] ésta la cabeza [parte cuadrada] y éste el cuerpo
[mango]”
233
R: “le parece la cabeza de un perro a – a Estrella”
C: this because it looks like a dog –this is the snout
R: that looks like what?
C: a dog
R: a dog?
C: this is the snout [pointing bit] this is the head [square bit] and this is the body [handle]
R: it looks like a dog to – to Estrella
<100> C: “porque parece como una jirafa y esto es la cabeza [parte puntiaguda] – donde la
boca y éste es el cuerpo [mango]”
C: because it looks like a giraffe and this is the head [pointing bit] –where the mouth is and
this is the body [handle]
Finally, seven children (13%) also point out the function of the metal part of the
hammer as the reason for it to be the head:
<101> C: “ésta [parte metálica] porque – porque es sólo para agarrarlo y esto macha”
C: this one [metal part] because – because it’s only to hold it and this hammers in.
<102> C: “la misma que Mª Luz”
C: “porque – porque también le da aquí con la cabeza que es más grande y le puede dar
mejor – ésta es más fina para romper – y ésta para meter porque es más gorda como la
cabeza y puedes meter mejor”
C: the same as Mª Luz
R: why?
C: because – because it also hits here with the head that is bigger and it can hit better –this
one is thinner for breaking – and this for hammering because it’s thicker like the head and
you can hammer better
234
<103> C: “pues porque si la – es mejor darle a la púa con esta parte que con ésta” [el
mango]
R: “que con el palo ¿verdad? ¿por qué?”
C: “porque ésa es de hierro y si le das con lo de madera se rompería lo de madera y lo de
hierro no”
C: well ‘cos if the –it’s better to hit the nail with this part than with this one [handle]
R: than with the handle you mean why?
C: because that’s made of iron and if you hit with the wooden part it’d break the wooden bit
and the iron bit wouldn’t.
The quantitative analysis of the answers provided in relation to the head of a line of
cars shows that the children’s choices are quite heterogenous (see Table 3.8)
7% 5% 4%
First car
top parts
Last car
25%
59%
Police car
others
Despite this heterogeneity, over half of the children (59% - 33 children) marked the
first car as the head of the line of cars. The second preferred answer was the top parts of the
cars (25% - 14 answers), followed by the last car (7% - 4 answers) and the police car (5% 235
3 answers). Of the remaining two children, one chose the wheels of the police car and the
other marked the sky.
Most of the children that singled out the first car justified their choice by
emphasising its first position in the line (42% - 14 answers):
<104> C: “éste coche – porque a mí me parece que éste que está el primero es la cabeza”
C: this car – because it seems to me that this one that is the first is the head
<105> C: “el primero porque es el que está el primero en la fila y lo que está primero en el
cuerpo es la cabeza”
C: the first one because it’s the one that is the first in the line and the first thing of the body is
the head
<106> C: “lo mismo que ha dicho Andrés – porque el – porque lo primero es la cabeza y lo
que – [silencio]”
R: “sigue David que lo estás haciendo muy bien”
C: “porque como la cabeza es lo primero pues también se parece un poco”
C: the same thing as Andrés said – because the – because the first thing is the head and the
– [silence]
R: keep going David you’re doing very well
C: because the head is the first thing so it’s also a bit like it
Some answers also reflect the idea that the first car is at the top (<107> or <108>)
highest or forward ( <109>) position:
<107> C: “yo creo que el primero porque la cabeza no va estar en los pies – la cabeza tiene
que estar arriba”
C: I think that the first because the head can’t be at the feet – it’s got to be at the top
<108> C: “el coche más – el que está más arriba”
236
R: “¿por qué? ¿por qué crees que esa es la ‘head’ de la fila?”
C: “porque es el que más – más adelantado está”
C: the car that’s most – the one at the upper position
R: why? Why do you think that’s the head of the line?
C: because that’s the most –that’s the one at the forward position
<109> C: “porque es la parte más alta – es el más alto – y tiene eso más alto – la parte de
arriba es más alta”
C: because it’s the highest part –the highest one –and it’s got this thing higher –the top part
is higher
In the ‘first-car’ answers, twelve children (36%) mapped the body parts onto the
parts of the line of cars:
<110> C: “esto porque esto parece un poquino (poquito) la cara [primer coche] esto – umm –
esto parece los brazos – este es el cuerpo [el de policía] y esto parece las dos piernas”
R: “y el último – el de las piernas es el último coche”
C: this because this looks a bit like the face [first car] this –mmm –this looks like the arms –
this is the body [police car] and these are the two legs
R: and the last one –the one like the legs it’s the last car
<111> C: “el primer coche porque el primer coche es la cabeza y los otros coches son el
cuerpo”
C: the first car because the first car is the head and the other cars are the body
<112> C: “el coche primero porque parece más bien el pelo y el coche de policía como es
blanco pues se parece un poco más a la cara –la mitad de este coche parece la barriga [el
último] y esto ya parecen las dos piernas [el último]”
R: “eso es el último coche”
237
C: “las ruedas que parecen las piernas”
C: the first car because it looks like the hair and the police car looks a bit like the face
because it’s white –half of the car looks like the belly [the last car] and this look like the two
legs [the last car]
R: that’s the last car
C: the wheels look like legs
<113> C: “yo el primer coche porque las luces parecen lo ojos y la matrícula parece la boca
y lo de arriba del coche parece más bien el pelo”
C: I think that the first car because the lights look like the eyes and the number plate looks
like the mouth and the top part of the car looks like the hair
Finally, only one of the children used his linguistic knowledge of the use of ‘cabeza’
in Spanish in a similar situation to justify his answer:
<114> C: “porque es el que está arriba – que es como yo veo ciclismo entonces dicen
‘cabeza de carrera’ que es el primero que hay”
C: because it’s the top one – it’s because I watch cycling races and they say ‘head of the
race’ and that’s the first one.
As regards the children that chose the top parts of the cars, all of them justified their
choice with the idea that the top part of the cars is actually the highest of the line:
<115> C: “porque es lo más alto de tó (todo)”
C: because it’s the highest thing
<116> C: “pues el techo porque es el sitio en donde siempre está la cabeza – en alto”
C: the roof because it’s the place where the head always is – at the top
238
<117> C: “pues que la cabeza como la tenemos arriba no la tenemos en ningún lao (lado)
aunque la he puesto la última porque – más porque la cabeza la tenemos – la tenemos en el
aire”
C: we’ve got our head at the top and nowhere else although I’ve marked the last one
because – because we’ve got our head – we’ve got it in the air
It is interesting to note that four children marked the top lights of the police car
which are the highest part, vertically speaking:
<118> C: “éste – porque tiene que ser la cabeza de este coche – tiene que ser la cabeza de
este coche”
R: “¿pero por qué crees?”
C: “porque eso es lo de arriba del tó (todo) y puede ser la cabeza”
C: this one – because it’s got to be the head of this car – it’s got to be the head of this car
R: but why do you think so?
C: because that’s the highest part and it could be the head
<119> C: “esto porque es la que hay más alto de los coches”
C: this because it’s the highest part of the cars
The four children that marked the police car reasoned about aspects that were salient
to them in a way that is similar to the 5-year-olds’ answers:
<120> C: “porque los policías no son tan – tan bajinos (bajitos) como la gente – sino que son
un poquino (poquito) más altos y algunas veces – si son más alto que otros – pueden rozar
con ‘head’ arriba en el techo”
C: because policemen are not as – as short as people – but rather they are a bit taller and
sometimes – if they are taller than others – they can graze the top on the roof with head
239
<121> C: “éste también porque es lo más alto de los coches y también porque es un coche
de policía y los coches de policía son muy grandes”
C: this one too because it’s the highest thing on the cars and also because it’s a police car
and police cars are very big.
Table 3.9 below shows the results of the quantitative analysis of the answers
provided by the 7-year-olds. A considerable number of children marked the top part as the
head of the stairs (77% - 43 answers). Five children selected the banister (9%) and three of
them (5%) chose the top steps. Finally, five children (9%) decided on other parts of the
photograph: the top window (2), the wall (1), the bottom step (1) and the whole of the
staircase (1).
5%
9%
top part
9%
banister
top steps
77%
others
In the answers that marked the top part, the most widely employed reasoning
strategy is analogy (51% - 22 answers). As in the case of the head of a bed, hammer and
line of cars, they also mapped body parts onto the parts of the staircase:
240
<122> C: “he tachado ésa porque esto [la barandilla] parecen los brazos esto [escalón de
arriba] como un poco parecido de carne y entonces por aquí se ve un poco negro [sombra]
por ahí y sería el pelo”
C: I’ve marked this one because this [banister] looks like the arms this looks a bit like flesh
[top step] and then you can see a bit black here [shade] there and it’d be the hair
<123> C: “lo mismo que Lourdes”
C: “porque – porque parece que la cabeza como éste [arriba] el cuerpo [escaleras] y las
manos [barandilla]”
C: the same as Lourdes
R: and why?
C: because – because it seems that this is the head like this [top part] the body [steps] and
the hands [banister]
When the photograph was taken, there were three posters displayed on the top wall
of the staircase which seem to have caught the attention of some of the children. Fifteen of
them reason about the posters as if the were parts of the face:
<124> C: “yo ésta porque es que los papeles blancos parecen los ojos y esto [el póster
verde] la nariz”
I think it’s this one because the white sheets of papers look like the eyes and this [the green
poster] the nose
<125> C: “mira aquí en el papel [central] pues porque como los dos papeles estos [papeles
laterales] son los brazos y la escalera ya tó (todo) el cuerpo pues el papel [central] tendrá
que ser la cabeza”
C: look the sheet of paper [middle] here ‘cos these two sheets of paper [at the sides] are the
arms and the whole staircase the body so the sheet of paper [middle] has to be the head
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<126> R: “dice Daniel que se ríe porque hay un póster – ¿no? ¿y qué pasa?”
C: “pues que eso son los ojos – y el póster del medio es la nariz y las escaleras son lo boca”
R: “bueno – ya ha pensado Daniel todo y ¡todavía no he hecho la pregunta!”
R: Daniel says that he’s laughing because there’s a poster –isn’t there? and why is that
relevant?
C: well those are the eyes –and they middle poster is the nose and the steps are the mouth
R: right –Daniel has already thought everything and I haven’t even asked the question!
Example <126> illustrates the child’s anticipation of the question. This child gives
his answer before the question has been made inferring what they are going to be asked
about from the similar questions in the other situations.
The identification of the head of the stairs with the top or highest part of a vertical
axis is also very recurrent (32% - 16 answers):
<127> C: “porque es donde está la parte de arriba – de la parte donde – la parte de arriba es
la de arriba del todo”
C: because it’s where the top part is – the part where – the top part it’s the highest part
<128> C: “porque tenemos la cabeza arriba”
because our head is at the top
<129> C: “lo de arriba porque es más alto que lo de abajo”
C: the top part because it’s higher than the bottom part
<130> C: “porque es lo más alto y tiene que ser la cabeza porque está en lo más alto – la
cabeza es lo más alto del cuerpo”
C: because it’s the highest part and it’s got to be the head because it’s at the top the –the
head is at the top of the body
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This is also the reason behind the three top-steps answers:
<131> C: “la última escalera porque la cabeza está arriba y también el escalón está arriba”
C: the last step because the head is at the top and the step is also at the top
<132> C: “lo mismo que David – la escalera la última”
C: “porque es la última”
R: “porque es la última y – ¿qué tiene –? ”
C: “porque es la última y que es el ‘head’ – la cabeza”
C: the same as David –the step the last
R: and why?
