LEXICAL-SEMANTIC FEATURES OF ECONOMIC TERMS BORROWED FROM ENGLISH AND RUSSIAN IN THE UZBEK LANGUAGE

Abstract

The transition of Uzbekistan to a market economy and its integration into global economic networks have driven an intensive influx of economic terminology into the Uzbek language, predominantly from two donor languages — Russian and English. This article examines the lexical-semantic features that accompany the assimilation of such borrowed economic terms into the recipient language. Drawing on a corpus of approximately 450 economic term units compiled from lexicographic sources, specialized textbooks, normative-legal texts and contemporary economic media, the study applies descriptive-comparative, componential and definitional-contextual analysis to trace how meaning is restructured during borrowing. The findings distinguish four principal source strata — direct English borrowings, Russian-mediated internationalisms, direct Russian borrowings and calques built from native material — and identify five recurrent semantic-adaptation mechanisms: full semantic transfer, semantic narrowing, semantic widening, semantic shift and loan translation. Particular attention is given to synonymic doublets and triplets in which native, Russian and English designations compete and undergo stylistic and functional redistribution, and to the polysemy and homonymy generated by multi-channel borrowing. The results demonstrate that economic borrowing in Uzbek is not a mechanical transfer of labels but a systematic semantic reorganization governed by donor-language chronology, register and the word-formation resources of the recipient language.