Categorización lingüística, género gramatical y visión del mundo.

Linguistic categorization refers to a mental process through which speakers differentiate in categories the world that surrounds them. Categorization, a concept already present in Aristotle, has been widely explored by linguistics, and some theories state that language imposes on users a set of categories as a result of the speakers' interaction between themselves and with the world and the general cognitive processes of concept formation (Taylor 1989). In this paper we comment on some highlights in linguistic studies regarding the relation between linguistic categories --specifically nominal classification systems-- and speakers' conceptions about the word, trying to incorporate to this field the contributions from investigators on indigenous languages of South America. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]