C: because it’s the last
R: because it’s the last and –what’s that got –?
C: because it’s the last and it’s the ‘head’ – the head
Finally, three of the children’s answers combine the two main reasoning strategies
(top position on a vertical axis and body-staircase analogy):
<133> C: “porque encima – que está arriba parece que tiene ojos y boca y eso y porque está
arriba”
C: because on – it’s at the top it looks as if it had eyes and mouth and all that and because
it’s at the top
4.2.5 DISCUSSION
The results of this study show that over 50% of the 7-year-olds that took part were
able to match the four semantic extensions of
HEAD
with their visual representation in
photographs and justify their choices verbally. As in the case of the 5-year-olds, the head of
the hammer was the easiest for them to identify (95%) followed by the head of the stairs
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(77% of the children marked the top part and 9% the top steps) and the head of a line of
cars (59%). The 7-year-olds’ answers to the head of the bed (45% marked the pillow, 43%
the bedhead and 11% chose both the pillow and the bedhead) support the idea that the area
where the bedhead and the pillow are placed can be considered the head of the bed, as
noted in the discussion of the 5-year-olds’ results. Although the identification order in the
case of the 7-year-olds coincides with that of 5-year-olds, the scores of the former are
higher, especially for the head of the stairs (77% and 9% as opposed to 55% and 17%) and
the head of a line of cars (59% as opposed to 42%).
The 7-year-olds’ explanations are mainly grounded in the ability to establish
mappings between two elements through metaphor and metonymy. As in the case of the 5year-olds, the identification of the head of each element with its ‘top’ part (even for those
elements that are placed on a horizontal axis) is recurrent. In the case of the head of a bed,
this is illustrated in 38% of the ‘bedhead’- answers (examples <73> to <78>) and in two of
the explanations for the choice of both the bedhead and the pillow (example <85>). It also
appears in 40% of the explanations related to the head of the hammer (examples <88> to
<93>). In fact, in most of these examples, an explicit comparison with the position of the
human head is established. These children seem to be using the schema of the human head
in relation to the human body to reason about these four semantic extensions. In the case of
the head of the stairs, all the explanations referring to the top steps (<131> and <132>) and
32% of those related to the top part (examples <127> to <130>) are based on this type of
argumentation. Finally, in the head of a line of cars, it is behind all the answers that marked
the top of the first and the police car (examples <115> to <119>). These examples are very
similar to <43> and <44> in the 5-year-old group and appear to confirm the idea that some
children tend to apply the same justification to more than one figurative use. That is, once
the children have identified head with top on a vertical axis, they search for the top part in
the photograph, which leads them to mark the roofs of the cars. This is illustrated in the
answers provided by one of the children to the different stimuli, shown in Table 3.10. It can
be noted that, although she uses a different verbal justification for the first semantic
244
extension of HEAD she is presented with (the head of the stairs), once she has employed the
idea of the top position on a vertical axis (the head of a line of cars), she extends it to the
other two cases (the head of the hammer and the head of a bed).
As in the case of the 5-year-old’s, the perception of the human body as a bounded
region with a beginning and an end is also reflected in some of the 7-year-olds’ answers.
However, it only appears in three of the four semantic extensions: the head of the hammer
(<94> and <95>), the head of a line of cars (<104>, <105>, <106> and <107>) and the
head of the stairs (<131> and <132>). Interestingly, in these last two examples the end is
related to the top part (“los últimos escalones” – the last steps), as in example <5> in the
group of 5-year-olds.
The metonymical notion of physical contiguity is also behind 43% of the answers
that selected the pillow as the head of the bed (examples <67> to <69>). Interestingly the
explanation given by the child in example <69> matches the Collins COBUILD
dictionary’s and OED’s definitions of the head and the foot of the bed.
So far, the 7-year-olds’ results do not seem to differ much from those obtained from
the 5-year-olds’s responses. However the rest of the analysis shows that they do in two
significant ways. In the first place, the 7-year-olds, in general, do not employ the second
preferred strategy used by the 5-year-olds: focusing on an aspect that catches their attention
and relating it to the task. Nevertheless, there are two examples (<120> and <121>)
explaining why the police car is the head of the line of cars, that reflect this practice, which
is, therefore, marginally used by the 7-year-olds.
Secondly, the 7-year-olds recurrently make use of analogy in a way that had not
appeared in the 5-year-olds’ explanations: they consistently, and very often creatively, map
the body parts onto the parts of the bed, hammer, line of cars and staircase. These are not
partial transfers of one body part but fully elaborated mappings of the body schema onto
another domain. Thus, for instance, according to some of the 7-year-olds, the staircase has a
head, which is its top part, but also a body (all the steps) and arms (the banister).
245
In the case of the head of the bed this is illustrated in answers related to the three
main choices (see examples <70>, <71>, <79> to <81>, <86> and <87>). In this children’s
view, the head and/or face of the bed is the bedhead and/or the pillow. The bed also has a
body (mattress), arms (falling bedcover) or legs (the legs of the bed). As regards the head of
a hammer, although the mapping mainly concerns the head and its parts (face or hair) as
shown in examples <97> to <100>, the handle is also perceived as the body (<92> <96>
<100>). It is interesting to note that the elaboration of the
HEAD
schema which these
children use is in fact responsible for the names of some parts of the hammer. Thus, face,
eye or cheek are conventionally used in English to refer to parts of the head of the hammer.
Body parts are also mapped onto the parts of the line of cars or the parts of one car in the
answers regarding the head of a line of cars
(<110> to <113>). Interestingly the
anthropologist Basso (quoted in Palmer 2000) notes the use of the same strategy by a native
American tribe when they see a car for the first time. In this suggestive example, the
members of this tribe use a whole set of related terms which are familiar to them and which
they usually employ to describe a specific reality (body parts) to refer to something they
have seen for the first time (the parts of a car) but that they perceive as similar to that
original reality. Thus, the lights of the car become the eyes (bidáá), the bonnet is the nose
(bichih), the windscreen is the forehead (bita’), the wheels become the legs and arms
(bigan), all the elements under the bonnet become the guts (bibiye’) and so on. The
mapping of the body parts onto the parts of the stairs is also widely employed in the
explanations related to the head of the stairs (examples <122> to <126>). However, many
of the 7-year-olds’ answers are motivated by accidental evidence: when the photograph was
taken, there were three posters on the wall at the top of the stairs and, because of the way
they are placed, the children regarded them as the parts of the face (eyes and nose). The
importance of images in children’s conceptions of figuration has also been pointed out by
Kövecses (2002), when he discusses children’s non-linguistic representations of conceptual
metaphors:
246
Children often draw pictures that visually embody conceptual metaphors. A common
metaphor (more precisely, personification) that is made used of by children is
INANIMATE OBJECTS ARE PEOPLE. In a picture drawn by a five-year-old, for
example, a house is personified. In this way, the house assumes many of the
properties of human beings and is therefore structured conceptually in terms of this
metaphor.” (Kövecses 2002: 58)
Finally, a different strategy, interlingual identification, that the 7-year-olds had
marginally employed in Study 1, appears here in three answers that identify the head of the
bed with ‘cabecero’ in Spanish (examples <82> <83>) and in the use of the phrase ‘cabeza
de carrera’ (<114>) to explain the head of a line of cars.
247
Table 3.10 Cross-check of a 7-year-old’ answers to the four semantic extensions
Photograph
Subject
Answer
Explanation
stairs
Patricia
top
line of cars
Patricia
first car
hammer
Patricia
top part
I think it’s this one because – ‘cos the white
pieces of paper look like the eyes and this
[green poster] the nose
I think it’s the first because the head is not
where the feet are – the head’s got to be at the
top
well – because – the same as with the line of
cars because the head’s got to be at the top it’s
not going to be on the bum! (R: Patricia!)
bed
Patricia
bedhead
“yo ésta porque – es que los papeles blancos
parecen los ojos y esto [el póster verde] la
nariz”
“yo creo que el primero porque la cabeza no
va estar en los pies – la cabeza tiene que
estar arriba”
“bueno – porque – igual que la de la fila de
coches porque la cabeza tiene que estar
arriba ¡ no va a estar en el culo! (R:
¡Patricia!)”
“la de arriba del todo porque – umm tiene
que estar arriba ¿no? – la cabeza – como
siempre”
248
the one at the topmost because – umm it’s got
to be at the top hasn’t it? – the head – as
always
4.3 NINE-YEAR-OLDS
The results of the quantitative analysis of the 9-year-olds’ answers regarding the
head of a bed are offered in Table 3.11.
the head of a bed
18%
46%
pillow
bedhead
bedhead & pillow
36%
Ten children (46%) marked the pillow as the head of the bed, eight (36%) chose the
bedhead and four children (18%) decided on both the bedhead and the pillow.
As regards the children that chose the pillow, their answers are very homogenous
from a qualitative point of view. Most of them (70 % - 7 answers) based their explanation
on the physical contiguity of the head and the pillow:
<143> C: “la cabeza porque a ver – la almohada – porque es donde se posa la cabeza y
como comprendes no la vamos a posar en la madera o en el colchón”
C: the head because let’s see – the pillow – because it’s where the head is laid and as you
know it can’t be laid on the wooden part or on the mattress.
Some children also relate the juxtaposition of the pillow and the head with the foot
of the bed and human feet emphasising the usual position when being in bed:
249
<144> C: “en la almohada porque la cabeza se pone en la almohada y – y no se va a poner
la cabeza aquí abajo de la cama ¿no?”
C: on the pillow because we lay our head on the pillow and – and we are not going to lay our
head here at the bottom part of the bed are we?”
<145> C: “porque la cabeza no va estar donde duermen los pies tiene que estar en la
almohada donde ponemos siempre la cabeza”
C: because the head it’s not going to be where the feet sleep it’s got to be on the pillow
where we always lay our head on.
Furthermore, the remaining three children also mentioned the physical juxtaposition
of the pillow and the head but they complemented their answers with the idea that the
pillow is at the top:
<146> C: “pues porque la almohada es lo que está arriba y es también donde se apoya la
cabeza y bueno – donde ponemos la cabeza que es la parte de arriba de nuestro cuerpo y la
almohada también es la parte de arriba”
C: well ‘cos the pillow is at the top and it’s also where we lay our head on and well – where
we lay our head is the upper part of our body and the pillow is also the upper part
The explanations of those who marked the bedhead and both the bedhead and the
pillow show different reasoning strategies that had already appeared in the 5- and 7-yearolds’ responses. Thus, in the case of the bedhead-answers, three children focused on the top
position:
<147> C1: “he señalado esto”
C2: “la cabecera”
C1: “la cabecera porque me parece que tiene relación con la cabeza – vamos a ver – como
si fuese la cabeza de la cama porque es lo que más arriba está”
C1: I’ve marked this
250
C2: the bedhead
C1: the bedhead because I think it’s related to the head – let’s see – as if it was the head of
the bed because it’s the highest part.
<148> C: “la cabecera también porque – porque por lo mismo que la escalera porque está
más arriba – es lo más alto y – no sé que más”
C: the bedhead too because – because for the same reason as the stairs because it’s the
upper part –it’s the highest and – I don’t know what else
In the last example, this child seems to extend the explanation given for the head of
the stairs and apply it to the new situation, as can be seen in the full relation of his answers
(Table 3. 15)
A different reason is given by two children in the following answers:
<149> C1: “pues yo eehh – la madera que hay – porque como se llama cabecero”
C2: “cabecera”
C1: “pues eso”
C1: I er –the wooden thingy – because it’s called ‘cabecero’ ”
C2: “cabecera”
C1: that’s it
<150> C: “yo lo mismo que María porque se llama ‘cabecera’ ”
C: the same as María because it’s called ‘cabecera’
These two children make use of their L1 linguistic knowledge and base their
explanations on it.
