Cognitive-Semantic Models of Literary Meaning Formation: A Comparative Analysis of English and Uzbek Novels

The article asks which cognitive model a reader must construct to interpret a passage of literary prose, and whether English and Uzbek texts call for these models through different linguistic means. Four models are examined – frame transfer, conceptual blending, text-world switching and image schemas – on eight passages from G. Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, K. Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go, V. Woolf's To the Lighthouse, A. Qodiriy's O'tkan kunlar, A. Cho'lpon's Kecha va kunduz and O'. Hoshimov's Tushda kechgan umrlar. Each passage is analysed for its input structures, type of projection, linguistic trigger and emergent meaning. The analysis shows that comparable models are triggered in English mainly by syntactic and lexical means (definitional copula, polysemy, second-person conditional, adjectives of size) and in Uzbek mainly by register-marked loanwords, numerals with modal particles, inclusive and counterfactual morphology and lexicalised spatial idioms. The same model may also project in opposite directions: Orwell raises a trivial frame to an absolute, while Hoshimov lowers atrocity to routine.