THE PROBLEM OF VOWELS IN THE UZBEK LANGUAGE

Abstract

It is known that the study of historical phonetics, the study and analysis of the vowels and consonants of the language of the studied period, and drawing the necessary scientific conclusions about them are problematic issues, because in that period the pronunciation of vowels and consonants, the determination of their quantity is not directly available. The linguist scientist H. Nematov writes about this: “On the basis of comparing the phonetic features of the language of the works written in different periods of development, it is possible to determine the development path of the phonetic system of the Uzbek language. But we are deprived of the opportunity to directly observe the pronunciation of past times. On the other hand, the writing did not fully reflect the pronunciation, so the study of historical phonetics faces great obstacles” [1:6]. For this reason, the written monuments of the Uzbek language have not been studied linguistically, scientific and critical texts have not been created on most of them, and some of them have not even been published. Even so, some work has been done on the historical phonetics of the Uzbek language. Commenting on them, summarizing existing views is also important for today’s linguistics. The article talks about the historical development of vowels, the research carried out on historical phonetics, the opinions of scientists about vowels, the views of modern people in determining the number of vowels in the Uzbek language.