The rest of answers illustrate an interesting technique employed by these children:
they justify their answers using several reasoning strategies. Thus, in their explanations,
251
they may combine linguistic knowledge, the idea of the top position on a vertical axis or the
physical contiguity between the head and the part of the bed where we lay our head on:
<151> C: “yo la cabecera eh – umm – por dos cosas porque se le llama cabecera y porque
es la parte de arriba de la cama la que umm la de detrás – bueno la de delante se puede
decir y la más alta”
C: the bedhead I think er –mmm –for two reasons because it’s called ‘cabecera’ and because
it’s the upper part of the bed the mmm the back part – well the front part you could say and
the highest
<152> C: “pues la cabecera porque también apoyas la cabeza y es – es –porque – ¡es que
no se como explicártelo!
R: “a ver pues explícamelo – tú tómate tu tiempo – has dicho que porque ahí se apoya la
cabeza ¿no?”
C: “claro y se llama cabecera y es la parte de arriba – la más alta”
C: the bedhead because you also lay your head on it and it’s – it’s – because – I don’t know
how to explain it to you
R: well explain it to me – you can take your time – you said it’s because you lay your head on
it didn’t you?
C: of course and it’s called ‘cabecera’ and it’s the upper part –the highest
Finally, the choice of both the bedhead and the pillow was made explicit in one of
the answers using the combination of two reasons:
<153> C: “el cabecero y la almohada a la vez porque el cabecero y la almohada son lo que
están arriba y – lo que hace más bulto y es donde pone la gente la cabeza – sobre tó (todo)
en la almohada”
C: both the bedhead and the pillow because the bedhead and the pillow are at the top and –
the bulkiest and it’s where people lay their head – especially on the pillow.
252
As shown in Table 3.12, all the 9-year-olds that took part in this experiment marked
the metal part as the head of a hammer
metal part
100%
Their reasons for choosing this part are not uniform, however. The most recurrent
explanation (59% - 13 answers) is based on the perception that the metal part is in the top
(<154>, <155> and <156>) or first position (<157>) in relation to the rest of the hammer as
the head is at the top in relation to the rest of the body:
<154> C: “la parte de arriba del todo del martillo porque es lo que está más arriba y es lo
más – es lo más alto y también porque – ya está”
C: the top part of the hammer because it’s the upper and it’s the most – it’s the highest and
also because – that’s it
<155> C: “la de hierro porque es la parte de arriba y la parte de abajo sirve pa’ (para)
sujetarla igual que lo que nos ayuda pa’ (para) sujetarnos a nosotros – pues la cabeza”
C: the metal part because it’s the upper part and the bottom part is used for holding it the
same as the thing that helps to hold us – the head then
253
<156> C: “esto está arriba porque se coge por aquí abajo y la cabeza está arriba – pues eso”
C: this is up because you hold it from down here and the head is up – it’s that then
<157> C: “porque es la primera parte que hay en el martillo”
C: because it’s the first part of the hammer
Two of the top-answers also emphasise the size of the metal part, which seems to be
a salient feature of the hammer for these children:
<158> C: “yo también lo mismo que Marina porque eeeh – eso es siempre – lo más grande
entonces creo que es la parte de arriba del martillo”
C: the same as Marina too because mmm – this is always the biggest so I think that it is the
top part of the hammer
<159> C: “también”
R: “también la de arriba ¿no? y ¿por qué?”
C: “porque es la parte de arriba y porque es con la que se trabaja y más grande”
C: the same
R: the top part too you mean? and why?
C: because it’s the top part and because it’s the part you work with and the biggest
In four other cases (18%), the children seem to map the parts of the body onto the
different parts of the hammer; specifically, the head as the metal part and the rest of it as
the body. As has been seen, this strategy was very common in the 7-year-olds answers but
the 9-year-olds use it less frequently.
<160> C: “lo de hierro – porque es lo del cuerpo que sería el mango y esto sería ya la
cabeza como nosotros que tenemos el cuerpo y la cabeza”
C: the iron bit – because this is the body thing that it’d be the handle and this would be the
head like us because we’ve got body and a head
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<161> C: “pues la de hierro – es casi igual que lo de Vicente – porque éste es el cuerpo
[mango] ésta es como si fuese la cabeza y es por donde se clava el martillo digo el martillo –
el clavo”
C: the iron part – it’s nearly the same as Vicente – because this is the body [handle] and this
is as if it was the head and it’s where you hammer the hammer – not the hammer – I mean
the nail.
The last example also refers to an aspect of the head of the hammer that was also
noted by some of the younger children, especially the 5-year-old group: its function. Apart
from the above quoted answer, two more children justify their choice using solely this
reason:
<162> C: “por donde se clava”
C: [silencio]
R: “¿por qué crees tú que ésa es la ‘head’ y no otra parte?”
C: “no sé”
R: “tú enseguida la has señalado esa ¿no? – como ‘head’ y ¿por qué?”
C: “porque por ahí se clava”
C: the part for hammering
R: why?
C: [silence]
R: why do you think that that’s the head instead of another part?
C: I don’t know
R: you’ve immediately marked that one haven’t you – as the head and why?
C: because it’s for hammering
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<163> C: “ésta porque es la que – ésta clava las cosas y es como si fuese la cabeza –
porque piensa las cosas – es que no sé como explicarme – las clava y por ejemplo esta
parte que sirve pa’ (para) sujetar y la otra pa’ (para) clavar”
C: this because it’s the one that – this hammers the things in and it’s as if it was the head –
because it thinks things – I don’t know how to explain it – it hammers them and for example
this part is used for holding and the other for hammering
So far, all the children that had justified their choice of the metal part of the hammer
as the head by using its function had not really elaborated on it. In fact, the 9-year-old that
produced example <162> does not explain his reason. However, in example <163>, there is
an interesting elaboration on the relation this child establishes between the function of the
metal part in the hammer and the head by means of the conventional metonymy HEAD FOR
THINKING:
“ésta clava las cosas y es como si fuese la cabeza – porque piensa las cosas”
(this hammers the things in and it’s as if it was the head – because it thinks things).
As in the case of some of the answers related to the head of a bed, the combination
of reasoning strategies also appears in some examples referring to the head of the hammer:
<164> C: “yo la parte de arriba como Carlos porque – primero se llama así también al menos
en mi casa la llamamos cabeza del martillo y – porque si lo cogieras por esa parte [parte
metálica] – la parte del mango que quedara arriba esa sería la cabeza – pero como lo
cogemos por la parte de abajo – a no ser que sea un loco – pues la parte de arriba es la que
queda arriba y la cabeza”
C: the top part like Carlos because – first because it’s called like that at least we call it the
head of the hammer at home and – because if you’d hold this part [metal part] the part of the
handle would be at the top and that would be the head – but since we hold the bottom part –
unless you are mad – then the top part is the part that is at the top and the head.
This child justifies his choice with an interesting explanation of why the metal part
is at the top and, therefore, the head based on what he considers the way a hammer is
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normally handled. Besides, he resorts to his knowledge of the L1 but in a very particular
way: he states that they call the metal part of the hammer the head “at home” and therefore,
he somehow acknowledges that might not be its standard name. The possible label
“cabeza” for the metal part of a hammer is also the justification for another answer:
<165> C: “la – esto – yo creo que se llama cabeza que he oído – porque es como – por eso
porque he oído que esto se llama cabeza”
C: the – this – I think that is called head because I’ve heard – because it’s like –because of
that because I’ve heard that this is called head.
Unlike the 5- and the 7-year-olds’ answers that focus on quite a few different
elements of the photograph that represented the head of a line of cars, the 9-year-olds’
responses are restricted to three elements: the first car (77% - 17 answers), the front part of
the first car (14% - 3 answers) and the police car (9% - 2 answers), as shown in Table 3.13.
Table 3.13. Quantitative results of Study 3 (9-year-olds. The head of a line of cars )
9%
14%
first car
front part first
police car
77%
The most frequent justification (53% - 9 answers) for the choice of the first car as
the head of the line is that it occupies the first, top or front position in the line:
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<166> C: “yo pues bueno porque lo de que está alante (adelante) del todo es como la
cabeza – lo que está arriba nuestra”
C: well ‘cos the front part is like the head – the part that is on top of us
<167> C: “el primero”
R: “¿y el primero por qué?”
C: “porque la cabeza está arriba y – y y no está abajo”
C: the first one
R: and why the first one?
C: because the head is at the top and – and and it’s not at the bottom
<168> C: “pues el primer coche”
R: “¿y por qué el primero?”
C: “porque la cabeza siempre está arriba y bueno es el que está el primero – está el primero
y es la cabeza”
C: the first car
R: and why the first one?
C: because the head is always at the top and well it’s the first one – it’s the first and it’s the
head
Starting from the same basis, one of the children produces a creative metaphor by
comparing the line of cars with a snake:
<169> C: “yo creo que es el primer coche de la fila – porque – a ver – si nosotros cogemos lo
que estaría más delante o más arriba sería la cabeza – como en una serpiente por poner un
ejemplo – una metáfora65 – la serpiente la cabeza este coche [señala el primero]”
65
The word ‘metaphor’ was never mentioned to the children or used in any of the explanations.
258
C: I think that it’s the first car in the line – because – let’s see – if we take the front or upper
part it’d be the head – like in a snake to give an example – a metaphor – the snake the head
this car [points to the first car]
The three answers that chose the front of the first car also justified this choice in the
same way:
<170> C: “yo creo que también es el primer coche pero – el morro del primer coche”
R: “¿y por qué piensas que es el morro del primer coche?”
C: “porque es lo que más arriba está de la fila de coches y la cabeza es lo más alto que está
en nuestro cuerpo así que eso pienso yo”
C: I also think that it’s the first car but – the face (mug) of the first car
R: and why do you think it’s the face (mug) of the first car?
C: because that’s the top part in the line of cars and the head is the top part of our body so
that’s what I think
<171> C: “la parte delantera del coche que está delante”
C: “porque va el primero”
C: the front part of the front car
R: and why?
C: because it’s the one that goes first
A different reason for considering the first car as the head of the line based on
metonymical reasoning (PART FOR FUNCTION – HEAD FOR GIVING ORDERS) appears in four of
the answers (24%):
<172> C: “yo también éste porque es el coche que va delante y en una fila el que va delante
es el que manda – y la cabeza – y nuestra cabeza es la que manda”
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C: I also choose this one because it’s the front car and in a line the front car is the leader –
and the head – and our head is the leader
<173> C: “el que primero porque es el primero de la fila que sería la cabeza como el cuerpo
así pues es la cabeza lo primero”
R: “se tumba David para señalar el cuerpo como sería”
C: “lo que manda – la que manda el – si quiere pasar – como la cabeza del pensamiento si
quieres mover esto”
R: “el brazo”
C: “lo mueves – y esto [fila de coches] si quieres mover a los demás pa’ (para) que vayan
ellos también pa’ (para) delante lo mueves”
C: the first one because the first in the line would be the head like the body so the head is the
first thing
R: David lies down to show how the body would be placed
C: the part that gives orders – that gives orders – if it wants to go on – like the head of
thought if you want to move this
R: your arm
C: you move it – and this [line of cars] if you want to move the rest of them so that they can
also go forward you move them
This reasoning strategy also applied to the police car:
<174> C: “el de policía”
R: “el de policía”
C: “creo que como la cabeza manda un poco más que – los demás – las demás partes del
cuerpo”
R: “la cabeza manda un poco más que las demás partes del cuerpo y ¿el de policía?”
