Empirical Article
The Development of Simile Comprehension: From Similarity to Scalar Implicature
Madeleine Long, Vishakha Shukla, Paula Rubio-Fernandez,
Corresponding Author
Paula Rubio-Fernandez
University of Oslo
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Paula Rubio-Fernández, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway. Electronic mail may be sent to [email protected].
Search for more papers by this authorMadeleine Long, Vishakha Shukla, Paula Rubio-Fernandez,
Corresponding Author
Paula Rubio-Fernandez
University of Oslo
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Paula Rubio-Fernández, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway. Electronic mail may be sent to [email protected].
Search for more papers by this authorFirst published: 25 January 2021
This research was supported by a FRIPRO Grant from the Research Council of Norway (Ref. 275505) awarded to Paula Rubio-Fernandez. The authors gratefully acknowledge this funding.
Abstract
Similes require two different pragmatic skills: appreciating the intended similarity and deriving a scalar implicature (e.g., “Lucy is like a parrot” normally implies that Lucy is not a parrot), but previous studies overlooked this second skill. In Experiment 1, preschoolers (N = 48; ages 3–5) understood “X is like a Y” as an expression of similarity. In Experiment 2 (N = 99; ages 3–6, 13) and Experiment 3 (N = 201; ages 3–5 and adults), participants received metaphors (“Lucy is a parrot”) or similes (“Lucy is like a parrot”) as clues to select one of three images (a parrot, a girl or a parrot-looking girl). An early developmental trend revealed that 3-year-olds started deriving the implicature “X is not a Y,” whereas 5-year-olds performed like adults.
Supporting Information
| Filename | Description |
|---|---|
| cdev13507-sup-0001-AppendixS1.pdfPDF document, 351.2 KB | Appendix S1. Further discussion, model outputs, subject-level analyses, and visualizations |
Please note: The publisher is not responsible for the content or functionality of any supporting information supplied by the authors. Any queries (other than missing content) should be directed to the corresponding author for the article.
References
- Asch, S. E., & Nerlove, H. (1960). The development of double function terms in children. In B. Kaplan & S. Wapner (Eds.), Perspectives in psychological theory (pp. 47–60). New York, NY: International Universities Press.
- Barnden, J. A. (2012). Metaphor and simile: Fallacies concerning comparison, ellipsis, and inter paraphrase. Metaphor and Symbol, 27, 265–282. https://doi.org/10.1080/10926488.2012.716272
- Barner, D., Brooks, N., & Bale, A. (2011). Accessing the unsaid: The role of scalar alternatives in children’s pragmatic inference. Cognition, 118, 84–93. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2010.10.010
- Barr, D. J., Levy, R., Scheepers, C., & Tily, H. J. (2013). Random effects structure for confirmatory hypothesis testing: Keep it maximal. Journal of Memory and Language, 68, 255–278. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2012.11.001
- Bloom, P. (2002). How children learn the meanings of words. MIT Press. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/3577.001.0001
- Braine, M. D., & Rumain, B. (1981). Development of comprehension of “or”: Evidence for a sequence of competencies. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 31, 46–70. https://doi.org/10.1016/0022-0965(81)90003-5
- Carston, R. (2002). Thoughts and utterances: The pragmatics of explicit communication. Oxford, UK: Blackwell. https://doi.org/10.1002/9780470754603
10.1002/9780470754603 Google Scholar
- Carston, R. (2010). Metaphor: Ad hoc concepts, literal meaning and mental images. In Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society (Vol. 110, pp. 295–321). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9264.2010.00288.x
10.1111/j.1467-9264.2010.00288.x Google Scholar
- Carston, R., & Wearing, C. (2011). Metaphor, hyperbole and simile: A pragmatic approach. Language and Cognition, 3, 283–312. https://doi.org/10.1515/langcog.2011.010
10.1515/langcog.2011.010 Google Scholar
- Chierchia, G., Crain, S., Guasti, M. T., Gualmini, A., & Meroni, L. (2001). The acquisition of disjunction: Evidence for a grammatical view of scalar implicatures. In A. H.-J. Do, L. Dominguez, & A. Johansen (Eds.), Proceedings of the 25th Boston University conference on language development (pp. 157–168). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.
