Turkish grammar
Encyclopedia
Turkish is a highly agglutinative
language, i.e., Turkish words have many grammatical suffixes or endings that determine meaning. Turkish vowels undergo vowel harmony. When a suffix is attached to a stem, the vowel in the suffix agrees in frontness
or backness
and in roundedness
with the last vowel in the stem. Turkish has no gender
.
suffix. An inflectional suffix indicates how a word is used in a sentence. The article on Turkish grammar pertains chiefly to inflectional suffixes. The article on Turkish vocabulary
treats the constructive suffixes.
A Turkish suffix can be called enclitic
if its vowel undergoes vowel harmony, agreeing with the last vowel of the stem the suffix is attached to.
and usage of honorific
s. Turkish uses second-person pronoun
s that distinguish varying levels of politeness, social distance
, age, courtesy or familiarity toward the addressee. The plural second-person pronoun and verb forms are used referring to a single person out of respect, as is done in French
and Russian
.
second-person "siz" is used almost exclusively. In very formal situations, double plural
second-person "sizler" may be used to refer to a much-respected person. Rarely, third plural conjugation of the verb (but not the pronoun) may be used to emphasize utmost respect. In imperative, there are three forms: second singular person for informal, second plural person for formal and double plural second person for very formal situations: "gel" (second singular, informal), "gelin" (second plural, formal), "geliniz" (double second plural, very formal). The very formal forms are not frequently used.
For the last two verbal roots, the constructive suffix -im can be added to form nouns for instances of the actions denoted by the roots:
Either of these nouns can be compounded with the noun ek, resulting in an indefinite compound (belirtisiz tamlama), the sign of which is the inflexional suffix -i attached to ek:
The inflexional suffix -ler comes before the -i to form the plural, so yapım ekleri, çekim ekleri.
Many words in Turkish—particularly many grammatical terms—are neologisms invented to replace earlier words borrowed from Arabic or Persian. (See the main article on Turkish language.) In some cases, the older term continues to be in used alongside the neologism.
Postpositions are analogous to prepositions in English, only they follow their objects. Postpositions can be reckoned as particles. However, there are particles in Turkish that are not postpositions.
Only nouns, pronouns and verbs are inflected in Turkish. An adjective can usually be treated as a noun or pronoun, in which case it can also be inflected. Inflexion can give a noun features of a verb such as person and tense. With inflexion, a verb can become one of the following:
These have peculiarities not shared with other nouns, adjectives or adverbs.
For example, some participles take a person the way verbs do.
Also, a verbal noun or adverb can take a direct object.
Some verbal nouns are not inflected forms in Turkish, but are borrowed from Arabic or other languages.
A noun or pronoun alone can make a complete sentence. For example,
köpek "dog"; Köpek. "It is a dog."
Most dictionaries list verbs in their infinitive form, which alone usually cannot form complete sentences. For example,
koşmak "(to) run".
However, instead of the infinitive, the Redhouse Turkish-English Dictionary gives the stem of a verb as its headword
, and the present article follows this convention. The verb-stem is also the second-person singular imperative:
koş- "run"; Koş! "Run!"
Both a noun and a verb, without endings, can alone form a sentence.
Many verbs are formed from nouns by addition of -le. For example,
köpekle- "swim like a dog" (in any of several ways).
The aorist tense of a verb is formed by adding -(i/e)r.
The plural of a noun is formed by suffixing -ler.
Hence:
Köpek + ler "(They are) dogs."
Köpekle + r "S/he swims (like a dog)."
Thus -ler can indicate either a plural noun or a finite verb.
Most adjectives can be treated as nouns or pronouns. For example,
genç "young" or "young person" or "the young person referred to".
An adjective or noun can stand, as a modifier, before a noun. If the modifier is a noun (but not a noun of material), then the second noun word takes the inflexional suffix -i:
beyaz diş "white tooth";
altın diş "gold tooth";
köpek dişi "canine tooth".
Comparison of adjectives is not done by inflecting adjectives or adverbs, but by other means (described below).
Adjectives can serve as adverbs, sometimes by means of repetition:
yavaş "slow"; yavaş yavaş "slowly".
Also, in a sentence,
However, because the distinction between subject, indirect object, and direct object is also indicated with inflexion, Turkish word order can vary.
The order of morphemes in Turkish is often opposite to English:
Avrupa Europe
Avrupalı European
Avrupalılaş become European (command)
Avrupalılaştır Europeanize (command)
Avrupalılaştırama I wish you could not Europeanize
Avrupalılaştıramadık we could not Europeanize
Avrupalılaştıramadıklar those whom could not Europeanize
Avrupalılaştıramadıklarımız those whom we could not Europeanize
Avrupalılaştıramadıklarımızdan one of those whom we could not Europeanize
Avrupalılaştıramadıklarımızdan mı? Is S/he one of those whom we could not Europeanize?