C: “es el que más manda – el que tiene autoridad”
C: The police car
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R: the police car
C: I think that the head bosses more than – the others – the other parts of the body
R: the head bosses more than the other body parts and the police car?
C: it’s the one that bosses more – the one that holds the authority
As with the two previous semantic extensions, the combination of more than one
reason to justify the answers is very frequent in the children’s explanations. Example
<172> combines the idea that the head is the first part of the body and the metonymical
reasoning based on
PART FOR FUNCTION.
The following two examples also illustrate this
combination:
<175> C: “pues porque el primer coche es la primera parte de los coches igual que mi
cabeza claro y – también porque es el coche que primero arranca”
C: well because the first car is the first part of all the cars the same as my head of course and
– because it’s the car that first starts off too
<176> C: “el coche de adelante (delante) porque donde se mueva él tienen que moverse
todos porque le están siguiendo – umm y porque está delante del todo”
C: the front car because wherever it goes all the rest have to move because they are
following it – mmm and because it’s the one at the front
Finally, three of the children refer to the language they have been exposed to in
similar situations that are familiar to them, such as cycle racing or computer games, to
explain their choice:
<177> C: “el primer coche – la cabeza de la fila – igual que en la vuelta ciclista – Miguel
Induráin es la cabeza de umm del pelotón pues en este caso también el primer coche es la
cabeza de esta fila”
C: the first car – the head of the line – the same as in the cycle race – Miguel Induráin is the
head of mmm of the pack so in this case the first car is also the head of the line
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<178> C: “bueno porque siempre se dice algo que va primero o que es la cabeza del grupo
porque va el primero – es el capitán – eso”
C: well ‘cos when something is the first it’s always said that it’s the head of the group
because it goes the first – it’s the captain – that’s it
<179> C: “porque – a veces – las carreras de coches – en algunos videojuegos ponen – te
salen puntos y te pone ‘en cabeza’ ”
C: because – sometimes –the car races – in some computer games it says – you get the
scores and it says ‘en cabeza’ ”
The quantitative results of the 9-year-olds’ answers in relation to the head of the
stairs are shown in Table 3.14.
9%
top part
top steps
36%
55%
others
As in the previous figurative extension, the 9-year-olds focused on a fairly limited
number of elements present in the photograph when compared with the 5- and 7-year-olds.
Thus, twelve children (55%) marked the top part as the head of the stairs, eight (36%)
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chose the top steps and the remaining two children decided on the banister and the bottom
steps respectively.
All the children that marked the top part of the staircase justified their answers by
saying that the top of the stairs is the top, front or highest part, as the head is situated in the
top, highest or front part of the body:
<180> C: “la de arriba del todo”
C: “porque es la cabeza de la escalera – cuando algo está por delante o sube o está más
alto – es la cabeza de algo”
C: the upper part
R: why?
C: because it’s the head of the stairs – when something is at the front or it goes up or it’s
higher – it is the head of something
<181> C: “la parte de arriba porque la cabeza no es que suela estar en el suelo ahí abajo – y
ya está”
C: the top part because the head is usually not down there on the floor – and that’s it
<182> C: “la de arriba del todo”
C: “pues porque – también por lo mismo que la otra porque está arriba y bueno esto puede
ser más la cabeza”
C: the top part
R: why?
C: well ‘cos for the same reason as the other one because it’s at the top and well this can be
more the head
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The child that produces example <182> explicitly says that she is using the same
strategy employed in other situations (“por lo mismo que la otra” – for the same reason as
the other one).
The following example is also based on the same reasoning strategy but the final
result is a creative metaphor in which the staircase is compared to a worm:
<183> C: “pues yo creo que está arriba que – a mí se me parece a un gusano y la cabeza
siempre –más o menos siempre está arriba – es la más pequeña”
I think it’s at the top – it looks like a worm to me and the head is always –is always more or
less at the top –it’s the smallest bit
In a similar vein, a different child produced a creative metaphor by comparing the
line of cars with a snake (see <169>).
The identification of the top position of the head and the top steps is also present in
two of the justifications of the answers that selected the top steps:
<184>C: “porque la cabeza siempre está arriba pues creo que es el primer escalón de arriba
y fuera – ya está”
C: because the head is always at the top so I think that it’s the first top step and that’s it –
that’s it
<185> C: “yo el último escalón porque la cabeza normalmente es el sitio más alto”
C: I think it’s the last step because the head is usually the highest part
However, the most frequent justification (75% - 6 answers) is the mapping of the
body parts onto the parts of the staircase:
<186> C: “la la la escalera de aquí – la última porque – porque es como – si esto fuese un
cuerpo y aquí estuviese la cabeza – por eso”
C: the the the staircase here – the last one because – because it’s as – if this was a body
and here the head was here – that’s why
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<187> C: “porque – el primer escalón – bueno el de arriba del todo – porque el escalón de
abajo serían los pies y el de arriba la cabeza”
C: because – the first step – well the highest step – because the bottom step would be the
feet and the top step the head
Finally, the following justification of the choice of the banister shows a strategy that
had been very frequent in the case of the head of the line of cars, that is, the identification
of the leading function of the head with the head itself and the mapping of this function
onto the banister of the staircase:
<188> C: “pues por las barandillas”
R: “porque – no sé porque la cabeza es la que guía todo el cuerpo y las barandillas son
también las que guían a las escaleras para subirlas”
C: because of the banister
R: why?
R: because – I don’t know because the head leads the whole body and the banister also
leads the stairs to climb them.
Although, as has been pointed out this explanation was quite frequent in the answers
related to the head of the line of cars, this particular child did not use it.
4.3.5 DISCUSSION
The percentages of successful matching of the four semantic extensions of
HEAD
with their photographic representations are higher among the 9-year-olds than those in the
previous age groups. All the children marked the metal part as the head of the hammer. In
the case of the head of the stairs, 55% chose the top part and 36% the top steps. 77% of the
children marked the first car as the head of the line of cars. Finally, as regards the head of
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the bed, 46% of the children chose the pillow, 36% the bedhead and 18% both the pillow
and the bedhead. Besides, their answers focused on a more limited number of elements than
those provided by the younger children.
Some of the explanations they use have also been employed by the 5- and the 7year-olds. For instance, the identification of the head of an element with its ‘top’ part on a
vertical axis is the most widely used in the cases of the head of the hammer (59% of the
answers, examples <154> to <157>), the head of the stairs (63% of all the answers,
examples from <180> to <182> and <184> and <185>) and the head of a line of cars (53%,
examples from <166> to <168>). However, the use of this justification in relation to the
head of the bed is marginal (15% of the answers, examples <143> to <145>). This is not
surprising if we take into account that the bed does not have a top part because it is placed
on horizontal axis. In contrast, 45% of the children based their explanations for this
particular semantic extension of HEAD on the physical juxtaposition of the human head and
the head of the bed.
In general terms, the 9-year-olds’ responses are more elaborated than those
produced by younger children, especially those by the 5-year-olds, and they may offer more
than one justification, as illustrated in examples <151> to <153> (the head of a bed), <164>
(the head of a hammer) or <175> and <176> (the head of a line of cars).
Furthermore, these children also use different explanations for some of their choices
that involve the matching of the two elements on a different basis. For instance, 24% of the
children justify their choice of the police car as the head of the line of cars with the
metonymy
HEAD FOR GIVING ORDERS,
which can be considered to be part of the more
general FUNCTION FOR PART (see examples <172> and <173>).
Similarly, examples <169> and <183> uttered by different children and referring to
two different semantic extensions are also based on a different reason. These two children’s
explanations involve the use of their knowledge of animal heads (reptiles, specifically
snakes and worms) rather than human heads to reason about the head of a line of cars and
the head of the stairs respectively.
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Global mappings of the body parts onto the parts of the elements present in the
semantic extensions of head, which had recurrently appeared in the 7-year-olds’
explanations, also motivated some of the 9-year-olds’ answers. Thus, they map the body
parts onto the parts of the hammer (examples <160> and <161>) and onto the parts of the
staircase (examples <186> and 187>). However, this is only applied to these two figurative
uses and in a significantly lower number of cases than those of the 7-year-olds.
Furthermore, the 9-year-olds’ mappings are less context-dependent. That is, none of them
refers to the posters on the wall as parts of the face of the staircase, a common explanation
in the 7-year-olds’ answers.
Interlingual identification, which had only been employed by the 7-year-olds in
three explanations regarding the head of the bed and the head of the line of cars (see
examples <82>, <83> and <114>) is slightly more common in the 9-year-olds’ answers.
There are two examples related to the head of the bed (<149> and <150>) and three
instances that refer to the head of a line of cars (<177> to <179>). Besides, it is also
employed in the case of the head of the hammer (<164> and <165>).
Finally, the answers provided by two of the children also point to the over-extension
of the same justification to more than one of the semantic extensions of
HEAD
presented.
When cross-checking their answers (see Table 3.15), it is clear that they either give the
same reason in all the cases (Daniel), or, once the notion of top position on a vertical axis
has been used, it is extended to other figurative uses (Marta). The over-generalisation of a
reasoning strategy had also appeared in the previous age groups (see Table 3.5 and Table
3.10)
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Table 4. Table 3.15. Cross-check of two 9-year-olds’ answers to the four semantic extensions
Photograph
stairs
Subject Answer
Daniel top
Explanation
“la parte de arriba porque – la cabeza está en la
parte de arriba y se imagina que la parte de
arriba de la escalera es la cabeza”
bedhead
“la cabecera también – porque – porque por lo
mismo que la escalera porque está más arriba –
es lo más alto y – no sé que más”
first
“el que está delante – el que está el primero
porque la cabeza siempre va delante de todo y
en este caso la cabeza es el primero y – el
primero que va es el de delante del coche de
policía”
metal part “la parte de arriba del todo del martillo porque
es lo que está más arriba y es lo más – es lo más
alto y también porque – ya está”
pillow
“en la almohada porque la cabeza se pone en la
almohada y – y ¡no se va a poner la cabeza aquí
abajo de la cama! ¿no?”
first car
“pues el primer coche porque la cabeza siempre
está arriba y – bueno es el que está el primero –
está el primero y es la cabeza”
Metal part “éste – lo mismo – porque está – esto está
arriba porque se coge por aquí abajo y la
cabeza está arriba – pues eso”
top
“la de arriba del todo (R: ¿por qué?) pues
porque – también por lo mismo que la otra –
porque está arriba y – bueno esto puede ser más
la cabeza”
bed
Daniel
line of cars
Daniel
hammer
Daniel
bed
Marta
line of cars
Marta
hammer
Marta
stairs
Marta
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the top part because – the head is at the top and
you can imagine that the top part of the stairs is
the head
the bedhead as well – because – because for the
same reason as the staircase because it’s higher –
it’s the highest and – I don’t know what else
the front one – the one that goes first because the
head always goes in front of everything and in
this case the head is the first – and the first that
goes is the one in front of the police car
the topmost part of the hammer because it’s the
highest and it’s the most – the highest and also
because – that’s it
on the pillow because you lay your head on the
pillow and – and you don’t put your head here at
the bottom of the bed! do you?
the first car because the head is always on the
top and – well it’s situated in the first position –
it’s the first and it’s the head.
this – the same thing – because it’s – this is on
the top because you hold it from down here and
the head is on top – that’s why
the topmost part (R: why?) because – for the
same reason as the other one too – because it’s
on the top and – well this can be more the head
The quantitative results of the 11-year-olds answers as regards the head of the bed
are offered in the following graph:
the head of a bed
25%
bedhead
50%
25%
pillow
bedhead & pillow
Half of the children marked the bedhead as the head of the bed and the same
number of them (25%) chose the pillow and both the bedhead and the pillow.
