Аннотация:The cognitive mechanisms underlying language conceptualization can be revealed using the notion of a semantic shift, understood as the association of two distinct linguistic meanings in the form of synchronic polysemy, diachronic semantic evolution, cognates and some others. The data collected in the “Database of semantic shifts in languages of the world” (www.datsemshift.ru) allows us to conclude that the linguistic meaning of visual perception serves as the source for the denotation of all the basic mental states, i.e. knowledge, understanding, belief, expectation and intention, as well as of some complex meanings which include mental and actional components. The paper discusses three cognitive mechanisms of semantic shifts in the domain of visual perception, namely the “metaphorical”, “inferential” and “metonymical” ones.