MODAL AND SUBJUNCTIVE CONSTRUCTIONS AS MARKERS OF IRREALIS IN ENGLISH AND UZBEK FAIRY TALES: A COMPARATIVE STUDY

Abstract

This study investigates how modal and subjunctive constructions serve as linguistic markers of irrealis in English and Uzbek fairy tales. Irrealis, a grammatical and semantic category expressing unrealized, hypothetical, or imaginary states, reveals how languages encode human perception of possibility and unreality. The research employs a semantic-pragmatic and typological framework, analyzing a corpus of canonical English (Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty) and Uzbek (Zumrad va Qimmat, Boy va kambag‘al) fairy tales. English texts express irrealis primarily through modal verbs (would, could, might) and subjunctive structures (if I were, so be it), while Uzbek relies on conditional suffixes (-sa), auxiliaries (edi), and particles (go‘yo, xuddi). The findings show that while both languages use grammatical mood to construct hypothetical worlds and moral imagination, English foregrounds individual volition and uncertainty, whereas Uzbek emphasizes collective destiny and divine causality. This comparative insight contributes to contrastive linguistics, translation studies, and the semantics of folklore discourse, illuminating the deep link between language structure and cultural worldview.