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Cognitive mechanisms in the interpretation and meaning of idioms

Informe de Seminario para optar al grado de Licenciado en Lengua y Literatura Inglesa / The focus of the following thesis is the cognitive mechanisms relevant to the
interpretation of English idiomatic expressions by native speakers of Spanish. It does so through
a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the responses given by 70 participants of 24 idioms,
presented to them with and without context. The idiomatic expressions are classified according
to their degree of transparency, their nuclei of information, as well as according to their degree of
compositionality: isomorphic, globally motivated, partially motivated and non-motivated idioms.
The analysis aims at evaluating the hypothesis underlying this research that assumes constancy
of schematization among the different interpretations an idiom gets, regardless its degree of
opacity. Regarding the quantitative aspect, the results suggest that the degree of transparency of
an idiom may be strongly influenced by the degree of compositionality that the idiom has.
Insofar as the processes of integration of the idiomatic expressions is concerned, the qualitative
analysis of the results shows that there occurs a constancy of domains, schematic figurations and
image schemas in the interpretations provided by the subjects, both in de-contextualised and
contextualised instances.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:UCHILE/oai:repositorio.uchile.cl:2250/130087
Date January 2014
CreatorsCanales Martínez, Francia, Flores Mella, Natalia, Garrido Jara, Macarena, Guzmán Peña, Rubén, Sanhueza Pérez, Daniel, Sepúlveda Riquelme, Stephanie, Tobar Núñez, Ana, Valdés Valdés, Gloria
ContributorsIoannou, Georgios, Facultad de Filosofía y Humanidades, Departamento de Lingüística
PublisherUniversidad de Chile
Source SetsUniversidad de Chile
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeTesis

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