THE MORPHOLOGICAL SYSTEM OF THE UZBEK AND TATAR LANGUAGES: A COMPARATIVE-TYPOLOGICAL ANALYSIS

This article presents a comparative-typological analysis of the morphological systems of the Uzbek and Tatar languages. The purpose of the study is to determine the features of the manifestation of agglutinative structure, the predominance of affixation, vowel harmony (synharmonism), nominal and verbal paradigms, as well as the ways in which grammatical categories are expressed in both languages. Methodologically, comparative-typological, descriptive-analytical, and distributive analysis methods were employed. The results demonstrate that the Uzbek and Tatar languages rely on the common Turkic agglutinative model; the principal differences are manifested in the degree of vowel harmony and in the phonetic variation of affixes — vowel harmony has weakened in Uzbek, whereas in Tatar it remains actively preserved. It is concluded that these morphological differences are determined by the internal subgroup affiliation of the two languages and by their historical-areal contacts.