SYSTEMATIC FEATURES OF PHONETIC SPELLING AND SOUND IMITATIVE IN ENGLISH AND UZBEK

Abstract: This thesis investigates the systematic features of phonetic spelling and sound-imitative (onomatopoeic) vocabulary in English and Uzbek. It shows that, despite belonging to unrelated language families, both languages organize their sound-imitative lexicons around recurring, rule-governed formal devices rather than arbitrary spelling. English relies chiefly on ablaut reduplication, phonaestheme-bearing consonant clusters, and zero-derivation of imitative words into verbs, while Uzbek relies on exact and modified root reduplication together with a productive imitative verb-forming suffix, supported by a largely phonemic orthography. The comparison points to a shared substratum of acoustic iconicity across the two languages alongside clearly language-specific structural implementations, with practical implications for translation, lexicography, and language teaching.