Abstract

This paper deals with the issue of a categorial status of lingual mentality. According to the author, the intentionality of consciousness is an ontological foundation for lingual mentality. The nature of lingual mentality as a universal semantic category is seen in the totality of participation in the object of consciousness. Categorial semantics of lingual mentality reveals itself in the development of an initial idea which is a meaning dominant and is presented as an integral seme ‘realization of mental activity’. This and other semes in the semantic structure of lingual units indicate functionally relevant paradigmatic and syntagmatic peculiarities that allow the author to speak of lingual mentality as a semantic category.