The article attempts to systematize the linguistic (metalinguistic, textual) content of the concept complex / complexity. For this purpose, linguistic and non-linguistic contexts with complex / complexity are analyzed, primarily from the point of view of evaluativeness and markedness – unmarkedness.
The article highlights a semiotic approach to the study of specific language units: abbreviations and phraseological units. The relation between the signifier and the signified helps to perceive the process
of the formation of new linguistic signs which can be both motivated and arbitrary. In both cases the asymmetry of a linguistic sign causes the appearance of either a new signifier (in abbreviation), or a new signified (in phraseology).
The article investigates such semantic phenomena as ambisemy and eurisemy, and how they are implemented in definitions of English IT-terms and lexical meanings of those determinologised lexical units. The research data is based on both English professional dictionaries and general English online dictionaries.
By means of an intertextual analysis the article considers color as a semiotic code along with its perception by Turkic and Slavic peoples. The subjects of the study are M. Bulgakov’s novel The Master and Margarita and O. Bokeev’s story The Trace of Lightning and its original text in Kazakh.
