The article considers the category of “family resemblance” and the related category of “basic models” in the aspect of genre analysis using the example of two early works of N. M. Karamzin: the translation of S. Gesner’s idyll “Wooden Leg” and the first original story “Eugene and Julia”. The theory of “basic models” by J. Lakoff, created by the researcher for the needs of cognitive linguistics, with some reservations and modifications can be applied to the analysis of genre structures of both speech and literary genres.