THE ISSUE OF STRESS IN UZBEK PHONETICS: THEORY AND PRACTICE

Abstract

This article investigates the theoretical and practical aspects of stress (accentuation) in Uzbek phonetics, focusing on its classification, placement rules, phonological patterns, and implications for pronunciation and orthography. Uzbek, as a Turkic language, presents a unique system of stress that differs significantly from both Indo-European and Semitic languages. While generally considered to exhibit fixed final stress in standard forms, actual spoken Uzbek shows considerable variation depending on dialectal differences, syntactic structure, word formation, and borrowed elements. The article explores how stress interacts with morphological boundaries, affects vowel reduction and intonation, and plays a role in speech rhythm and meaning differentiation. Using a combination of descriptive analysis, field recordings, and a corpus-based review of stress placement in spontaneous speech, this study reveals patterns of regularity and exceptions that are pedagogically and linguistically significant. Practical implications include the development of pronunciation models for Uzbek as a foreign language and the need for stress-sensitive speech synthesis tools. The findings emphasize the necessity of integrating phonetic theory with applied linguistic instruction and propose steps toward standardizing stress models in dictionaries and educational materials.