Avrupalılaştıramadıklarımızdan mısın? Are you one of those whom we could not Europeanize?
Avrupalılaştıramadıklarımızdan mısınız? Are you one of those whom we could not Europeanize? (second plural or formal)
Within the same context, the longest Turkish word consists of 44 characters:
Çekoslovakyalılaştıramadıklarımızdanmışsınız = You are apparently one of those we weren't (or haven't been) able to make a Czechoslovakian. (And equally: İskandinavyalılaştıramadıklarımızdanmışsınız = same for a Scandinavian.)[longest Turkish word:
in Turkish "Muvaffakiyetsizleştiricileştiriveremeyebileceklerimizdenmişsinizcesine", which means something like (you are talking) as if you are one of those that we can not easily convert into an unsuccessful-person-maker (someone who un-educates people to make them unsuccessful)].
The case
-endings (durum ekleri from dur- "stop, last", or hâl ekleri from hâl "state, condition") can be named (in English) and used roughly as in Latin:
If a case-ending is attached to a demonstrative pronoun (which ends in o or u), or to a noun that has already taken a third-person ending of possession (given below), then the case-ending is preceded by n (and the parenthetical y is not used).
Nouns derived from verbs in several ways. The number of ways of forming verbal nouns (fiil isimleri) from verb-stems can be debated; here are three:
Several series of endings show distinctions of person
(kişi); they are given here, along with the personal pronouns for comparison:
The names given to the personal endings here are not standard.
These endings are often just referred to as type I, II, III, and IV respectively; but the order in which the types are numbered is also not standard.
It should also be noted that Lewis (1967) refers to the suffixes of possession as "personal" endings.
However, of the endings called personal in Turkish and in this article:
In the 3rd person, plural number is not always explicitly marked, and the same form is used for both singular and plural. If the plural suffix -ler is used, it combines with the personal endings as indicated in the final column of the table.
A suffix of possession gives the person of a possessor of the object named by the noun to which the suffix is attached; it also indicates a subject for a participle.
A predicative ending can assign a person to a noun, thus creating a complete sentence:
ada "island"; Adayım "I am an island."
See also Copula#Turkish and Turkish copula
.
All of the personal suffixes can be used in the formation of verbs.
Verb-stems have been mentioned.
A verb-base is obtained from a verb-stem by attachment of certain suffixes or characteristics given below.
Then the personal endings here called "predicative" and "verbal" attach only to verb-bases; the optative and imperative endings attach to verb-stems.
The present characteristic is not fully enclitic: the first syllable shows vowel harmony, but the second is invariable.
The aorist negative and impotential characteristics are given here because they are anomalous. Note, that the "-z" of the aorist negative (-mez) and impotential (-(y)emez) is dropped in the 1st person singular and plural, in order to be able to suffix it. (Aorist negative 1st person singular: -mem; BUT: Aorist impotential 3rd person plural: -(y)emezler)
The non-aorist characteristics can be suffixed to the following endings:
See #Negation and potential in verb-stems under #Verbs below.
Some third-person verbs are also participles.
Participles can be classified as personal, if they take a suffix of possession, and impersonal, if they do not. The following suffixes attach to verb-stems:
The interrogative particle (soru eki) is not written as a suffix, but it is enclitic:
.
The dictionary-form of a noun can take up to four (kinds of) #Inflexional suffixes, generally in the following order:
Through its presence or absence, the plural ending shows distinctions of number
.
baş "head",
başlar "[some] heads",
beş baş "five head(s)", but
Beşevler "Five Houses" (district of Ankara).
The plural ending also allows a family (living in one house) to be designated by a single member:
Aliler "Ali and his family";
teyze "maternal aunt",
teyzem "my maternal aunt";
teyzemler "my maternal aunt and her family".
In the last example, the first-person singular suffix of possession comes before the plural ending; this is an exception to the order of suffixes given above.
In the usual order, we have
teyzelerim "my maternal aunts".
Nouns are pluralized in standard temporal greetings.
gün "day", İyi günler! "Good day!";
yıl "year"; Mutlu yıllar! "Happy new year!"
(and number) of the possessor of what is named by the noun:
teyzem "my maternal aunt",
teyzeniz "you(formal/plural)r maternal aunt",
teyzeleriniz "you(formal/plural)r maternal aunts".
Note well that, when a word takes one of the endings of possession, the word becomes the name of something possessed, not possessing: the word for the possessor, if present, takes the genitive case-ending, as discussed below.
The plural ending will not be attached twice to the same word; therefore ambiguity is possible:
fikir "idea",
fikirleri "their idea" or
"their ideas" or
"her [or his] ideas".
Ambiguity can be resolved with #Pronouns.
, vocative
, and (in part) accusative
cases.
It is for subjects, and for names of people being addressed.
It is also used for indefinite direct objects.
