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Cognitive Verbs Reveal How English and Uzbek Express Human Thought and Perception
A new linguistic study by Karimjonova Shakhlo Ravshanjonovna from Fergana State University examines how English and Uzbek use cognitive verbs to describe thinking, memory, perception, emotion, and attention. Published in 2026 in the journal Jurnal Multidisiplin Madani (MUDIMA), the research shows that verbs do far more than describe actions. They also shape sentence structure and reveal how people organize knowledge and experience through language.
The study matters because cognitive verbs are central to communication in education, translation, artificial intelligence, language teaching, and cross-cultural understanding. Verbs such as “think,” “know,” “feel,” “see,” and “remember” are among the most frequently used words in everyday speech. According to the research, these verbs act as linguistic tools that connect human cognition with grammar and meaning.
Why Cognitive Verbs Matter in Modern Linguistics
Language researchers have long debated how verbs should be classified. While nouns often identify people or objects, verbs organize events, emotions, and mental processes. The article explains that modern linguistics still lacks a single universally accepted system for categorizing verbs semantically.
To address this issue, Karimjonova Shakhlo Ravshanjonovna adopted a paradigmatic approach that groups verbs according to their core meanings. The study divides verbs into categories such as activity, state, property, and relation, then further organizes mental activity verbs into smaller semantic “microfields.”
The research highlights how cognitive verbs provide insight into universal human experiences while also revealing cultural and linguistic differences between English and Uzbek.
How the Research Was Conducted
The study used qualitative semantic analysis based on examples from Uzbek and English literary texts. The author analyzed verbs drawn from works by writers including Charlotte Brontë, Jane Austen, Joseph Conrad, William Shakespeare, and Uzbek author Said Ahmad.
Rather than focusing only on dictionary meanings, the research examined how verbs function inside sentences and how they create what linguists call “valency structures” — patterns that determine how other words connect to the verb.
The article builds on theories developed by linguist Solomon Davidovich Katsnelson, who argued that verbs contain a “blueprint” for sentence construction. According to this perspective, verbs not only express actions or states but also organize grammatical relationships inside a sentence.
Eight Major Categories of Cognitive Verbs
The study identified several important categories of cognitive verbs shared across English and Uzbek.
Key semantic groups include:
Examples include “feel,” “sense,” and Uzbek equivalents related to physical or emotional awareness.
Verbs of desire
Words such as “want” and “desire” express intention and motivation.
These include:
- General cognition verbs like “know” and “understand”
- Visual perception verbs like “see”
- Auditory perception verbs like “hear”
- Olfactory perception verbs like “smell” and “sniff”
- Verbs of attentionExpressions such as “pay attention” and “listen carefully.”
- Verbs of emotional experienceWords describing satisfaction or emotional states.
- Verbs of emotional attitudeVerbs such as “love,” “respect,” and “like.”
- Verbs of thinkingExamples include “think,” “imagine,” “assume,” and “reflect.”
- Verbs of memoryTerms such as “remember,” “forget,” and “remind.”
The analysis found that many cognitive verbs overlap semantically. For example, verbs related to perception can also imply understanding or awareness. The word “see” may refer either to visual observation or comprehension, depending on context.
English and Uzbek Show Both Similarities and Differences
One of the study’s most important findings is that English and Uzbek share many universal cognitive concepts while expressing them differently through grammar and vocabulary.
The research demonstrates that both languages contain sophisticated systems for describing thought, perception, memory, and emotion. However, the semantic boundaries between these categories may differ depending on cultural usage and linguistic structure.
According to the article, cognitive verbs reveal how languages encode not only physical perception but also psychological interpretation. This makes them especially valuable for comparative linguistics and translation studies.
Implications for Translation, AI, and Education
The findings have practical value beyond theoretical linguistics.
For translators, the classification system may improve the accuracy of translating near-synonymous verbs between languages. A verb meaning “see” in one context may imply understanding rather than visual perception in another.
For language teachers, the study offers a structured way to teach mental verbs as interconnected semantic systems instead of isolated vocabulary items. This could help students better understand nuance and contextual meaning.
The research may also support advances in artificial intelligence and natural language processing. AI systems that analyze human language rely heavily on semantic classification. Understanding how cognitive verbs function across languages could improve machine translation, multilingual chatbots, and semantic search technologies.
The study additionally recommends future corpus-based research that would examine how frequently cognitive verbs appear in real-world speech and writing, including their collocations and grammatical patterns.
Author Perspective
Karimjonova Shakhlo Ravshanjonovna argues that cognitive verbs provide one of the clearest linguistic windows into human mental activity. The article explains that language reflects how people perceive, remember, interpret, and emotionally respond to the world around them.
The author concludes that verbs should be understood not merely as vocabulary items but as structural mechanisms that organize meaning within sentences and communication itself.
Author Profile
Karimjonova Shakhlo Ravshanjonovna is a linguistics researcher affiliated with Fergana State University. Her research focuses on cognitive linguistics, semantic analysis, causative verbs, cross-linguistic comparison, and English-Uzbek linguistic structures. She has published multiple studies on cognitive and semantic aspects of language, particularly in the fields of verbal semantics and linguistic theory.
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