CONCEPT: ITS DEFINITION, HISTORY, AND DIACHRONIC APPROACH

Abstract

In the modern days, the study of the "trinity" of human-language-cognition occupies a central position in philology. Special attention is given to the phenomenon of the "concept," which has become one of the focal objects of such research. This article is dedicated to the notion of "concept" and addresses the following issues:

First, an expanded academic interpretation of the phenomenon of "concept" is provided based on various academic dictionaries.

Second, relying on different sources, an analysis of the history of the concept is conducted, examining when and how the notion of "concept" emerged as an object of academic research, who studied this phenomenon, and what questions were raised in the process.

Third, the paper explores how the concept was developed within the framework of certain problems in 20th-century linguistics.

Interest in this phenomenon as a structural and content-based unit of human cognition has significantly increased in Uzbek philology as well. However, there are gaps in the understanding of what a concept is in essence, how the notion of concept evolved, and how it became one of the central issues in cognitive sciences, such as philosophy and cognitive linguistics, which focus on the study of human cognition. This extended analysis of the phenomenon aims to fill these gaps, which are evident in monographs, dissertations, and articles written in the Uzbek language. A clear example of such gaps is the use of the word "tushuncha" (idea) as an equivalent of the term "concept". This mistaken identification can be seen as a result of a lack of information regarding the role of concepts in human cognition and language. This article is an attempt to bridge the existing gaps in the study of the concept as a research object by providing a comprehensive interpretation of this phenomenon and explaining the areas of science and the research questions within which it has been formed. Such an analysis may offer insights into the future prospects of research on this topic.