FROM MEASURE TO MEANING: CONCEPTUAL METAPHOR AND FRAME-BASED INTERPRETATION OF MEASUREMENT-RELATED EXPRESSIONS IN ENGLISH-UZBEK TRANSLATION

Аннотация

Measurement is usually associated with precision, numerical reference, and the objective description of physical properties. In natural language, however, expressions originating in the domain of measurement frequently move beyond their literal metric function and become instruments for conceptualizing abstract experience. This paper examines this transition from physical measure to cognitive meaning in English and Uzbek from the perspective of Conceptual Metaphor Theory and Frame Semantics, with particular attention to its implications for translation. The study addresses expressions such as within an inch of failure, miles away from reality, a mountain of work, Uzbek bir qadam oldinda ’one step ahead’, bir umr kutdim ’I waited a lifetime’, and zarracha shubha yo‘q ’there is not the slightest doubt’. A qualitative contrastive method is applied to identify the underlying source-target mappings, the knowledge structures activated by the expressions, and the translation decisions required when comparable metaphorical patterns are differently lexicalized in the two languages. The analysis demonstrates that measurement-related vocabulary functions as a cognitive scaling device for conceptualizing proximity, progress, duration, intensity, certainty, and evaluation. At the same time, Conceptual Metaphor Theory alone does not fully explain why a particular measurement expression is interpreted in a particular way in discourse. The interpretation also depends on culturally and situationally activated frames involving thresholds, goals, distances, expectations, and evaluative norms. The paper therefore proposes a two-stage model in which conceptual metaphor identifies the direction of cross-domain mapping, while frame-semantic analysis reconstructs the knowledge structure that makes the expression contextually meaningful. From a translation perspective, the findings suggest that metaphorical measurement expressions should not normally be treated as metrological problems. Once a unit loses its primary referential function, formal numerical conversion may become irrelevant or even distort the communicative effect. The translator’s task is instead to preserve the cognitive-pragmatic value of the scale encoded by the source expression. The paper argues that cognitive-pragmatic equivalence, rather than formal measurement equivalence, should constitute the principal criterion for translating metaphorically motivated expressions of measure.