FORMAL MEANS OF EXPRESSING COMMUNICATIVE (ACTUAL) STRUCTURE IN UZBEK: PROSODY, WORD ORDER, PARTICLES, SYNTACTIC REPETITION AND DETACHMENT

Abstract

This paper describes the inventory of formal means by which the invariant sentence pattern of Uzbek is adapted to a concrete communicative situation — that is, realized as an utterance — and by which particular constituents are actualized as theme or rheme. Working with a corpus of literary and colloquial Uzbek and applying the diagnostic question test together with transformation and componential analysis, the study classifies these means into theme‑marking and rheme‑marking devices and shows their interaction. Intonation (prosody) is the primary and ever‑present means; the remaining devices perform their function against its background and in cooperation with it. Word order — the fronting of the actualized constituent to the pre‑predicate position, where it receives logical stress — is the leading device in Uzbek, in which the actualized constituent stands only immediately before the predicate. Particles, intensifiers and modal words attach an additional logical or emotive meaning to a communicative constituent and thereby single it out; syntactic repetition (sentence reduplication) and detached constituents build the further stages of a multi‑stage communicative structure. The results refine the description of Uzbek communicative syntax and distinguish the communicative effect of word‑order change from its merely stylistic effect.