Development of nonliteral interpretations in typically developing Spanish speaking children: light verb constructions and figurative expressions

Abstract

In this paper we present a study about the typical development of the comprehension of expressions that exhibit an ambiguity between a literal and a nonliteral interpretation in Spanish, and whose most frequent use is nonliteral. Such expressions include light verb constructions (LVC) such as to make the bed and expressions in a metaphor-hyperbole-idiom continuum (MHI) such as to sleep with angels. We ran a forced-choice experiment where children aged 3 to 9 (N = 143) heard an ambiguous expression and had to choose the correct picture on the face of three options: one target item and two distractors. There were two counterbalanced lists, so that each critical item would be present in either the literal or the nonliteral condition. We collected accuracy data as well as reaction times. We encountered different developmental trends for LVC than for MHI, observing a literalist stage in MHI which we did not observe in LVC.