Raun Alo. Basic Course in Uzbek

Bloomington: Indiana University; The Hague: Mouton & Co., 1969. — 285 p. — (Research and studies in Uralic and Altaic languages 81; Uralic and Altaic series 59).The purpose of these introductory remarks is to explain the procedure and the notation used.
Whenever possible, the Uzbek texts appear in dialogue form. However, since a learner of a language is no match for a native speaker, the answers given by the latter easily turn into monologues or lecturing. An unprejudiced speaker of a language unconsciously uses both the sounds and the forms of only his native dialect. Often, however, a speaker of a dialect will attempt to apply his more or less imperfect knowledge of a more or less normalized standard language, and the result will be an interesting and/or strange compromise or mixture of the two. In addition, informants may be inclined to correct one another’s language usage, and in some cases such an attitude appears to be justified. The author has accepted numerous suggestions for improvements, but he has had to reject others whose motivation appeared to be narrowly dialectal or subjective, and which did not agree with the general usage of the Soviet printed texts. Since no one ideal informant could be found, there was no reason or opportunity to follow the style of only one person, although the originally obtained forms were retained whenever possible. The main purpose of working with informants was to gather useful data for understanding the language. Under more favorable circumstances the author would have included more materials for practicing the language. The book should not be taken as an introduction to Uzbek daily life and culture or as a tourist’s guide. The author would have been happy to give more consideration to all these points, but this proved to be practically impossible.
As indicated in the preface, the revised text was first checked orally with an informant. Then another informant submitted his corrections in writing. Among other things, he insisted on a unified spelling, whereas the author’s transcription, while essentially phonemic, displays certain phonological variations. Since spelling pronunciations cannot be avoided, especially in slow pronunciation, such examples are offered throughout the book.
The author has tape recordings of the earlier and later versions of the Sasic Sentences, made by two different informants. Since there appears to be a disagreement concerning wording and the use of stress and pitch, and a third recording could not be made, stress and pitch are not indicated in this book. In 195 3 the author began a study of stress in Uzbek, and of its relations to pitch and length, but all this soon had to be interrupted because the informant ceased to be available. In this book, preference is given to Kononov’s views on this matter, as on numerous other points. There is a special study on accent and tone in Uzbek by 'S. Wurm, mentioned in the bibliography.