This thesis research lies in the field of nominal semantics and focuses on a sample of nouns denoting humans (HN) during different stages of life: infant, child, teenager, adult, elderly (N-[age]). It is three fold. First, this works aims at offering a linguistic description of a set of N-[age] whose operation has remained unknown until now. Demonstrating their hybrid nature - N-[age] denote both referentially essential and intrinsically transient properties - we provide novel parameters for the description of HN in general. Finally, this thesis explores the possibility of notional extension of the aspectual domain to nominal semantics by questioning the concept of phase and by demonstrating that all N-[age] have a phasal structure.