- Chierchia, G., Fox, D., & Spector, B. (2008). The grammatical view of scalar implicatures and the relationship between semantics and pragmatics. In C. Maienborn, K. Heusinger, & P. Portner (Eds.), Semantics: An international handbook of natural language meaning (pp. 47–62). Mouton de Gruyter. https://doi.org/10.1353/lan.2013.0026
- Clark, E. V. (1973). What's in a word? On the child's acquisition of semantics in his first language. In T. E. Moore (Ed.), Cognitive development and acquisition of language (pp. 65–110). New York, NY: Academic Press.
10.1016/B978-0-12-505850-6.50009-8 Google Scholar
- Degen, J. (2015). Investigating the distribution of some (but not all) implicatures using corpora and web-based methods. Semantics and Pragmatics, 8, 11–21. https://doi.org/10.3765/sp.8.11
- Di Paola, S., Domaneschi, F., & Pouscoulous, N. (2019). Metaphorical developing minds: The role of multiple factors in the development of metaphor comprehension. Journal of Pragmatics. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2019.08.008
- Doran, R., Baker, R., McNabb, Y., Larson, M., & Ward, G. (2009). On the non-unified nature of scalar implicature: An empirical investigation. International Review of Pragmatics, 1, 1–38. https://doi.org/10.1163/187730909X12538045489854
10.1163/187730909X12538045489854 Google Scholar
- Doran, R., Ward, G., Larson, M., McNabb, Y., & Baker, R. E. (2012). A novel experimental paradigm for distinguishing between what is said and what is implicated. Language, 88, 124–154. https://doi.org/10.1353/lan.2012.0008
- Falkum, I. L., Recasens, M., & Clark, E. V. (2017). “The moustache sits down first”: On the acquisition of metonymy. Journal of Child Language, 44, 87–119. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305000915000720
- Gentner, D. (1983). Structure-mapping: A theoretical framework for analogy. Cognitive Science, 7, 155–170. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0364-0213(83)80009-3
- Gentner, D. (2003). Why we’re so smart. In D. Gentner & S. Goldin-Meadow (Eds.), Language in mind: Advances in the study of language and thought (pp. 195–235). MIT Press. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/4117.003.0015
- Gentner, D., Bowdle, B., Wolff, P., & Boronat, C. (2001). Metaphor is like analogy. In D. Centner, K. J. Holyoak, & B. N. Kokinov (Eds.), The analogical mind: Perspectives from cognitive science (pp. 199–253). Cambridge MA: MIT Press. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/1251.003.0010
10.7551/mitpress/1251.003.0010 Google Scholar
- Gershkoff-Stowe, L., Connell, B., & Smith, L. (2006). Priming overgeneralizations in two-and four-year-old children. Journal of Child Language, 33, 461–486. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305000906007562
- Geurts, B. (2010). Quantity implicatures. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/ip-2016-0020
10.1017/CBO9780511975158 Google Scholar
- Gibbs, R. W. (1994). The poetics of mind: Figurative thought, language and understanding. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
- Glucksberg, S. (2001). Understanding figurative language: From metaphors to idioms. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195111095.001.0001
10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195111095.001.0001 Google Scholar
- Glucksberg, S. (2003). The psycholinguistics of metaphor. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 7, 92–96. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1364-6613(02)00040-2
- Glucksberg, S. (2011). Understanding metaphors: The paradox of unlike things compared. In K. Ahmad (Ed.), Affective computing and sentiment analysis: Emotion, metaphor and terminology (pp. 1–12). Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-1757-2_1
10.1007/978-94-007-1757-2_1 Google Scholar
- Glucksberg, S., & Keysar, B. (1990). Understanding metaphorical comparisons: Beyond similarity. Psychological Review, 97, 3–18. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.97.1.3
