A Comparative Study of Definiteness and Indefiniteness in English, Russian, and Uzbek

Abstract

This article presents a comparative analysis of how definiteness and indefiniteness are expressed in English, Russian, and Uzbek. English marks these categories through the article system (“the,” “a/an”), while Russian and Uzbek do not have articles and rely on other linguistic means. The study examines the role of context, word order, demonstratives, and morphological markers such as the Uzbek suffix “-ni” and the numeral “bir.” The analysis highlights similarities and differences in the ways these languages express referential meaning and shows that Russian and Uzbek depend more on contextual and grammatical cues than English. Drawing on theoretical frameworks by Christophersen, Lyons, and Halliday and Hasan, the study employs a descriptive-comparative methodology to analyze authentic examples across all three languages. The findings reveal that while the semantic concept of definiteness is universal, the grammatical means of expressing it vary significantly. These results carry practical implications for contrastive linguistics, translation studies, and the teaching of English to speakers of Russian and Uzbek.