The article presents the critical review of modern theories of linguistic categorization in view of using natural language categorization as a means of formal knowledge description. The article targets at integrating the classical conceptions of linguistic categorization, based on the postulates of logic and philosophy, and cognitive categorization described within the framework of the prototype theory. The categorization potential of the formal language IMAL has been carefully analyzed. Basic

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... ays of using linguistic categorization in formal coding of language are suggested. The article addresses the issue of the traditional deinition of semiosis as the process involving objects' representations functioning as signs and futher elaboration of this deinition in cultural semiotics. The author claims that the semiotics of culture primarily encompasses information processes, while the culturally marked mechanism of transforming information into text appears to be but another deinition of semiosis. The article focuses on culture text as a structure facilitating culture's acquiring information about itself and contextually functioning as "mind" (J. Lotman). From this standpoint semiosis is described as the communication-oriented process of generating senses which unfolds when culture texts emerge in the mental space. Culture is a space of mind for the production of semiosis Juri Lotman Relection on signs and meaning is, of course, nothing new. he purpose of this essay is to revise some fundamental ideas concerning semiosis as the process of cooperation between signs, their objects, and their interpretants and to introduce some new understanding of the notion of cultural semiosis. Philosophers and linguists have always discussed signs in one way or another but until recently this discussion of signs has always been ancillary to some other enterprise, usually a discussion of language or psychology. here had been no attempt to bring together the whole range of phenomena, linguistic and non-linguistic, which could be considered as signs, and to reset the issues of the sign as the centre of intellectual enquiry. It was only in the early years of the 20 th century that the American philosopher Charles Sanders Pierce and the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure envisaged a comprehensive science of signs. he following two linguistic traditions lie at the heart of semiotics. he programme outlined by Ferdinand de Saussure was easy to grasp: linguistics would serve as example and its basic concepts would be applied to other domains of social and cultural life. he scientist suggests making explicit the system (langue) which underlies and makes possible meaningful events (parole). He is concerned with the system as functioning totality (synchronic analysis), not with the historical provenance of its various elements (diachronic analysis), and he suggests describing two kinds of relations: contrast or opposition between signs (paradigmatic relations) and possibilities of combination through which signs create larger units (syntagmatic relations). Charles S. Peirce is a very diferent case. He devoted himself to "semeiotic" as he called it, which would be the science of sciences, since "the entire universe is perfused with signs if it is not composed exclusively of signs" [16, 394]. If so, then the question arises, what are the species of signs, the important distinctions? Peirce's voluminous writings on semiotics are full of taxonomic speculations which grow increasingly more complicated. here are 10 trichotomies by which signs can be classiied (only one of which, distinguishing icon, index and symbol, has been inluential), yielding a possible 59 049 classes of sign. Certain redundancies and dependencies allowed reducing this number to 66 classes but even this has been too many. One has to agree with Jonathan Culler that the complexity of his scheme and the swarm of neologisms created to characterize the 66 types of sign have discouraged others from entering his system and exploring his insights [5].