- Goodman, N. D., & Stuhlmüller, A. (2013). Knowledge and implicature: Modeling language understanding as social cognition. Topics in Cognitive Science, 5, 173–184. https://doi.org/10.1111/tops.12007
- Gualmini, A., Crain, S., Meroni, L., Chierchia, G., & Guasti, M. T. (2001). October). At the semantics/pragmatics interface in child language. Semantics and Linguistic Theory, 11, 231–247. https://doi.org/10.3765/salt.v11i0.2840
10.3765/salt.v11i0.2840 Google Scholar
- Guasti, M. T., Chierchia, G., Crain, S., Foppolo, F., Gualmini, A., & Meroni, L. (2005). Why children and adults sometimes (but not always) compute implicatures. Language and Cognitive Processes, 20, 667–696. https://doi.org/10.1080/01690960444000250
- Hansen, M. B., & Markman, E. M. (2005). Appearance questions can be misleading: A discourse-based account of the appearance–reality problem. Cognitive Psychology, 50, 233–263. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cogpsych.2004.09.001
- Happé, F. G. (1995). Understanding minds and metaphors: Insights from the study of figurative language in autism. Metaphor and Symbol, 10, 275–295. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327868ms1004_3
- Horowitz, A. C., Schneider, R. M., & Frank, M. C. (2018). The trouble with quantifiers: Exploring children's deficits in scalar implicature. Child Development, 89, 572–593. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.13014
- Hudson, J., & Nelson, K. (1984). Play with language: Overextensions as analogies. Journal of Child Language, 11, 337–346. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305000900005808
- Israel, M., Harding, J., & Tobin, V. (2004). On simile. In M. Achard & S. Kemmer (Eds.), Language, culture, and mind (pp. 123–135). Stanford, CA: CSLI.
- Kao, J. T., Bergen, L., & Goodman, N. D. (2014). Formalizing the pragmatics of metaphor understanding. In P. Bello, M. Guarini, M. McShane, & B. Scassellati (Eds.), Proceedings of the 36th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 719–724). Quebec City, Canada: Cognitive Science Society.
- Katsos, N., & Bishop, D. V. (2011). Pragmatic tolerance: Implications for the acquisition of informativeness and implicature. Cognition, 120, 67–81. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2011.02.015
- Köder, F., & Falkum, I. L. (2019). Children's metonymy comprehension: Evidence from eye-tracking and picture selection. Journal of Pragmatics. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2019.07.007
- Kurumada, C., & Clark, E. V. (2017). Pragmatic inferences in context: Learning to interpret contrastive prosody. Journal of Child Language, 44, 850–880. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305000916000246
- Levinson, S. C. (2000). Presumptive meanings: The theory of generalized implicature. MIT Press. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/5526.001.0001
10.7551/mitpress/5526.001.0001 Google Scholar
- MacWhinney, B. (2000). The CHILDES project: Tools for analyzing talk ( 3rd ed.). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
- Miller, K., Schmitt, C., Chang, H., & Munn, A. (2005). Young children understand some implicatures. In A. Brugos, M. R. Clark-Cotton, & S. Ha (Eds.), Proceedings of the 29th Annual Boston University conference on language development (pp. 389–400). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.
- Norbury, C. F. (2005). The relationship between theory of mind and metaphor: Evidence from children with language impairment and autistic spectrum disorder. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 23, 383–399. https://doi.org/10.1348/026151005X26732
- Noveck, I. A. (2001). When children are more logical than adults: Experimental investigations of scalar implicature. Cognition, 78, 165–188. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0010-0277(00)00114-1
- Özçalıskan, S., & Goldin-Meadow, S. (2006). “X Is like Y”: The emergence of similarity mappings in children’s early speech and gesture. In G. Kristiansen, M. Achard, R. Dirven, & F. J. Ruiz (Eds.), Cognitive linguistics: Current applications and future perspectives (pp. 229–260). Berlin, Germany: de Gruyter.
