Comparative Analysis Of Stress And Intonation Systems In English And Uzbek

Abstract

This article presents a comparative analysis of the prosodic organization of English and Uzbek with a focus on lexical stress and sentence intonation. Drawing on descriptive-typological comparison and acoustic-informed observations from reference corpora and pedagogical materials, we show that English maintains a high functional load for stress in distinguishing lexical and morphological contrasts and for organizing information structure through nuclear stress placement. Uzbek, by contrast, demonstrates predominantly final word stress with limited lexical distinctiveness, while intonational means—boundary tones, pitch range, and phrase-final lengthening—carry the primary burden for expressing sentence modality and discourse pragmatics. The study highlights how rhythm type (stress-timed vs. more syllable-timed tendencies), stress placement rules, and nuclear tone inventories interact with morphosyntax in each language. Pedagogical implications are discussed for L2 pronunciation training for Uzbek learners of English and for teaching English-speaking learners Uzbek prosody. The article recommends explicit instruction in English stress alternations, nuclear tone selection, and deaccenting rules for given information, and systematic practice with Uzbek statement and yes/no contours, focus marking, and clitic behavior.