Eliseeva, Nadezda

Marini, Andrea

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78 Eliseeva	N.,	Marini	A.	(2016).	Comprehension	of	 idiomatic	expressions	by	Russian-speaking	preschoolers	with	typical	development.	 In	Proceedings	of	the	International	Conference	on	the	“Scientific	heritage	of	V.A.	Bogoroditskij	as	a	vector	of	modern	research	of	Kazan	linguistic	school”.	Kazan,	Russian	federation;	October,	31	–	November,	3	2016).	Vol.	2.	p.	78-81	ISBN	978-5-00019-715-8		N.Eliseeva1 A.Marini1,2 1 University of Udine, Udine (Italy) 	2 Claudiana - Landesfachhochschule 	für Gesundheitsberufe Bozen (Italy) 			Comprehension of idiomatic expressions 	by Russian speaking preschoolers with typical development 			comprehension of Idiomatic expressions, acquisition of figurative meaning, Russian speaking children, testing idioms, pre-schoolers 		Introduction 	The ability to process figurative language is a key feature of human verbal communication. To date, it is still not clear at what age this complex skill matures in children exposed to different languages. When it comes to Russian, the comprehension and production of one form of figurative lan- guage, i.e., Idiomatic Expressions (IEs), has not been systematically studied yet in developmental linguistics and has mostly focused on error analysis [e.g. Tseytlin, 2000; Gridina, 2006]. The current brief report outlines the preliminary results of a larger pro- ject aimed at developing an Idiom Comprehension Task for Russian-speaking children which involves both children with Typical Development and children with developmental Language Impairments. Namely, we present here the re- sults obtained by administering this task to a sample of monolingual pre- schoolers aged 4 through 7 with the aim of answering to the following ques- tions: 1) can Russian-speaking preschoolers correctly interpret the non-literal meanings of IEs?; 2) Is there a difference between younger (i.e., 4-5 y.o.) and older (i.e., 6-7 y.o.) preschoolers in the amount of given correct, literal and wrong responses? 79 Eliseeva	N.,	Marini	A.	(2016).	Comprehension	of	 idiomatic	expressions	by	Russian-speaking	preschoolers	with	typical	development.	 In	Proceedings	of	the	International	Conference	on	the	“Scientific	heritage	of	V.A.	Bogoroditskij	as	a	vector	of	modern	research	of	Kazan	linguistic	school”.	Kazan,	Russian	federation;	October,	31	–	November,	3	2016).	Vol.	2.	p.	78-81	ISBN	978-5-00019-715-8		Materials and Methods 	Participants 	Fifty-six Russian-speaking preschoolers with typical development were included in the study (see Table 1). They formed 2 groups of monolingual Russian native speakers differing on chronological age (younger: 4 to 5 year olds; older 6 to 7 year olds) but matched on numerosity (N=28 in each group) and gender distribution (13 males in each group). None of the participants had a known history of speech and/or language impairments, mental retarda- tion, hearing loss or pervasive developmental disorders. All participants were attending regular kindergartens in Omsk, Russia. 		Table 1 – Age, numerosity and gender distribution of the two groups of participants. Legenda: M=Males. 		Age-Group 	Age 	Number 	Sex 	Younger (4_5) 	4.73 (.46) – Range: 4.04-5.11 	28 	M=13 (46.4%) 	Older (6_7) 	6.18 (.35) - Range: 6.00-7.02 	28 	M=13 (46.4%) 			Materials 	Forty IEs were selected from the dictionary of Russian idiomatic ex- pressions (Fedorov, 2008) and were then checked for their presence/absence in the General Internet-Corpus of Russian language (GICR1). A wide cohort of Russian-speaking adults (n=420) aged 20 to 60 years old participated to an online survey set out to assess the frequency of use of the selected IEs on a three-scores scale. The results of this survey were compared to those ob- tained with the GICR database. As a result, the 10 idioms with the highest frequency scores were selected for the experiment. Methods Children were asked to identify the correct non-literal meaning of a se- ries of 10 IEs that were uttered by the examiner. For each item the child 			1 http://www.webcorpora.ru/en/#sthash.n1hjGkYI.dpuf 80 Eliseeva	N.,	Marini	A.	(2016).	Comprehension	of	idiomatic	expressions	by	Russian-speaking	preschoolers	with	typical	development.	In	Proceedings	of	the	International	 Conference	 on	 the	 “Scientific	 heritage	 of	 V.A.	 Bogoroditskij	as	 a	 vector	 of	 modern	 research	 of	 Kazan	 linguistic	 school”.	 Kazan,	 Russian	federation;	October,	31	–	November,	3	2016).	Vol.	2.	