THE CONCEPT OF SPEECH ACTIVITY VERBS, THEIR PLACE IN LINGUISTIC RESEARCH, AND THE HISTORY OF THEIR STUDY

Abstract

Speech activity verbs (also known as speech act verbs or verbs of speaking) constitute a fundamental semantic class that encodes human communicative intentions, social interactions, and cognitive processes. In Uzbek linguistics, they are traditionally classified as nutqiy faoliyat fe’llari (e.g., gapirmoq, so‘zlamoq, demoq, aytmoq, bayon qilmoq). In Western linguistics, they are analyzed as speech act verbs (SAVs) that lexicalize illocutionary forces within pragmatic theory. This article provides a detailed examination of the concept, its theoretical foundations, semantic and pragmatic properties, and its central role in modern linguistic research. It traces the historical development from traditional grammar and structural linguistics through the pragmatic turn to contemporary cognitive, corpus-based, and anthropocentric approaches. The analysis demonstrates that speech activity verbs are not merely lexical items but powerful tools for understanding language as a human-centered phenomenon deeply embedded in social, cultural, and cognitive realities.