In the answers that chose the bedhead there are two main justifications: the
linguistic resemblance between ‘cabeza’ and ‘cabecero’ (<189>) and the proximity of the
head and the bedhead (<190>):
<189> C: “yo he puesto el cabecero porque por algo se llama cabecero”
C: I’ve marked the bedhead because that’s why it’s called bedhead
<190> C: “el cabecero pues porque es una parte de la cama y es donde – digamos que
apoyamos la cabeza”
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C: the bedhead because it’s a part of the bed and it’s where – let’s say that lay our head
Like the 9-year-olds, the 11-year-olds frequently gave more than one reason for
their choices. In fact, four children (67%) used the two explanations mentioned above in
their answers:
<191> C: “yo he puesto que éste – el cabecero – la cabeza porque la palabra viene de –
bueno que son de la misma familia me parece a mí y pones la cabeza en – el cabecero está
al lado que tienes la cabeza”
C: I’ve marked this – the bedhead – the head because the words comes from – well they
belong to the same family in my opinion and you lay your head on – the bedhead is next to
where you have your head
<192> C: “cabecero por lo mismo que José porque en español cabecero – en inglés también
cabecera y también porque además ponemos la cabeza casi apoyando – al lado del
cabecero”
C: bedhead for the same reason as José because in Spanish ´cabecero´ – in English also
‘cabecera’ and we also lay our head nearly touching –next to the bedhead.
<193> C: “yo el cabecero porque pienso que cabeza y cabecero es lo mismo y además – tú
cuando te acuestas – la cabeza la pones debajo del cabecero”
C: the bedhead because I think that ‘cabeza’ and ‘cabecero’ is the same and besides – when
you are in bed – you lay your head under the bedhead
These children seem to be especially aware of meta-language and word-formation
(see example <191>). As has been pointed out, this linguistic background is certainly
encouraged in the Spanish school system. Example <192> clearly illustrates the use of
these notions when learning a foreign language. When provided with the opportunity to
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reason about the fact that beds in English have heads, this child uses his linguistic
knowledge and produces: “en español cabecero – en inglés también cabecera”
As regards the children that marked the pillow as the head of the bed, all of them
stress the physical contact between the head and the pillow:
<194> C: “porque – porque nos tumbamos y ponemos la cabeza ahí”
C: because – because we lie down and lay our head there
<195> C: “porque en la almohada se apoya en la cabeza ¿no?”
C: because we lay our head on the pillow don’t we?
Finally, the answers that selected both the bedhead and the pillow also focus on
physical contiguity, although the idea that bedhead is the highest or first part is also
mentioned:
<196> C: “el cabecero y la almohada porque el cabecero es la parte que está más atrás de
la cama que sería la más alta y esto – y la almohada porque es donde se pone la cabeza”
C: the bedhead and the pillow because the bedhead is at the back part of the bed which
would be the highest part and this – the pillow because it’s where we lay our head
<197> C: “lo de la cabecera esa – el principio de la cama”
C: “that bedhead thingy – the first part of the bed
As Table 3.17 shows, all the 11-year-olds marked the metal part as the head of the
hammer. The reasons why they marked this part are also relatively homogenous although
the tendency to give more than one explanation to justify their answers is also shown here.
271
metal part
100%
Eleven children (92%) focused on the function of the metal part of the hammer in
combination with other reasons:
<198> C: “porque se pega”
C: because you hit with it
This justification had also been very recurrent in their explanations of the other year
groups without any further elaboration. In this case, however, three of the 11-year-olds
explain the relation between the metal part, its function and the head in the following terms:
<199> C: “yo la parte con la que casi siempre – con la que le pegamos a las cosas”
C: “porque es lo más importante – lo que más se utiliza”
C: the part with which we very often – with which we hit things
R: why?
C: because it’s the most important thing –the thing we use the most
<200> C: “la parte de arriba – todo el metal – porque es lo más importante ¿no?”
C: the top part – the whole metal bit – because it’s the most important thing isn´t it?
272
These children equate the metal part of the hammer with a head in terms of their
scale of importance. In this sense, the metal part of a hammer is the most important part
because of its function: it is the part of the hammer that actually defines its use. The
following example illustrates this idea:
<201> R: “¿qué has señalado?”
C1: “la cabeza del martillo – por lo mismo que Carolina ¿no? porque con eso se da ¡no le
das con el palo!”
R: “¿y qué relación tiene – que relación tiene eso de que se da con cabeza?”
C1: “pues porque la cabeza del cuerpo está arriba y eso también está arriba ¿no? yo creo”
C2 [Carolina]: “yo porque cuando le das a una puntilla la cabeza de lo que es esto es lo del
principio – que tú le das – no le das con lo de abajo – con lo que coges”
R: what have you marked?
C: the head of the hammer – for the same reason as Carolina right? because you hit with that
you don’t hit with the stick!
R: and what’s the relationship between – the relationship between hitting and head?
C1: well ‘cos the head of the body is at the top and that’s also at the top isn’t it? that’s what I
think
C2 [Carolina]: I think it’s because when you hammer a nail in the head of this is the first bit –
you hit with it – you don’t hit with the bottom bit – with the bit you hold it
As can be seen in this example, C1 also justifies his choice with the idea that the
metal part is the top part of the hammer. Four more children used similar explanations:
<202> C: “la cabeza del martillo es por donde – por donde se golpea”
C: “porque es la parte de arriba y porque me suena”
C: the head of the hammer – it’s used for hitting –for hitting
R: why?
C: because it’s the top part and it sounds familiar to me
273
<203> C: “pos (pues) porque la cabeza – porque esa es la parte delantera del martillo con la
que se golpea – es la más – ‘amos (vamos) la que va delante y ya está”
C: because the head – because that’s the front part of the hammer the one you hit with – it’s
the most – the front one and that’s it
Like the 9-year-olds’, the 11-year-olds’ choices of the possible elements that could
be the head of the line of cars are restricted to two elements: the first car (83% - 10
answers) and the police car (17% - 2 answers), as can be seen in Table 3.18.
17%
first car
police car
83%
The most frequent explanation for choosing the first car as the head of the line is
based on the idea that it is situated in the first or front position:
<204> C: “porque está en lo primero de los coches”
C: because it’s in the first bit of the cars
In a similar answer, in the following example, the emphasis is placed on the first car
going in the direction it is supposed to go:
274
<205> C: “porque de tres coches el más delante está en su destino – si fueran al contrario –
yo lo pondría en la otra punta”
R: “por la dirección ¿no?”
C: “claro y porque está delante de todos – sería como la cabeza”
C: because out of three cars the one that goes in front is in its destination – if they were going
in the opposite direction – I’d put it at the other end
R: because of the direction right?
C: sure and because it’s in front of them all – it’d be like the head
In one answer the whole line of cars is seen as a human body and the head is,
according to this child, the top part that is situated in the front position:
<206> C: “pues el coche que va delante”
C: “porque sí – porque es igual que lo del cuerpo – igual que arriba – pues delante”
C: the car that goes first
R: why?
C: ‘cos it is – because it’s the same as in the body – the same as top – the front then
In contrast, another child views the head of the line of cars as an animal body,
specifically the body of a snake, and the head is the first part:
<207> C: “el primero”
R: “¿el primero por qué?”
C: “porque – porque es el primero – está el primero”
R: “¿que relación tiene el primero con ‘head’?”
C: “porque es como una serpiente y la serpiente tiene la cabeza al principio”
C: the first one
R: why the first one?
C: because – it’s the first – it’s situated at the first position
275
R: what’s the relationship between the first and head?
C: because it’s like a snake and snakes have their head at the beginning
The other main reasoning strategy employed is their knowledge of Spanish
linguistic phrases that include the word ‘cabeza’ or forms derived from it and refer to
similar situations:
<208> C: “pienso que la cabeza de toda esta fila ¿no? es el primer coche que va”
C: “no sé porque siempre se ha dicho ‘la cabeza de la fila de coches’ – al principio”
C: I think that the head of the whole line you know? is the car that goes first
R: why?
C: I don’t know because it’s been always said that the head of the line of cars – in the first
position
<209> C: “pues el primer coche porque dicen que – ese coche va ‘en cabeza’ cuando va el
primero – pues éste va el primero”
C: the first car because it’s said that – that car is at the head when it’s the first – and this one
is the first
<210> C: “yo he oído esa palabra – que por ejemplo el cabeza de – bueno eso el cabeza del
grupo – el que va más de – el que va delante un poco de todo y también por lo que dice
Lidia porque está en la parte de delante”
C: I’ve heard that word – that for instance the head of – well the head of the group – the one
that goes more than – the one that goes a bit before everything and also for the same reason
as Lidia because it’s the front part
276
As regards the two children that marked the police car, they both focused on its
value as opposed to the other two average cars that appear in the photograph in terms of
quality (<211>) and control or leadership (<212>):
<211> R: “¿por qué has señalado el de policía?”
C: “porque es como si fuera la cabeza de todos”
R: “¿y por qué crees?”
C: “porque es el que más vale del que hay ahí”
R: “¿el más importante tú crees?”
C: “claro”
R: why have you marked the police car?
C: because it’s as if it was the head of all the rest
R: and why do you think so?
C: because it’s the best of all of them there
R: the most important do you think?
C: of course
<212> C: “la policía porque está – porque es el que controla a los demás coches”
C: the police because it’s – because it’s the one that controls the rest of the cars
As can be seen in Table 3.19, the semantic extension of
HEAD
stairs shows the greatest disparity of choices in the sixth-years’ answers:
277
in the head of the
8%
17%
33%
top steps
top
bottom
middle
17%
25%
others
Most children marked the top steps (33% - 4 answers) and the top part (25% - 3
answers) as the head of the stairs. A lower percentage of children chose the bottom part
(17% - 2 answers) and the middle part (17% - 2 answers) and the remaining child selected
the whole staircase (8%).
All the children that marked the top part and the top steps, that is, 58% of the
children, based their reasoning on the recognition of the top position of this part in relation
to the rest of the staircase:
<213> C: “la parte de arriba porque la cabeza es lo que está más alto del cuerpo y las
escaleras – es la parte de arriba – el final de la escalera”
C: the top part because the head is the highest part of the body and the stairs – it’s the top
part – the end of the staircase
<214> C: “la parte de arriba por la causa de Ali y Alejandro porque siempre la cabeza está
arriba ¡no la vas a tener en los pies!”
C: the top part for the same reason as Ali and Alejandro because the head is always at the
top you can’t have it at your feet!
<215> C: “el último escalón”
278
C: “porque es lo más alto que hay”
R: “¿y eso que relación tiene con ‘head’?”
C: “porque la cabeza es lo que está más arriba de todo el cuerpo”
C: The last step
R: why?