p.	78-81	ISBN	978-5-00019-715-8		heard three potential explanations (one correct, one literal, and one overtly wrong) and was asked to choose the one that (s)he thought would be correct. For each correct answer children received 1 point for a maximum total score of 10. 	Results and discussion 	Potential age-related differences in the ability to identify the correct indi- rect meaning of the provided IEs were explored running one independent samples T-Test with age group (1. 4 to 5 years old; 2. 6 to 7 years old) as in- dependent variable and three score obtained by each age-group at this task as dependent variables (i.e., Total Correct Answers, Total Wrong Answers, Total Literal Answers). Alpha level was set at p<.017 after Bonferroni correc- tion for multiple variables (.05/3 dependent variables). This analysis showed the presence of a significant age effect on the production of correct answers (t(54)=-2.994; p<.004) but not for the production of Wrong (t(54)=1.852; p=.070) or Literal Answers (t(54)= 1.852; p=.070); (see Table 2). 		Table 2 – Descriptive statistics reporting the performance of the two groups of children at the Idiomatic Comprehension task. The asterisk ( * ) shows when the group-related difference was significant. 		Age-Group 	Correct Answers, 	mean (SD) 	Wrong Answers, 	mean (SD) 	Literal Answers, 	mean (SD) 	Younger (4_5) 	2.89 (2.1)* 	2.57 (1.6) 	3.36 (1.59) 	Older (6_7) 	4.54 (2.01)* 	1.89 (1.1) 	2.39 (2.25) 			The results from this brief report suggest that at the age of 4 the ability to process the non-literal meaning of IEs is partially present but still not ma- ture. On average these younger preschoolers provided 3 correct responses for the 10 items of the task. At this age, children tend to split IEs into inde- pendent parts, individual words, and interpret them literally. This trend to pro- vide the correct interpretation of the IEs grows sensibly between 4_5 and 6_7 81 Eliseeva	N.,	Marini	A.	(2016).	Comprehension	of	 idiomatic	expressions	by	Russian-speaking	preschoolers	with	typical	development.	 In	Proceedings	of	the	International	Conference	on	the	“Scientific	heritage	of	V.A.	Bogoroditskij	as	a	vector	of	modern	research	of	Kazan	linguistic	school”.	Kazan,	Russian	federation;	October,	31	–	November,	3	2016).	Vol.	2.	p.	78-81	ISBN	978-5-00019-715-8		years of age. However, at 7 years old it is still not fully fledged, as suggested by the performance of the children which is in many cases still below chance level (fewer than 5 correct answers for the 10 items of the task). Of note, our data collected from school children (not presented here) show that this ability boosts when children begin to attend primary school. This is likely the conse- quence of two different factors, both biological and cultural. From a biological point of view, it is well-established that the ability to process non-literal mean- ings relies on a set of cognitive skills (e.g., executive functions) that allow children to inhibit the activation of the literal meaning of an Idiomatic Expres- sion while processing its correct contextual indirect meaning. These executive skills are mostly implemented in neural networks organized in the frontal are- as that tend to myelinate around the age of 8. Furthermore, from a cultural point of view, at School children tend to be exposed to complex forms of their language that are not always available at their homes and this likely prompts their acquisition of ever more words with the inclusion of Idioms. As a conse- quence, around the age of 8 children improve their ability to manage the in- hibitory processes necessary to block the automatic access to the literal meanings of IEs while increasing their explicit knowledge of their indirect meanings. 	References 	Fedorov A.I.  Frazeologicheskij  slovar'  russkogo  literaturnogo  jazyka: 	okolo 13000 frazeologicheskih edinic / A.I.Fedorov. – Moscow: AST, 2008 	Gridina T.A. Mehanizmy reinterpretacii i obrazovanija frazeologizmov v detskoj rechi Russkij jazyk: sistema i funkcionirovanie (k 80-letiju professora P. P. Shuby): materialy III Mezhdunar. nauch. konf., Minsk, 6–7 apr. 2006 g. : v 2 ch. / T.A.Grigina; redkol. : I. S. Rovdo (otv. red.) [i dr.]. – Minsk : RIVSh, 2006. – Ch. 1. – S. 292–296. 	Tseytlin S.N. Yazyik i rebenok: Lingvistika detskoy rechi: ucheb.posobie dlya stud.vyisshih ucheb. Zavedeniy / S.N. Tseytlin. – M.: Gumanit. Izd.tsentr VLADOS, 2000. – 240 s. 

Comprehension of idiomatic expressions by Russian-speaking preschoolers with typical development

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Comprehension of idiomatic expressions by Russian-speaking preschoolers with typical development

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