学龄前儿童转喻的发展及其教育意蕴

Preschoolers’ Metonymy Development and Its Education Inspiration

现有研究一般将学前儿童出现的转喻视为由于词汇匮乏导致的语言发展过程中的副产品。然而,本研究通过对看图讲述任务而收集到的4~6岁儿童自然连贯语料的分析表明,每个儿童几乎在每个故事中都产生了基于转喻机制的表达,并呈现出从隐性到显性,从偏好转喻泛化到偏好创造性转喻缩写再到偏好基于转喻的语义近似的年龄发展趋势与女孩比男孩发展得更快更早的性别差异,这说明转喻对学前儿童来说不仅是具有生产力的意义拓展方式,而且是该年龄段儿童普遍依赖的认知机制,反映了学前儿童认知的灵活性及其语言社会化逐渐深入的过程,与学前儿童在知识组织、元语言意识、心理理论三方面的发展密切相关,体现了语言、认知、社会三者之间复杂的耦合关系。作为比隐喻更基础的概念化手段,转喻是儿童词典开发的重要策略,能够促进儿童的深度学习与创造性思维发展。成人应尊重、珍视和保护儿童包含转喻联想的非常规表达,丰富儿童的感官体验和社会经验,积极利用一切符号表征促进儿童转喻思维发展。

Previous studies on language acquisition mainly take children’s metonymy as a question to be solved. To examine the language development of preschool children from the perspective of metonymy production that has rarely been investigated,the study collects large natural and coherent corpus of children aged 4~6 through the story-tell task,and builds a process-oriented and child-friendly language development model based on language facts. The results show that preschoolers’ metonymic ability is manifested as the gradual development of knowledge organization from implicit to explicit,and children’s construction methods and preferences vary from metonymic generalization to metonymic compound words,then to metonymybased semantic approximation,which reflects the flexibility of children’s cognition and the complexity of social practice. The continuum of metonymy development is consistent with children’s development in knowledge organization,metalanguage awareness,and Theory of Mind,reflecting the complex coupling relationship between language,cognition,and society. Educators should change their mindsets,carry out experiential teaching,and focus on the cultivation of metonymic thinking,so as to help children gain this key resource for fostering creativity,realizing lifelong learning and sustainable development.