Abstract
The article examines two key issues in the theory of consciousness and psycholinguistics: the question of the elementary units of thinking and speech and the question of the method of their implementation in alphabetical writing. These issues are analyzed in conjunction and presented in the Neoplatonist paradigm. The author puts forward (as a single system-forming principle for all levels of thinking and speech, from preverbal to utterances of any length) the principle of progressive reduction of the semantic field in the process of connecting semantic units based on common subelements. The hypothesis about the way to implement this principle in writing is formulated taking into account historically developed, mainly in the East, as a result of the unconscious process of appropriation of reality, ideas about semantic space (mandalas and similar diagrams).