C: because it’s the highest thing
R: and what’s the relationship between that and ‘head’?
C: because the head is the topmost part of the whole body
In all these examples, the children concentrated on the schema of the human head
and its position in relation of the rest of the body (top on a vertical axis) to explain their
choice of the top part or top steps as the head of the stairs.
One of the children that marked the middle part and the child that chose the whole
staircase gave the same justification: they both identify the central part with the most
important part.
<216> C: “el centro porque – no sé porque como la cabeza es como si fuese lo más
importante pues – las escaleras – está el centro”
C: the central part because – I don’t know because the head is as if it was the most important
thing so – the staircase –it’s the central part
<217> C: “todas las escaleras porque es como si fuera toda la cabeza – ¿no?”
C: “porque es la parte central – es la principal”
C: the whole staircase because is as if it was the whole head – isn’t it?
R: and why?
C: because it’s the central part – it’s the main part
279
Finally the bottom-answers are fairly vague:
<218> C: “vamos que he señalao (señalado) esta parte y – que porque si no hubiera este
escalón pues no podríamos seguir al segundo – igual que la cabeza si no tuviéramos la
cabeza – no podríamos hacer muchas cosas”
C: well I’ve marked this part and – ‘cos if there wasn’t this step we couldn’t go on the second
one – the same as the head if we didn’t have a head – we couldn’t do many things.
4.4.5 DISCUSSION
The success in identifying the different semantic extensions of HEAD by the 11-yearolds varies somewhat in regard to that by the other the age groups. In this sense, although
the head of a hammer is the most accessible (all the children marked the metal part), they
find the head of a line of cars easier to identify than the head of the stairs. In fact, the
percentages of successful identification of the head of the hammer and the head of the line
of cars are the highest among all the age groups, and the number of elements in the
photographs they focus on are the most limited. In contrast, in the case of the head of the
stairs, they identify five different parts of the staircase as its head and only 33% of the
children select the top steps and 25% the top part. An examination of their explanations
shows that all the children that marked the top part or steps justify their choice by
identifying the head of the stairs with the part that is situated in the topmost position
(examples <213> to <215>). That is, they map the human head-body schema onto the
staircase, as was the case of younger children. This justification is, however, marginal in
this age group. Most children ignore the relation between the top part and the head, derived
from the human body schema, which has been so frequent in the other groups’ answers. In
fact, a detailed examination of the 11-year-olds’s explanations shows that the identification
of the head of one element with its ‘top’ part is only the preferred justification for the head
of the stairs. The use of this explanation is also marginal in the other three semantic
extensions. Thus, for instance, in the case of the head of a line of cars, most children focus
on the notions of first or front position and going in a particular direction. Interestingly,
280
although one answer illustrates the use of the ‘human head’- schema to reason about the
head of the stairs (example <205>), the ‘animal head’- schema, in particular, that of the
head of a snake is also employed in example <206>. Thus, these children do not only resort
to their knowledge of the human body in order to explain some of the semantic extensions
of HEAD (see also examples <169> and <183> in the group of 9-year-olds).
As regards the head of the bed, most children justify this semantic extension in
terms of the physical proximity of the human head with the part where it lies in the bed.
Interestingly, this explanation, which was only applied to the ‘pillow’- answers in other
year groups, is extended here to the bedhead. In fact, these children do not say that the head
and the bedhead are necessarily in contact but rather that they are next to each other (<191>
and <192>) or that the head is below the bedhead (<193>), still acknowledging the
proximity between the two elements. The awareness of this spatial relationship is even
more evident in example <191>. The child starts his sentence with (“y pones la cabeza en”
– and you lay your head on) and immediately stops and changes his mind (“el cabecero
está al lado que tiene la cabeza” – the bedhead is next to where you have your head).
In the case of the head of a hammer, the most widely employed justification to
choose the metal part is based on the function of this element. This explanation had also
appeared in some of the answers of the other age groups: 25% of the 5-year-olds, 13% of
the 7-year-olds and 14% of the 9-year-olds. Although their answers seem to be based on the
FUNCTION FOR BODY PART
metonymy, most of the children in those age groups could not
explain the relation between the function of the metal part of the hammer and the function
of the human head. The 11-year-olds, in contrast, establish this relation in terms of scale of
importance: the metal part is the most important part of the hammer because of its function,
as the head is the most important part of the body because of its function. For these
children, the metal part is what defines the use of a hammer (<199> to <201>).
Finally, like the 9-year-olds, most of the 11-year-olds frequently use more than one
explanation to justify their answers. Thus, in some cases, most of the justifications
mentioned above are combined with interlingual identification. Nevertheless, this latter
281
strategy alone is also employed to reason about two of the four semantic extensions: the
head of a bed (see examples <189> and from <191> to <193>) and the head of a line of
cars (<208> to <210>). This strategy, which had also appeared in some of the 7-year-olds’
answers (examples <82>, <83> and <114>) and the 9-year-olds’ (examples <149>, <150>,
<164>, <165> and from <177> to <179>) is more frequent in the 11-year-olds’
explanations. Furthermore, the 11-year-olds show a more developed meta-linguistic
awareness and of phenomena such as word-formation (for instance, <191>), and are also
able to speak about the similarities between the two language systems (example <192>).
In relation to the two main research questions posed at the beginning of this study
and taking into account the two types of analyses applied to the data, it seems clear that the
quantitative results are useful to answer the first research question (are 5-, 7-, 9- and 11year-olds able to apprehend the four figurative extensions of head presented to them?) and
the qualitative analysis sheds some light on the second (what kind of reasoning is involved
in their understanding of these meanings?). As regards the children’s identification of the
four semantic extensions of HEAD, a comparison of the results across the four age groups is
shown in Table 3.20. Considering that the head of a bed is the area where the bedhead and
pillow are, and that the head of the stairs includes the top part and top steps, it can be
concluded that, apart from the 5-year-olds in the head of line of cars where only 42% of the
children marked the first car as the head, over 50% of the children in all the groups were
able to match the four semantic extensions of
HEAD
with their visual representation on
photographs. The results as regards the head of the hammer, where practically all the
children identified the metal part of the hammer as its head, are noteworthy.
From a quantitative perspective, the identification order of the four semantic
extensions from most to least accessible is as follows: the head of a hammer, the head of a
282
bed, the head of the stairs and the head of a line of cars. In the group of 11-year-olds,
however, this order is somewhat different since they find the head of a line of cars easier to
identify than the head of the stairs.
As regards the main types of reasoning involved in these children’s identification of
these four figurative uses of
HEAD,
the most widely employed is figurative reasoning,
followed by interlingual identification. A different strategy, which consists in focusing on
an element that catches their attention and relating it to the task proposed, is also employed
by the 5-year-olds. Its use is restricted to this age group and a couple of the 7-year-olds’
answers. In fact, age seems to play an important role in the use of the different strategies. In
this sense, apart from the above noted use of a specific reasoning strategy only by younger
children, age also affects resorting to interlingual identification, and is favoured by older
learners (it is comparatively more frequent in the 11-year-olds’ answers) or learners who
are especially aware of language (see examples <82>, <83>, <114>, <149>, <150>, <164>,
<165>, from <177> to <179>, <189>, from <191> to <193>, from <208> to <210>).
Furthermore, the use of interlingual identification is obviously restricted to those semantic
extensions that have an equivalent in Spanish. These findings are similar to those of Study
1 as regards the use of interlingual identification by different learners.
In contrast, figurative reasoning is available to the children of different ages (5-, 7-,
9- and 11-year-olds) in all four semantic extensions. In fact, the capacity to reason about
one domain of experience in terms of another or to match the features of different concepts
on the basis of similarity or contiguity is extensively reflected in the children’s answers.
Thus, when attempting to understand these four semantic extensions of
HEAD,
these
children (especially the 5- and the 7-year-olds and, to some extent, the 9-year-olds) mostly
base their justifications on the identification of the head of each element with its ‘top’ part.
They, therefore, use their knowledge about the domain of human body parts and map it
onto the four elements in question: a bed, a hammer, a line of cars and a staircase.
However, due to the complexity of the semantic motivation of these four figurative uses,
the over-generalisation of this notion to the four cases may give rise to incorrect answers.
283
This is illustrated in the 5- and 7-year-olds’ choices of the top parts of the first and police
car. In their search for the ‘top’ part of the line of cars, the actual evidence tells them that
the roofs of the cars are in the topmost position (see examples <43> and <44> in the 5year-old group, and from <115> to <119> in that of the 7-year-olds).
Similarly, the case of the head of the bed is mainly justified in two ways: using the
top-position notion or appealing to the physical proximity of the human head and the head
of the bed. The 5- and 7-year-old are more reliant on the former whereas the 9- and 11year-old preferred the latter. It is evident that a bed is placed on a horizontal axis and
therefore there is no top part to it, despite dictionary definitions. Thus, the younger
children’s explanations may also have been motivated by the over-generalisation of the
human head pattern. In contrast, the older children often ignore this schema in this
particular case to focus on the notion of physical proximity.
The 9- and 11-year-olds are not so reliant on the identification of the head of each
element with their top parts. For instance, some of the children use the animal body schema
(specifically, reptiles) rather than the human body schema to reason about the head of a line
of cars (examples <169> and <205> in the 9- and 11-year-old groups respectively) and the
head of the stairs (example <183>). Studies on children’s development of the concept
ANIMAL
(Anglin 1977, Carey 1985 or Keil 1989) have shown that this poses difficulties for
young children. For instance, Anglin (1977) finds that when asked what things are animals,
children under 7 exclude people and tend to exclude non-prototypical animals such as
insects. His results also show that for the pre-school child the word animal is not
synonymous with the word alive. Similarly, Carey’s (1985) findings show that deep
conceptual differences underlie the different meanings children and adults attach to the
words animal and living thing. However, Keil (1989) concludes that even young children
can assign specific members to the classes ‘animal’, ‘object’ and ‘living plants’ because
they can be distinguished in terms of numerous salient, perceptual differences and children
encounter very few examples of things that are ambiguous as to their status as plants versus
animals versus other objects in their daily lives. Nevertheless, children have problems in
284
fully understanding the ‘in-principle distinctions’ (e.g. being dead or alive) between the
categories. These findings may explain why the animal head schema is not so salient for the
younger children. The more developed domain knowledge that older children have may
play a role in enriching their explanations, but failure to resort to the human body schema at
this age will lead them to problems when head does refer to top part.
The saliency of the human body schema for younger children (5-, and 7-year-olds)
may have also motivated the significant amount of answers that reflect the conception of
the human body as a bounded region with a beginning and an end in this age groups. This
notion, which is very recurrent in the younger children’s explanations, only appears in one
case in the groups of 9- and 11-year-olds (examples <173> and <207> respectively). In
fact, in example <207>, the child talks about the head as being the beginning of a body
which is not a human but rather the body of a snake (“la serpiente tiene la cabeza al
principio” – snakes have their head at the beginning).
As regards the head of the hammer, two main notions are behind the explanations
across the four age groups: the metal part is the head of the hammer either because it is the
top part or because of its function. This latter idea is widely employed by the 11-year-olds
who establish the relation between the metal part and the head in terms of their function as
follows: the functions of both the head and the metal part of a hammer define their use and
are therefore the most important parts. This functional interpretation, which emphasises the
importance of the part, coincides with the Collins COBUILD Dictionary’s definition.
However, this interpretation may be misleading and counter-productive in the children’s
learning process because it cannot be applied to other similar devices (e.g. a screwdriver, a
fork, a knife).
