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Nous proposons une nouvelle perspective sur des questions jamais résolues en les considérant comme des représentations mentales qui peuvent être traitées matériellement et donc causalement (c'est-à-dire, scientifiquement)., When one considers humanistic concepts from a cognitive point of view, as a set of mental representations, a materialistic and causal (i.e., scientific) perspective may be possible., Al centrarnos en las representaciones mentales, intentamos aportar un nuevo punto de vista sobre cuestiones que no han sido descritas jamás siguiendo una metodología de inspiración materialista y causal (es decir, científica).

Ante los problemas que presenta la hipótesis de que el lenguaje humano es una evolución de la capacidad comunicativa del mismo (p.e., su probable aparición súbita (Chomsky), su complejidad universal (Pinker), el hecho de que infra-determine los mensajes comunicados (Sperber & Wilson), etc.), se ofrece otra alternativa en la que se intenta refinar el uso terminológico de ciertos conceptos, tratando de evitar algunos de estos problemas, y proponiendo, para ello, una concepción evolutiva no sólo basada en la selección natural (Darwin), sino también en la de la endosimbiosis (Margulis)., The canonical hypothesis argues that human language evolved from simpler communicative acts in a manner non-specified, since there are no primitive languages in the World which could give us hints as to the steps it may have taken in its evolution. I think that creating a new hypothesis based on a serious attempt to reach the levels of adequacy proposed by Chomsky, and on adopting the endosymbiotic evolutionary mechanism proposed by Margulis, could easily do away with those (and a host of others) theoretical problems., L’hypothèse canonique qui veut que le langage humain soit une évolution de la capacité communicative humaine présente des problèmes qui, il me semble, peuvent être effaces si on adopte une autre hypothèse qui, fondée sur l’utilisation approprié de la terminologie conceptuelle, essaye d’expliquer cette evolution non seulement par le mécanisme darwinien de la sélection naturelle mais en ajoutant celui de l’endosymbiose proposé par Lynn Margulis.

This piece of research centres upon a detailed analysis of the internal structure of noun-noun compounds extracted from a corpus of present-day English. Our theoretical approach has been based on a variety of theories and basic principles within the field of cognitive linguistics and microcognition: Langacker's Cognitive Grammar, the Theory of Conceptual Metaphor as proposed by Lakoff and Johnson, Turner and Fauconnier's Theory of Conceptual Integration as well as Pustejovsky's Generative Lexicon. All of these approaches have been pervasively influenced by a background on connectionism.We have carried out a detailed analysis of a set of compounds according to its morphological, syntactic, semantic, cognitive and pragmatic features as each element of the compound is inserted into its contextual slot within the nominal composition construction. One of our critical findings has been the reinforcement of the fallacy of mass-count opposition in nouns. In this sense, noun compounds have helped reveal the real nature of nouns in general, as they are relatively mass or count within a countability scale based on the prototype. On the other hand, the conjunction of a conceptual context and a textual context within the contextual slot are essential for an adequate interpretation of a lexical unit. The contextual slot has thus been depicted as a container for a linguistic type, featuring a high degree of specificity with symbolic implications. We have also described the basic structure of the nominal composition construction (NCC) which is made up of two contextual slots: one slot for the compound's internal modifier (Mi) and another for the compound's head (Hn). The conceptual integration between the two components of a compound, the concept of emergence and the fact the many compounds have a well-delimited metaphorical and/or metonymical structure are also some of the interesting findings of this research. We have concluded that a noun-noun compound is a conceptually-integrat, 542 p.

Ante los problemas que presenta la hipótesis de que el lenguaje humano es una evolución de la capacidad comunicativa del mismo (p.e., su probable aparición súbita (Chomsky), su complejidad universal (Pinker), el hecho de que infra-determine los mensajes comunicados (Sperber & Wilson), etc.), se ofrece otra alternativa en la que se intenta refinar el uso terminológico de ciertos conceptos, tratando de evitar algunos de estos problemas, y proponiendo, para ello, una concepción evolutiva no sólo basada en la selección natural (Darwin), sino también en la de la endosimbiosis (Margulis)., The canonical hypothesis argues that human language evolved from simpler communicative acts in a manner non-specified, since there are no primitive languages in the World which could give us hints as to the steps it may have taken in its evolution. I think that creating a new hypothesis based on a serious attempt to reach the levels of adequacy proposed by Chomsky, and on adopting the endosymbiotic evolutionary mechanism proposed by Margulis, could easily do away with those (and a host of others) theoretical problems., L’hypothèse canonique qui veut que le langage humain soit une évolution de la capacité communicative humaine présente des problèmes qui, il me semble, peuvent être effaces si on adopte une autre hypothèse qui, fondée sur l’utilisation approprié de la terminologie conceptuelle, essaye d’expliquer cette evolution non seulement par le mécanisme darwinien de la sélection naturelle mais en ajoutant celui de l’endosymbiose proposé par Lynn Margulis.

One of the most basic linguistic principles (or parameters, according to some) is used to point to a likely necessary (though, probably, not sufficient) condition of human uniqueness (i.e. being able to speak, communicate complex messages, have religious feelings, indulge in art and humour, and so on) which has been conceptualised either as the fact that we have human souls, in religious contexts, or human minds, in other contexts.

The present work offers a psycho-pragmatic approach to idiom processing that has enough flexibility to be able to account for any idiom, regardless of their nature. In order to achieve it, two different views of modeling idiom processing have been combined: the Idiom Decomposition Hypothesis , proposed by Raymond W. Gibbs, Jr., and the pragmatic approach represented by Sperber and Wilson's Relevance Theory.This work is structured in six chapters. Chapter 1 offers a terminological and typological analysis of the most common terms used to define idioms. This analysis highlights the vagueness with which the different terms are used. Thus, the definition and the typology proposed for idioms at the end of the chapter are only based on pragmatic criteria. Chapter 2 reviews the psycholinguistic models of idiom processing, carrying out a more specific analysis of Gibbs's model than of the rest. Chapter 3 analyzes the main ideas of Relevance Theory. Chapter 4 is divided into two parts. The first one deals with which idioms communicate explicitly and implicitly. The second part tackles the uses that speakers of a language make of idioms: descriptive use---when the concept communicated by the speaker is identical to the one encoded by the idiom---and interpretative and/or metalinguistic use---when the concept of the idiom the speaker communicates resembles semantically and/or formally the one encoded by the idiom. Chapter 5 focuses on the concepts underlying idioms, which reveals that idioms make immediately accessible sets of stereotypical assumptions whose number varies depending on their degree of lexicalization. Those sets of assumptions are the point of departure for the creation of an ad hoc concept in all cases, except when the lexicalized concept underlying the idiom coincides with the one encoded by the expression. Chapter 6 accounts for the representation of idioms in the mind, following the Sperberian distinction between intuitive and reflective concepts. This analy