Publications

Publication details [#36545]

Cacciari, Cristina and Maria Chiara Levorato. 1989. How children understand idioms in discourse. Journal of Child Language 16 (2) : 287–405.

Publication type

Article in journal

Publication language

English

Keywords

child | discourse | figurative meaning | idiom | literal meaning

Place, Publisher

Cambridge University Press

ISBN

0305-009

Journal WWW

journals.cambridge.org/

Annotation

The findings of this study demonstrate that informative contexts can improve children's idiomatic competence, even at the age of seven. In general, children appear capable of perceiving that language can be both literal and figurative.