ИСТИНА

The report is devoted to the problem of conceptualisation. The formation of a concept is a gradual mental process that involves the growth of human knowledge of a particular subject in a number of spheres of conscious activity. As the concept TIME is one of the most prominent and massive concepts within the human mind, here, an attempt is made to find and describe its essential characteristics, based on the available encyclopedic information and accumulated knowledge. This article examines the experiential basis of concept formation. In this paper, TIME is described from the point of view of its characteristics that can be determined by analysing the commonly available information from several spheres of human knowledge. This descriptive approach is warranted by the mechanism of conceptualisation - a concept is created by pooling together the knowledge of a community about a particular phenomenon. It is universal in nature, as its very existence helps a group of people overcome individual differences of interpretation on the way of understanding and knowledge acquisition. Due to the formidable structure of the concept itself, the aim of this research is partial concept reconstruction with the help of linguistically represented information. Moreover, relying on the shared experience of the English-speaking community in connection with time, it is possible to characterise the speakers' worldview by singling out the peculiarities of concept formation and representation. Research material comprises encyclopedic, dictionary and research data from multiple academic sources.