Modern Uzbek Language: Sociolinguistic Transformations and Adaptation Processes in the Era of Globalization

Abstract

The globalization processes of the 21st century have a significant impact on the functioning and development of the Uzbek language, creating a complex system of interaction between national linguistic traditions and international communication practices.  The sociolinguistic transformations and adaptation processes taking place in the modern Uzbek language undoubtedly enrich the language and to a certain extent contribute to its unification. At the same time, these processes create difficulties when attempting to standardize and record borrowings in the Uzbek language. The lack of comprehensive scientific work in this area also complicates the task. The study attempts to identify the patterns of sociolinguistic transformations and the characteristics of adaptation processes in the modern Uzbek language in the era of globalization. The research material consisted of texts from contemporary Uzbek media, Internet communications, and data from sociolinguistic studies conducted in 2010–2025. It has been established that the phonetic system of the Uzbek language shows a tendency to simplify consonant clusters in borrowings and adapt foreign sounds to the phonological system of the recipient language. At the morphological level, there is an increase in analytical constructions, calquing of word-formation models from English and Russian, and the development of new derivational models. Syntactic changes are manifested in the expansion of word order functions, an increase in the frequency of nominative constructions, and the development of new types of complex sentences. Lexical-semantic transformations are characterized by the massive borrowing of international vocabulary, the semantic modification of native words, and the formation of new terminological systems. The differentiation of linguistic changes depending on the social, age, and educational characteristics of native speakers has been identified. The results of the study demonstrate the adaptive potential of the Uzbek language in the context of globalization while preserving its structural integrity and national specificity. The author’s findings may be used for compiling dictionaries and reference books.