RULES OF TENSE USAGE IN ENGLISH AND UZBEK LANGUAGES: A COMPARATIVE LINGUISTIC ANALYSIS

Abstract

This article offers a comprehensive scientific examination of the rules governing tense usage in English and Uzbek, two languages from fundamentally different families (Indo-European Germanic and Turkic, respectively). It presents the formal definitions, structural principles, formation mechanisms, and pragmatic functions of tenses, including the 12-tenses system in English (simple, continuous, perfect, and perfect continuous aspects across past, present, and future) and the suffix-based tense-aspect-modality system in Uzbek (with its rich distinctions in witnessed/non-witnessed past, present-future continuum, continuous forms, and intentional/definite futures). Processes of tense formation, negation, interrogation, and compound constructions are analyzed in detail, alongside a side-by-side comparison, numerous authentic examples, and applications in contemporary fields such as language teaching, machine translation, bilingual education, and natural language processing (NLP) tools as of 2025–2026. Recent studies highlight that while English relies heavily on auxiliary verbs and strict word order, Uzbek achieves temporal and aspectual nuance through agglutinative suffixes, leading to unique challenges and opportunities for learners and translators. The modular nature of both systems enables effective management of temporal complexity in communication, yet their differences underscore the need for contrastive grammar approaches in globalized contexts.