qoshimchi

Qoshimchi is a bound morpheme in Uzbek linguistics that attaches to a word stem to modify its meaning or grammatical function. It cannot stand alone and is used to form inflected forms as well as, in some cases, new words. In Uzbek, such morphemes are typically called suffixes (qoʻshimchalar) and are a central feature of the language’s agglutinative morphology. Qoshimchilar can indicate number, possession, location, direction, tense, aspect, mood, or derivational relationships.

Two main types are inflectional suffixes, which mark grammatical categories such as plural or case, and derivational suffixes, which create new words or shift the word class. Through vowel harmony and consonant assimilation, qoshimchi endings adapt to the surrounding sounds and the structure of the stem. This allows a single root to generate a wide range of related forms without changing the core word.

Examples (illustrative): kitob + -lar = kitoblar (books) shows the plural suffix; kitob + -im = kitobim (my book) shows the possessive suffix; maktab + -da = maktabda (in the school) shows the locative suffix; maktab + -ga = maktabga (to the school) shows the dative/directional suffix. These processes illustrate how qoshimchi function to express relations in sentences and to form new lexical items.

In summary, qoshimchi are essential for Uzbek grammar, enabling the language’s characteristic conciseness and richness through systematic affixation.