Linguoculturological aspects of the lexeme cat in the Serbian language

The research was conducted in order to show the dominant models of thinking related to the word for ?cat? in the Serbian language community. The conceptualization of the cat was examined based on the meaning of lexical units: the lexeme cat and its semantic structure; the derivational network of this lexeme; the terminological expressions with the lexeme cat and the phraseologisms with this component. It can be stated that the analysis of linguistic data successfully reveals models of conceptualization of the ?cat? in the Serbian language community. The results show that both types of cognition of reality participate in the understanding of this animal - experience that is realized by the senses, and understanding, which engages the intellectual capacities.