This article presents a cognitive-comparative analysis of kinship terms in English, Russian, and Uzbek with the aim of explaining how each language packages family relations into lexical categories. The study is built in IMRAD format and combines componential, contrastive, and cognitive-semantic methods. The working corpus includes core consanguineal and selected affinal terms verified through lexicographic sources and recent scholarly studies. The comparison focuses on seven parameters: generation, sex, lineality, parental side, relative age, affinal specificity, and pragmatic extension to non-relatives. The results show that all three languages reliably lexicalize the nearest lineal relations, but they diverge strongly in the collateral zone. English tends toward semantic compression: aunt, uncle, and cousin cover relatively broad relational classes and require contextual or analytic clarification. Russian occupies an intermediate position: it preserves a rich traditional inventory, especially for in-laws, yet in current usage many specific terms are replaced by descriptive phrases. Uzbek demonstrates the highest degree of lexical differentiation in the sampled material, especially in distinguishing maternal and paternal lines and older versus younger siblings. The discussion argues that these differences should not be interpreted as simple degrees of lexical richness; rather, they reveal distinct cognitive strategies of categorization. English privileges economy and contextual inference, Russian shows partial restructuring under conditions of modern communicative simplification, and Uzbek integrates genealogy, hierarchy, and politeness into a single semantic field. The article concludes that kinship terminology is an especially productive site for studying the relationship between language structure, cultural knowledge, and conceptual organization.

kinship terms, cognitive linguistics, comparative linguistics, English, Russian, Uzbek, semantic categorization, linguoculture.

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