NARRATIVE STRUCTURES ACROSS LANGUAGES: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF FOLKTALE MOTIFS IN UZBEK AND ENGLISH TRADITIONS

This comparative study investigates the structural, thematic, and linguistic organization of narrative motifs within Uzbek and English folktale traditions. Utilizing Vladimir Propp’s structural methodology outlined in Morphology of the Folktale, this research analyzes fifty traditional tales (twenty-five Uzbek pari/pahlavon narratives and twenty-five English fairy tales) to identify common plot archetypes, functional sequences, and language-specific mechanisms of expression. The findings demonstrate that while both traditions exhibit strong alignment with Propp’s thirty-one narrative functions—particularly initial lack, interdiction, departure, donor testing, and resolution—their linguistic realization reflects fundamental cultural and grammatical differences. Uzbek folktales rely heavily on agglutinative morphology, evidential verbs (-gan ekan), fixed formulaic opening/closing couplets, and Turkic epic motifs. Conversely, English folktales favor hypotactic sentence structures, temporal adverbial framing, and localized moralizing motifs. The study provides quantitative and qualitative evidence that narrative functions transcend linguistic boundaries, while morphosyntactic structures dictate the cognitive pace and stylistic delivery of folktale motifs.