SEMANTIC AND COGNITIVE PATTERNS OF DIRECTIONAL MOTION VERBS IN ENGLISH AND UZBEK: A COMPARATIVE TYPOLOGICAL INVESTIGATION

Abstract

Directional motion is a fundamental domain through which humans conceptualize spatial experience and represent it linguistically. This study examines the semantic typology of directional motion verbs in English and Uzbek, focusing on the interaction of path, manner, orientation, and deictic perspective. Drawing on literary texts, spoken discourse, and lexicographic sources, the analysis identifies semantic patterns related to movement toward, away from, upward, downward, inward, outward, and across space. The findings show that while both languages share universal cognitive foundations, they differ in lexical granularity, morphosyntactic realization, and conceptual organization. English primarily combines manner-based verbs with satellite path markers, whereas Uzbek often expresses direction through verbal morphology and contextual semantic structures. The study contributes to comparative linguistic typology by revealing how different linguistic systems organize motion concepts within broader cognitive frameworks.