- Özçalışkan, Ş., Goldin-Meadow, S., Gentner, D., & Mylander, C. (2009). Does language about similarity play a role in fostering similarity comparison in children? Cognition, 112, 217–228. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2009.05.010
- Papafragou, A., & Musolino, J. (2003). Scalar implicatures: Experiments at the semantics/pragmatics interface. Cognition, 86, 253–282. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0010-0277(02)00179-8
- Papafragou, A., & Skordos, D. (2016). Scalar implicature. In The Oxford handbook of developmental linguistics (pp. 611–632). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199601264.013.26
- Papafragou, A., & Tantalou, N. (2004). Children’s computation of implicatures. Language Acquisition, 12, 71–82. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327817la1201_3
10.1207/s15327817la1201_3 Google Scholar
- Pouscoulous, N. (2011). Metaphor: For adults only? Belgian Journal of Linguistics, 25, 51–79. https://doi.org/10.1075/bjl.25.04pou
10.1075/bjl.25.04pou Google Scholar
- Pouscoulous, N., Noveck, I. A., Politzer, G., & Bastide, A. (2007). A developmental investigation of processing costs in implicature production. Language Acquisition, 14, 375. https://doi.org/10.1080/10489220701600457
10.1080/10489220701600457 Google Scholar
- Pouscoulous, N., & Tomasello, M. (2019). Early birds: Metaphor understanding in 3-year-olds. Journal of Pragmatics. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2019.05.021
- R Core Team. (2018). R: A language and environment for statistical computing. Vienna, Austria: R Foundation for Statistical Computing. Retrieved from https://www.R-project.org/
- Reynolds, R. E., & Ortony, A. (1980). Some issues in the measurement of children's comprehension of metaphorical language. Child Development, 51, 1110–1119. https://doi.org/10.2307/1129551
- Rubio-Fernandez, P., Geurts, B., & Cummins, C. (2017). Is an apple like a fruit? A study on comparison and categorisation statements. Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 8, 367–390. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13164-016-0305-4
- Rubio-Fernandez, P., & Grassmann, S. (2016). Metaphors as second labels: Difficult for preschool children? Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 45, 931–944. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10936-015-9386-y
- Seidenberg, P. L., & Bernstein, D. K. (1986). The comprehension of similes and metaphors by learning disabled and non learning-disabled children. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 17, 219–229. https://doi.org/10.1044/0161-1461.1703.219
10.1044/0161-1461.1703.219 Google Scholar
- Siltanen, S. A. (1990). Effects of explicitness on children's metaphor comprehension. Metaphor and Symbol, 5, 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327868ms0501_1
- Skordos, D., & Papafragou, A. (2016). Children’s derivation of scalar implicatures: Alternatives and relevance. Cognition, 153, 6–18. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2016.04.006
- Smith, C. L. (1980). Quantifiers and question answering in young children. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 30, 191–205. https://doi.org/10.1016/0022-0965(80)90057-0
- Sperber, D., & Wilson, D. (2008). A deflationary account of metaphors. The Cambridge handbook of metaphor and thought (pp. 84–105). Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511816802.007
- Stiller, A. J., Goodman, N. D., & Frank, M. C. (2015). Ad hoc implicature in preschool children. Language Learning and Development, 11, 176–190. https://doi.org/10.1080/15475441.2014.927328
- Van Tiel, B., Pankratz, E., & Sun, C. (2019). Scales and scalarity: Processing scalar inferences. Journal of Memory and Language, 105, 93–107. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2018.12.002
- Van Tiel, B., Van Miltenburg, E., Zevakhina, N., & Geurts, B. (2016). Scalar diversity. Journal of Semantics, 33, 137–175. https://doi.org/10.1093/jos/ffu017
- Vosniadou, S. (1987a). Children and metaphors. Child Development, 58, 870–885. https://doi.org/10.2307/1130223
- Vosniadou, S. (1987b). Contextual and linguistic factors in children’s comprehension of nonliteral language. Metaphor and Symbol, 2, 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327868ms0201_1
- Vosniadou, S. (1989). Context and the development of metaphor comprehension. Metaphor and Symbolic Activity, 4, 159–171. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327868ms0403_4
- Vosniadou, S. (1995). Analogical reasoning in cognitive development. Metaphor and Symbol, 10, 297–308. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327868ms1004_4
- Vosniadou, S., & Ortony, A. (1983). The emergence of the literal-metaphorical-anomalous distinction in young children. Child Development, 54, 154–161. https://doi.org/10.2307/1129872
- Vosniadou, S., Ortony, A., Reynolds, R., & Wilson, P. (1984). Sources of difficulty in children’s understanding of metaphorical language. Child Development, 55, 1588–1606. https://doi.org/10.2307/1130028
- Winner, E., McCarthy, M., Kleinman, S., & Gardner, H. (1979). First metaphors. New Directions in Child Development, 3, 29–41. https://doi.org/10.1002/cd.23219790305
10.1002/cd.23219790305 Google Scholar
