SEMANTIC REPRESENTATION OF ONOMASTIC UNITS IN UZBEK–ENGLISH LEARNER’S DICTIONARIES: AN EMPIRICAL AND THEORETICAL INVESTIGATION
Keywords:
onomastic units, proper names, semantic representation, bilingual dictionaries, Uzbek–English lexicography, cultural semantics.Abstract
Onomastic units, including proper names of persons, places, historical figures, and cultural entities, constitute a semantically and pragmatically rich component of language. Their representation in bilingual learner’s dictionaries poses significant challenges due to semantic opacity, cross-linguistic non-equivalence, and cultural specificity. This article investigates how Uzbek–English learner’s dictionaries semantically encode onomastic units, examining translation strategies, cultural annotation, and contextual support. Empirical analysis of a corpus of 150 onomastic entries from three widely used Uzbek–English dictionaries reveals that over 60% of proper names lack cultural or contextual explanation, limiting learners’ ability to understand both denotative and connotative meaning. The study proposes lexicographic strategies for enhancing the semantic representation of onomastic units to improve learner comprehension and intercultural competence.
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