Finally, it is interesting to note that although the definitions of the dictionaries may
not be very accurate, some of the children’s answers match them faithfully. This is
especially noteworthy in the case of the 5-year-olds’ explanations (see for example the
‘bed’-answers using the idea of the top position (New Oxford English Dictionary) and
285
physical contiguity (OED); example <35> in the case of the hammer; or examples <36> to
<38> complemented by <39> for the head of a line of cars.)
Such differences in the reasoning strategies employed by children at different ages
will have pedagogical implications. Different extensions of
HEAD
will be understood with
greater accuracy at different stages of development, and age itself is not an advantage in
this sense. The human body schema, which is so salient to the younger learners leads them
to a correct identification in the head of the stairs while the 11-year-olds, having grown out
of this, may use inappropriate strategies.
286
Table 3.20
100%
80%
60%
40%
20%
0%
5-year-olds
The head of a bed
100%
80%
60%
40%
20%
0%
metal part
handle
others
96%
2%
2%
bedhead
pillow
bedhead &
pillow
others
5-year-olds
45%
41%
0%
14%
7-year-olds
95%
5%
0%
7-year-olds
45%
43%
11%
2%
9-year-olds
100%
0%
0%
9-year-olds
36%
46%
18%
0%
11-year-olds
100%
0%
0%
11-year-olds
50%
25%
25%
0%
100%
80%
60%
40%
20%
0%
100%
80%
60%
40%
20%
0%
first car
police
car
last car
top parts
front
parts
others
5-year-olds
42%
29%
12%
5%
7%
5%
18%
7-year-olds
59%
5%
7%
25%
0%
4%
0%
9%
9-year-olds
77%
9%
0%
0%
14%
0%
17%
8%
11-year-olds
83%
17%
0%
0%
0%
0%
top part
top steps
middle
bottom
others
5-year-olds
55%
17%
7%
14%
7%
7-year-olds
77%
5%
0%
0%
9-year-olds
55%
36%
0%
11-year-olds
25%
33%
17%
287
CONCLUSIONS
Conclusions
The results of the three studies presented in this dissertation allow two main
conclusions to be drawn. One the one hand, they indicate that young (5-, 7-, 9- and 11-yearold) Spanish learners of EFL are, in general, able to identify different semantic extensions
of the English lexemes
HAND, MOUTH
and
HEAD,
the prototypical meaning of which they
know from their English lessons. However, not all these extensions are equally transparent
for them. On the other hand, it has been seen that their ability to reason figuratively plays a
very important role in their identification and verbal explanation of the semantic extensions
presented to them.
As far as the former is concerned, although the success in apprehending the
figurative uses varies across the age groups and in the different semantic extensions, in
general, over 50% of the children were able to identify them in the three studies. Thus, in
Study 1, apart from the 7-year-olds in the case of the expression give me a hand, in which
46% of the children chose hand, the successful identification of the three figurative uses
(give me a hand, the hands of a watch and hand it to me) is above 50%. Especially
remarkable is the children’s recognition of the phrase hand it to me, identified by over 80%
of the participants in the three age groups. The 11-year-olds’ identification of give me a
hand, with 92% of the participants providing the correct answer, is also noteworthy. The
quantification of the children’s selections of the literal paraphrase of not open one’s mouth
in the task proposed in Study 2 shows that over 75% of the children across the three age
groups chose this semantic extension of MOUTH. Finally, in Study 3, apart from the 5-yearolds in the case of the head of line of cars (where only 42% of the children marked the first
car as the head), over 50% of the children in all the groups were able to match the four
semantic extensions of HEAD (the head of a bed, the head of a hammer, the head of a line of
cars and the head of the stairs) with their visual representation in photographs. The results
in the case of the head of the hammer, where over 95% of the children identified the metal
part of the hammer as its head, are similarly noteworthy.
As regards the role played by these children’s figurative capacity, the individual
analysis of the samples elicited indicates that they extensively reason metonymically and
289
Conclusions
metaphorically when attempting to understand these eight semantic extensions of three
different body part terms. These particular children in the particular context of the studies
carried out are able to set up links via metonymy and metaphor between the different uses
of a lexeme, if they are provided with an appropriate stimulus to do so, and that they search
for similarity and contiguity in their reasoning. Linguistically, this is reflected in their
ability to use metaphorical comparisons, creative similes and utterances grounded in
metonymy.
Thus, these results replicate some of the findings of previous research into the
figurative capacity of monolingual children: analogical capacity and the transfer of
knowledge from a concrete to an abstract domain play a significant role in children’s
abstract reasoning (Gardner, Kirchner, Winner and Perkins 1975; Vosniadou 1987; Winner
1988; Zurer Pearson 1990; Glicksohn and Yafe 1998; Nerlich, Clarke and Todd 1999;
Johnson 1999 or Cameron 1991, 1996, 2003.) Furthermore, they also indicate that this
capacity operates with linguistic forms in the second language from, at least, the age of
five.
However, other identification strategies employed have also been noted. One is
interlingual identification, present in the three studies, but evidently restricted to those
figurative uses that have a counterpart in Spanish (give me a hand, the hands of a watch,
not open one’s mouth, the head of a bed, the head of a hammer and the head of a line of
cars). As has been noted, interlingual identification is favoured by older children
(especially the 11-year-olds) or children with a marked linguistic awareness.
A developmental pattern can also be discerned in other reasoning strategies that are
marginally used. For instance, in their explanations of the four semantic extensions of
HEAD,
the 5-year-olds focused on an element that caught their attention and reasoned about
it, showing strong context-dependency. This tendency had mostly disappeared in the 7year-olds’ explanations and did not appear at all in the 9- and 11-year-olds’. Similarly, in
Study 2, two other identification strategies are employed: making inferences from the
context using script knowledge (for example, their knowledge of a mother’s reaction when
290
Conclusions
she is cross with her children or ideas of solidarity between siblings) and relying on the
visual support provided in the task (focusing on the way the children are portrayed in the
pictures). These two strategies were mostly used by the 7-year-olds and led them to both
correct and incorrect answers. The 7-year-olds’ tendency to either use concrete evidence or
script knowledge, which is very often related to personal experiences, is also illustrated in
other studies. Thus, in many of their explanations of the head of the stairs, they
concentrated on the three posters on the wall, which represented different parts of the face
to them (Study 3). Similarly, in Study 1, the 7-year-olds’ answers were very often
influenced by their script knowledge of familiar routine events such as doing homework,
playing on the computer or sitting an exam. Children of this age seem to rely more on script
rather than other types of knowledge, a tendency that is not reflected in the 9- and 11-yearolds’ answers.
In the case of Study 2, the 7-year-olds’ reliance on the visual input and their script
knowledge may have been motivated by the presentation of the stimuli. The narrative
accompanied by visual strips appears to have distracted their attention from the linguistic
input. In contrast, the 9- and 11-year-olds generally focused on the linguistic input, which
led them to the identify mouth and infer its figurative meaning in this specific context. As
has been noted, the use of stories accompanied by visual cues is very common in EFL text
books for young learners. Children from very early ages are accustomed to this kind of
visual support, which is encouraged on the assumption that young learners need to rely on
visual cues to understand the contents since they are still not familiar with the verbal input.
It is evident that young learners’ knowledge of English is limited. However, as the results
of Study 2 show, the use of pictures may actually prevent them from focusing on the target
language.
Thus, age and the context in which the stimulus is provided influence the children’s
choice of different strategies when attempting to understand different semantic extensions.
But there is another factor that plays a significant role in the process of understanding: the
type of figurative language employed. It is very important to recall that although a large
291
Conclusions
amount of research has been devoted to idiomatic expressions, figurative language is not
only manifested in fossilised strings. Lazar’s (1996) classification, which also includes the
figurative extensions of a word’s meaning, provides a more complete account. In this sense,
it seems more useful to think in terms of core lexemes and the semantic extensions that are
accessible to children at different stages of their cognitive development, regardless of
whether they occur in a fixed combination or not. In fact, although certain idioms may pose
difficulties for young children, this is not necessarily so in all cases, as has been seen in this
study. The unitary meaning of the idiomatic expressions give me a hand and not open one’s
mouth arise from the functions of the two body parts they refer to. As has been shown, most
of the children participating in the studies reported in this dissertation have no difficulties in
grasping the meaning of these two idioms because they perceive the connection via
metonymy of the core lexeme in the string. Thus, to class idioms as inherently difficult for
children is to ignore aspects such as their semantic transparency or opacity.
Furthermore, as has been discussed, the different types of figurative language can
also be distinguished in terms of their syntactic form and their semantic motivation.
Syntactically speaking, these eight semantic extensions are realised by idioms (give me a
hand and not to open one’s mouth), nouns (the four semantic extensions of
HEAD
and the
hands of a watch) and a verb (hand it to me). In general, it appears that the syntactic form
of the semantic extension does not greatly affect the children’s understanding of the
figurative use. In fact, hand it to me is the most accessible of the three semantic extensions
of
HAND
for the children in the three age groups, despite the syntactic shift of the
prototypical meaning of
HAND
realised in this particular extension. Furthermore, those
children that employ interlingual identification produce Spanish utterances that, although
equivalent to the English words, are not necessarily identical to them either from a syntactic
or morphological perspective. For instance, they use the multi-word expression ‘ir en
cabeza’ (verb + preposition + noun) for the head of a line of cars, or derived forms of
‘cabeza’ (‘cabecero/cabecera’) and mano (‘manecillas’) for the head of a bed and the
hands of a watch, respectively. In this sense, it seems clear that, in general, meaning is
292
Conclusions
more relevant than form to them. However, the results of Study 1 and 2 indicate that form
may pose a problem in some cases. For instance, multi-word units (give me a hand and not
open one’s mouth) are less accessible to younger children (7-year-olds), and the negative
form of the latter poses a difficulty that decreases with age.
Unlike the syntactic form, the semantic motivation of the figurative extensions
seems to play a significant role in their understanding by these children. The detailed
examination of the children’s explanations about the different figurative uses indicates that
the schema of the human body is very salient to them, especially at the earliest ages (5 and
7 years). Thus, those semantic extensions motivated by this schema are more transparent
for the children. This is particularly evident in the case of hand it to me, which offers the
most uniform data across the three age groups, from both a quantitative and a qualitative
perspective. As regards the latter, most of the children’s explanations cases are metonymybased, grounded in the awareness of the functions of the hand, which are motivated by their
experiences of manipulating and passing objects. In general, these children are very much
aware of the functions of different body parts and they extensively use this concrete
knowledge to reason about abstract uses, as shown in the significant number of
explanations motivated by the metonymy
entailments
BODY PART FOR FUNCTION
HAND FOR DOING, MOUTH FOR SPEAKING
or
and its more specific
HEAD FOR THINKING
in Study 1.
Similarly, in Study 2, the awareness of the functions of the mouth when open and closed is
behind most the answers that successfully identify not open one’s mouth. As has been
noted, this awareness of the function of different body parts coincides with Nagy’s (1953)
findings of children’s body knowledge at different ages.
