{"id":288,"date":"2010-03-03T10:00:19","date_gmt":"2010-03-03T08:00:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/elanguage.net\/blogs\/booknotices\/?p=288"},"modified":"2010-02-09T15:11:52","modified_gmt":"2010-02-09T13:11:52","slug":"modern-literary-uzbek","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/?p=288","title":{"rendered":"Modern Literary Uzbek"},"content":{"rendered":"
Modern Literary Uzbek<\/strong>: A manual for intensive elementary, intermediate, and advanced courses. By Andr\u00e1s J. E. Bodrogligeti<\/strong>. (LINCOM language coursebooks 10.) 2 vols. Munich: LINCOM Europa, 2003. Pp. 360 each vol. ISBN 3895866954<\/a>. $80.36 (each vol.).<\/div>\n

Reviewed by John A. Erickson<\/strong><\/a>, Indiana University<\/em><\/p>\n

This manual is an important addition to English-language materials on Uzbek. Its two volumes grew out of class materials used in both regular and intensive Uzbek courses at UCLA and aim to provide \u2018culturally balanced language materials\u2019 for students who wish, in the authors\u2019s words, to obtain \u2018well rounded composition and conversation competence\u2019 in modern literary Uzbek, covering elementary, intermediate, and advanced levels of instruction.<\/p>\n

The book contains an introduction; thirty chapters; a bibliography of selected works on Uzbek grammar, dictionaries, modern literature, and other materials on the language; an index of grammatical and other topics covered; and an index of Uzbek morphemes. The introduction provides a succinct overview of modern literary Uzbek, the letters of its Cyrillic alphabet (but not its new Latin alphabet) together with their phonemic correspondents and a description of its phonology.<\/p>\n

The chapters are uniformly organized, beginning with a sample proverb and an outline of grammatical topics and exercises covered. This is followed by a short dialogue with its translation and then by sections containing vocabulary (50\u2013100 words); roughly fifteen phrases and idioms; five proverbs; grammar; a brief Uzbek text and its vocabulary; 10\u201320 Uzbek sentences to be copied and translated into English; about ten sentences in English for translation into Uzbek; \u2018Directed composition\u2019, with a topic described in English for students to write about in Uzbek; and \u2018Conversation\u2019, with a list of 15\u201330 expressions for use in conversations on various topics without the context of a dialogue.<\/p>\n

The book covers most essential topics in Uzbek grammar, providing detailed descriptions of morphology, with many nominal declensions and verbal conjugations given in table format; however, it does not adequately address many topics in syntax, such as word order, agreement in complex sentences, coordination, subordination, and relative clauses. The vocabulary, phrases and idioms, and proverbs glossed in English at the beginning of each chapter often have no relevance to the readings or exercises that follow. The proverbs are rendered literally and without an illustrative context or explanation.<\/p>\n

The conversation sections include topics such as \u2018Greetings\u2019, \u2018Being thankful\u2019, and \u2018Complaints\u2019, as well as \u2018Curses\u2019 and \u2018Being rude\u2019. Many essential conversation topics are missing, however, such as family, food, cooking, dining, shopping at the bazaar, transportation, and asking for directions, and this absence leaves significant gaps in needed vocabulary, as well as in common examples of certain grammatical constructions (e.g. bare ablative partitive expressions, as in \u2018Take some of the bread\u2019, routinely heard while dining). There are also many gaps in what might be expected for certain conversation topics; for example, under \u2018Greetings\u2019 one finds expressions such as \u2018Hello\u2019, \u2018Good-bye\u2019, and \u2018How are you?\u2019, but not \u2018What is your name?\u2019, \u2018Where are you from?\u2019, or their appropriate responses.<\/p>\n

In sum, this book could serve as a useful reference manual on Uzbek grammar for both students and instructors, with many exercises that could be incorporated into language courses. Nonetheless, it would clearly need to be supplemented by other language materials to teach students communicative proficiency in many practical topics of conversation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Modern Literary Uzbek: A manual for intensive elementary, intermediate, and advanced courses. By Andr\u00e1s J. E. Bodrogligeti. (LINCOM language coursebooks 10.) 2 vols. Munich: LINCOM Europa, 2003. Pp. 360 each vol. ISBN 3895866954. $80.36 (each vol.). Reviewed by John A. Erickson, Indiana University This manual is an important addition to English-language materials on Uzbek. Its […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=288"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":289,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288\/revisions\/289"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}