A COMPARATIVE LEXICAL-SEMANTIC ANALYSIS OF SOMATIC-COMPONENT RIDDLES IN ENGLISH AND UZBEK
Keywords:
Riddle, somatism, lexical semantics, somatic negation, metaphor, comparative-typological analysis, linguoculturology, Uzbek and English folkloreAbstract
This study offers a comparative lexical-semantic analysis of riddles built on somatic components, that is, words denoting parts of the human body, in English and Uzbek. Although both riddle scholarship and the semantics of body-part vocabulary are well developed, the two have rarely been examined together, and almost never across genetically unrelated languages. Working from published collections of English and Uzbek folk riddles, the study isolates riddles containing somatisms, classifies the body-part lexemes involved, and describes the semantic mechanisms of metaphor, personification, and allegory by which these lexemes are turned into concealing images. Its central finding is that both traditions build the somatic riddle on negation, and do so through two mirror strategies. In the conversive type, an object has a body part but is denied its function, as in a river that has a mouth but never eats; in the privative type, a referent performs an action without the relevant organ, as in an echo that speaks without a mouth. Against this shared structural core the traditions diverge in surface form. Uzbek riddles negate directly and dress the body-image in everyday, household realia, often in elaborate verse, whereas English riddles lean towards metaphoric and symbolic imagery in a prosaic question frame. The results contribute to the comparative study of folklore genres and to the description of how body-part semantics is exploited under the specific communicative constraints of the riddle.
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