Latin script in Uzbekistan, the use of Cyrillic is still widespread, especially in advertisements and signs. In newspapers, scripts may be mixed, with headlines in Latin and articles in Cyrillic. The Arabic script is no longer used in Uzbekistan except symbolically in limited texts or for the academic studies of Chagatai (Old Uzbek). In the western Chinese region of Xinjiang, in northern Afghanistan and in Pakistan, where there is an Uzbek minority, the Arabic-based script is still used. Phonology Words are usually oxytones (i.e. the last syllable is stressed), but certain endings and suffixal particles are not stressed. Vowels Standard Uzbek has six vowel phonemes. Contrary to many Turkic languages, Uzbek no longer has vowel harmony. and can have short allophones and , and central allophones and . can have an open back allophone . and can become and when the syllable or the vowel is adjacent to the phonemes , , and (yaxshi "good" ). Consonants Grammar As a Turkic language, Uzbek is null subject, agglutinative and has no articles and no noun classes (gender or otherwise). The word order is subject–object–verb (SOV). In Uzbek, there are two main categories of words: nominals (equivalent to nouns, pronouns, adjectives and some adverbs) and verbals (equivalent to verbs and some adverbs). Nouns Plurals are formed by suffix -lar. Nouns take the -ni suffix as an definite article, unsuffixed nouns are understood as indefinite. The dative case ending -ga changes to -ka when the noun ends in -k, or -qa when the noun ends in -q or -g‘ (notice *tog‘qa → toqqa). The possessive suffixes change the final consonants -k and -q to voiced -g and -g‘, respectively (yurak → yuragim). Unlike neighbouring Turkmen and Kazakh languages, there is no irregularity on forming cases after possessive cases (uyida "in his/her/its house", as opposed to Turkmen öýünde). Verbs Uzbek verbs are also inflected for number and person of the subject, and it has more periphrases. Uzbek uses some of the inflectional (simple) verbal tenses: {| class="wikitable" |+ Non-finite tense suffixes ! Function ! Suffix |- ! Infinitive | -moq |} {| class="wikitable" |+ Finite tense suffixes ! Function ! Suffix |- ! Present-future | -a/y |- ! Focal present | -yap |- ! Momentary present | -yotir |- ! Progressive present | -moqda |- ! Definite past | -di |- ! Indefinite past | -gan |- ! Indirective past | -ib |- !