The human body schema is also behind the children’s reasoning when attempting to
understand the four semantic extensions of
HEAD
in Study 3. The children participating
(especially the 5- and the 7-year-olds and, to some extent, the 9-year-olds) mostly base their
reasoning on the identification of the head of each element with its ‘top’ part on a vertical
axis. That is, they use their knowledge about the domain of human body parts and map it
onto the four elements in question: a bed, a hammer, a line of cars and a staircase. In fact,
293
Conclusions
younger children tend to over-generalise explanations based on the human body schema (as
illustrated in Tables 3.5, 3.10 and 3.15) to the cases where there is no vertical axis, which
prevents them from identifying semantic extensions that have a different motivation such
the head of a line of cars. This is illustrated in the 5- and 7-year-olds’ choices of the top
parts of the first and the police car. In their search for the ‘top’ part of the line of cars, the
actual evidence tells them that the roofs of the cars are in the topmost position. In contrast,
older children (some of the 9-year-olds and most of the 11-year-olds) are more specific.
They have a better differentiated and more developed knowledge of domains and are more
flexible in the use of other schemas. In this sense, they use the animal body schema to
reason about the head of a line of cars. As has been noted before, this might be explained in
relation to the development of the concept
ANIMAL
in children. The studies carried out by
Anglin (1977), Carey (1985) or Keil (1989) have shown that it poses difficulties for young
children. Nevertheless, failure to resort to the human body schema at older ages will lead
them to problems when HEAD does refer to top part, as the 11-year-olds’s results in relation
to the head of the stairs show.
It is obvious that the children’s developing ‘knowledge of the world’ or ‘domain
knowledge’ plays an important role in their understanding of these eight semantic
extensions of body part terms. This has also been noted in studies carried out with
monolingual children (Winner 1988, Gentner 1989, Vosniadou 1989 or Cameron 1996).
Research into figurative reasoning in the L1 has shown that it is a fundamental mechanism
for recognition, classification, learning and even scientific discovery and creativity
(Vosniadou and Ortony 1989 or Gentner 2003) used from early childhood. It has been
argued that creative uses of figuration in the mother tongue are related to the need of filling
gaps in the children’s growing conceptual and linguistic system (Clark 1993 or Nerlich,
Clarke and Todd 1999). The studies reported in this dissertation show that children also
resort to this capacity when reasoning about a foreign language and also emphasise the
importance of their growing ‘knowledge of the world’. Similarly, the over-extensions
reported in children’s language use (Nerlich, Clarke and Todd 1999) may facilitate or even
294
Conclusions
encourage the kind of risk-taking or experimental attitude to language which may be
helpful to young learners. That is, rather than seeing over-generalisation of over-extension
as a problem, it may be a necessary part of the learning process and one from which young
EFL learners may benefit.
The findings of the experimental studies carried out for this piece of work have
some implications for ELT. In the first place, they show that children can be helped to
operationalise a limited lexicon by providing them with the opportunity to extend meanings
by reasoning figuratively. It is clear that the children resort to two main strategies when
attempting to identify and explain these figurative uses: analogical reasoning and
interlingual identification. However, the latter is only useful in very specific semantic
extensions (those that have a counterpart in the mother tongue) and seems to be only
available to ‘older’ learners (11-year-olds) or those learners who are specially aware of
language. As has been noted, this linguistic awareness has been traditionally promoted in
the Spanish educational system and also in the pedagogical techniques employed to teach
EFL, in which translation from English into Spanish and vice versa has been often
employed. In contrast, analogical reasoning can clarify semantic extensions that have no
counterparts in the L1 and is available to most learners, according to the results of the three
studies. Interestingly, in the case of the semantic extension hand it to me, even the 11-yearolds, who had extensively resorted to interlingual identification to explain the figurative use
give me a hand, employed metonymy in order to explain this verbal use of
HAND.
In fact,
the ability to see language as a system and compare it with another would, in this case,
impede learners’ understanding of this use. Encouraging the children to use analogical
reasoning in the EFL classroom will help them to grasp the meanings of these types of
semantic extensions and to gradually see the connections between them. However, the
results of these studies also show that children’s analogical reasoning is influenced by
different types of knowledge at different ages and this knowledge might lead them to
misunderstand figurative uses. The younger learners are heavily influenced by the
immediate context and their personal experiences. In the case of the 5-year-olds, this is
295
Conclusions
especially evident when they reason about an element that catches their attention. For
instance they may mark a specific part of the stairs because they wait there for one of their
teachers before going up.
This tendency is also present, to a certain extent, in the 7-year-olds, but they are
particularly dependent on script knowledge, which may lead them to wrong answers. For
instance, in Study 1, their script knowledge influences their answers to give me a hand. The
children obviously situate the semantics of
feel
HELP
HELP
in the contexts in which they themselves
is salient. So, if learning the tables or sitting an exam have been recently
experienced as being difficult, their extension of body parts in the context of helping will
depend on these recent occurrences of obvious ‘helping’ scenarios. This kind of situated
reasoning suggests that when presenting this semantic extension to them it would be useful
to relate it to scenarios in which the hands are used for helping. Similarly, over-reliance on
specific knowledge of particular situations and events (such as those that provoke a
mother’s anger) in Study 2 led the children to misinterpret the short story and to miss the
opportunity of understanding the semantic extension of MOUTH with which the story ended.
In the case of the 9-year-olds, recent knowledge acquired through classroom work
seems to influence their reasoning, as illustrated in the examples in which they refer to the
functions of the hands as an alternative means for communication in general or for people
who cannot speak. The teacher needs to distinguish the kind of knowledge the children are
bringing into the classroom at different ages (for example, script knowledge in the case of
the 7-year-olds or the 9-year-olds’ experience of classroom work) and direct the children to
the most useful knowledge in each case.
The results of the experimental research presented in this dissertation indicate that
even very young learners are endowed with that unique capacity to understand one thing in
terms of another, and that this ability is also available to them in an L2. In this sense, it is
not only intermediate or advanced learners who can benefit from the pedagogical
application of the cognitive linguistic approach to metonymy and metaphor. Even very
young learners can be helped to extend the possibilities of a limited lexicon in the L2. In
296
Conclusions
fact, since the L2 lexicon of a beginner is particularly restricted, helping these learners to
use their vocabulary as productively as possible will be especially beneficial for them.
Furthermore, learning a language is a developmental process and its first stages are
fundamental in terms of establishing a solid basis for future development. Clarifying the
prototypical meanings of core lexical items would lay the foundations for later extensions
in other areas. It also seems that the natural ability to reason figuratively and the presence
of certain schemas, for example, the human body schema, are more salient at earlier ages. If
the role of those schemas in human understanding is not enhanced at that early period, we
may be missing an opportunity that will not be available at later stages.
As noted at the outset, no attention is given in the course materials to the possibility
of enriching young EFL learners’ understanding of the ways in which core vocabulary
items, such as the body part terms studied here, extend their meanings in systematic ways.
Nevertheless, these semantic extensions can be apprehended by even very young learners if
they are provided with the opportunity to discover the polysemous senses of the words they
are familiar with. Thus, it would seem advisable to allow for and foster this capacity from
early stages. There is no sudden onset of figurative capacity at a certain age, which means
that there appear to be no good reasons to suppose that the kind of pedagogical application
of metaphor research carried out to date should only be relevant to older learners or those
with a greater command of the L2. Rather, fostering this capacity throughout the whole
learning process may well have beneficial effects in helping learners to reason figuratively
in the L2 at all ages and stages, and may, hence, lead to the deployment of useful strategies
in understanding not only polysemy but other figurative language uses.
Evidently, further research in this area is required. The limited nature of the research
reported in this dissertation, which has focused on one particular domain and explored the
reasoning behind children’s choice or understanding of conventional metonymies or
metaphors in English, could be expanded to consider specific pedagogical applications of
these findings, to explore other domains of knowledge, or to study the long-term
advantages of encouraging figurative reasoning in the L2 classroom, among other things.
297
Conclusions
The studies reported here have aimed to provide a first step in a field of enquiry which is, at
present, under-explored, but which may enrich current views on the teaching/learning of the
L2 lexicon in young learners.
298
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322
APPENDIX A. STIMULI DESIGNED FOR STUDY 1
Appendix A
SITUATIONS DESIGNED FOR STUDY 1
Case 1. Give me a hand
“Si necesito que me ayudéis a hacer algo, ¿cómo creéis que os lo voy a pedir en
inglés?” (If I need your help to do something, how do you think I will ask for it
in English?)
“Give me a head, give me a hand or give me a mouth?”
Case 2. The hands of a watch
Children of this age are more familiar with digital watches, therefore, in order to
check if they would recognise the hands of an analogue watch, in the first place, they were
shown one and asked to describe how it works and its parts.
“¿Cómo creéis que se llaman estas partes (señalando las agujas) en inglés?
(What do you think these parts (pointing to the hands) are called in English?)
“mouths, heads, or hands?”
It is interesting to note that although there exists in Spanish the word manecillas
(literally, “little hands”) to refer to the hands of a watch, it is rather formal and infrequent.
In fact the most common word used to designate these devices is agujas which literally
means “needles”.
CASE 3. HAND IT TO ME
“X (el nombre de uno de los niños) tiene una hoja de papel y le pido que me la
dé, ¿qué creéis que le voy a decir en inglés?” (X (the name of one of the
children) has got this piece of paper and I ask him/her to give it to me. What do
you think I will say in English)
“Head it to me, hand it to me or mouth/foot it to me?”
324
APPENDIX B. STIMULI DESIGNED FOR STUDY 2
Appendix B
SHORT STORY DESIGNED FOR STUDY 2
This is Sarah and this is Michael. Sarah and Michael. They are brother and sister. Sarah is
Michael’s sister and Michael is Sarah’s brother. They are in Sarah’s bedroom. They are
drawing a picture with brushes and coloured paints in Sarah’s bedroom. Suddenly, Michael
spills some red paint on Sarah’s duvet. What a mess! Their mum comes in and looks at
them. ‘What’s happened?’ she asks. Sarah and Michael don’t open their mouth.
¿Qué pasa al final de la historia?
a) La madre culpa a Michael
(The mother blames Michael)
b) Los niños se quedan callados
(The children keep quiet)
326
Appendix B
STORY STRIP 1
327
Appendix B
STORY STRIP 2
328
Appendix B
STORY STRIP 3
329
APPENDIX C. STIMULI DESIGNED FOR STUDY 3
Appendix C
PHOTOGRAPHS USED IN STUDY 3
THE HEAD OF A BED
331
Appendix C
THE HEAD OF A HAMMER
332
Appendix C
THE HEAD OF THE STAIRS
333
Appendix C
THE HEAD OF A LINE OF CARS
334
APPENDIX D. TRANSCRIPTION CONVENTIONS
Appendix D
TRANSCRIPTION CONVENTIONS
The original words in Spanish are presented in italics and in double inverted commas (“ ”).
The English translations have no special marks or type of font.
When there is an English word in the Spanish original, it is marked with single inverted
commas (‘ ’) that are also kept in the English translation. For example:
C: “ ‘hand’ porque las cosas se hacen con la mano”
C: ‘hand’ because you do things with your hands
C stands for child. When more than one child participates in the same interaction, they are
distinguished by giving them a number according to the order of intervention (e.g. C1,
C2 or C3). Sometimes the child’s name appear between square brackets ([ ]) in order to
facilitate the discussion (e.g. [María]). All the children’s names provided are fictitious.
R stands for researcher”.
Pauses are marked with a dash ( – ) but their length has not been recorded.
Gestures are explained and presented between square brackets ([ ]). For example, [shrugs]
The regional varieties or mispronunciations of words have been faithfully transcribed but
accompanied by the standard form in brackets (e.g. deo (dedo) )
336

LA COMPRENSIÓN DE ALGUNAS EXTENSIONES SEMÁNTICAS

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