AGE-RELATED VARIABILITY OF CHILDREN'S HUMOR: A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF ENGLISH AND UZBEK LANGUAGES

This article examines the age-related variability of children’s humor in English and Uzbek languages, demonstrating that humor is not a static phenomenon but evolves systematically through four developmental stages: pre-verbal social laughter (0–2 years), phonetic humor (3–6 years), lexical humor (7–10 years), and pragmatic humor (11–14 years). Drawing on the theoretical frameworks of McGhee, Piaget, and Vygotsky, the study provides a comparative analysis of how children in both linguistic traditions develop humor competence at each stage. The findings reveal that while the cognitive progression is universal, the specific linguistic resources and social contexts through which humor manifests differ markedly between the two languages: English children develop humor through dialogic, individual performance, while Uzbek children acquire humor through collective, formula-based folk traditions.