A Comparative Analysis of the Morpho-Syntactic Peculiarities of English Preposition On and Its Equivalents in Tajik and Chinese

The given article dwells on a comparative linguistic analysis focusing on the English preposition on and its functional equivalents in Tajik and Mandarin Chinese. The methodology involves analyzing parallel constructions and contrasting linguistic devices identified through reference grammars, corpora, and specifically through examples drawn from “Reminiscences” Sadriddin Aini for Tajik. The analysis highlights significant divergences: English relies on the polysemous preposition on within a relatively fixed SVO structure; Tajik employs a range of prepositions (bar, dar, ba), postpositions (rūi), circumpositions (dar boloi), and postposition (-ro indirectly interacting with location) within a more flexible SOV structure; Chinese utilizes covers (zài, dào), locative particles (shàng), and verb complements within a topic-prominent SVO structure. The findings underscore how distinct morphological inventories (inflection, agglutination, derivation, lack thereof) and syntactic configurations shape the expression of seemingly universal spatial and abstract concepts.