Evaluative description of the person's mental abilities in the Austrian national variant of German

The national variant of language is studied as a metasystem of all variations of the national language, as a parity form of language existence and adapting to its functioning conditions. In the article the paradigmatic class of lexical items in the Austrian national variant of German, which are used to evaluate a person in terms of their mental abilities, are studied. The inner structure of this class incorporates two subclasses of lexical items, which actualize positive and negative evaluations. The onomasiological approach allows to define subject codes as nomination motivating factors. Subject codes point to identification spheres of a certain object, generate images and metaphorical shifts, allow to determine the elements of the mental processes and their features relevant for positive or negative evaluation. The results of linguistic analysis reveal that in comparison to the negative evaluation, the positive one is less completely represented in the lexical and semantic system of the Austrian national variant of German. Relevant features for an evaluative description of person's mental abilities are temporal and qualitative characteristics of mental processes, quantitative characteristics of objects, qualitative characteristics of a person, such as age, physical, social and gender. The most productive subject codes are objective, zoological, botanical, physiological and anatomical codes. The spatial and temporal subject codes are less productive.