Definite direct objects are in the definite-accusative case:
şiir "poem", so:
Şiir okur "S/he reads a poem";
Şiiri okur "S/he reads the poem."
The dative case tells whither, that is, the place to which.
Thus it has roughly the meaning of the English prepositions "to" and "into", and also "in" when it can be replaced with "into":
Birayı buzdolabına koy- "the-beer in-icebox put", that is,
"put the beer in the fridge".
The dative also is for objects: usually indirect objects, but sometimes objects that in English would be considered direct:
Güneşin batışına bak- "sun's at-its-sinking look", that is,
"look at the sunset";
hükümete güven- "in-government trust", that is,
"trust the government".
The locative case tells where, hence corresponds to the English prepositions "at" and "on", and "in" when it does not mean "into".
evde "at home" (ev "house");
Buzdolabında dört bira var "in-icebox four beer exist," that is,
"There are four beers in the fridge."
The ablative case tells whence, that is, the place from which (or through which), hence:
kumdan yapılmış kale "of-sand made castle", that is,
"castle made of sand";
açlıktan öl- "of-hunger die";
In the Turkish terminology, the genitive case indicates a "compounding" (tamlayan) word.
The corresponding "compounded" (tamlanan) word will take the appropriate suffix of possession.
The pair of these words is then a definite compound (belirtili tamlama):
anne "mother",
annesi "her mother",
Ayşe'nin annesi "Ayşe's mother".
(The apostrophe in Turkish is used before suffixes attached to proper nouns.)
However, if two nouns are connected, but not by ownership, then the second noun generally takes an ending of possession, while the first takes no ending. The result is an indefinite compound (belirtisiz tamlama):
Türkiye'nin Cumhurbaşkanı "The President of Turkey" (definite);
Türkiye Cumhuriyeti "The Republic of Turkey" (indefinite).
If one noun names a material, the other noun need not take an ending:
nikâh yüzüğü "wedding ring";
altın yüzük "gold ring".
Dünyayız "We are the world" (dünya "world").
Çocuklarsınız "You are the children" (çocuk "child").
In the third person, no ending is required.
However, the ending -dir can be used; it is said (Lewis, 1967: VIII,3) to be the remnant of a verb turur "S/he stands".
Again in the third person, the plural suffix may be used:
Türk or Türktür "S/he is Turkish";
Türkler or Türktürler "They are Turkish";
Türklerdir "They are the Turks" (Lewis, 1967: VIII,5).
Several suffixes can be combined:
Evinizdeyim "I am at your house."
Ya benimsin, ya toprağın "Thou art either mine, or the earth's (that is, dead)."
(The last was spotted on a minibus in Turkey.)
It does take all other case-endings.
In particular, the progressive characteristic given earlier is the infinitive ending with the locative ending:
Konuşmaktayız "We are in (the act of) speaking."
Savaşmaktayız "We are in warmaking", that is, "We are at war."
The verbal noun in -me is called a gerund above, since it corresponds roughly to the English gerund
.
It can take a suffix of possession and any case-ending:
The dative form of a Turkish gerund can correspond precisely to an English infinitive with to:
Ülkemizde nano teknolojik ürünler üretilmeye başlandı
"In-our-country nano technological products to-be-produced began"
that is, "Nano-technological products began to be produced in our country" (source: Cumhuriyet Bilim-Teknik 13 August 2005, p. 1).
Yet another verbal noun is from -iş:
yürüyüş "walk, walking" (yürü- "walk");
yağış "rain" (yağ- "rain");
alışveriş "getting [and] spending", that is, "shopping"
(al- "take" or "buy"; ver- "give" or "spend");
yaratılış "creation" (yara- "be of use",
yarat- "create",
yaratıl- "be created").
The verb et- "make, do" can be considered as an auxiliary verb, since for example it is often used with verbal nouns borrowed from other languages, such as Arabic:
kabul et- "accept" (kabul "[an] accepting");
reddet- "reject" (ret "[a] rejecting");
ziyaret et- "visit" (ziyaret "[a] visiting").
Considered as units, these are transitive verbs; but the nouns in them can, by themselves, take direct objects:
Antalya'yı ziyaret "visit to Antalya".
What looks like an ablative gerund is usually an adverb; the ending -meden usually has the sense of "without".
See #Adverbs below.
An infinitive in the absolute case can be the object of a verb such as iste- "want":
Kimi eğitime devam etmek, "Some-of-them towards-education continuation make
kimi de çalışmak istiyor. some-of-them also work want"
that is, "Some want to continue their educations, and some want to work"
(source: Cumhuriyet Pazar Dergi, 14 August 2005, p. 1.) Note here that the compound verb devam et- "continue, last" does not take a direct object, but is complemented by a dative noun.
Another way to express obligation (besides with lâzım as in the earlier example) is by means of zor "trouble, compulsion" and an infinitive:
Gitmek zoru "Go compulsion",
Gitmek zorundayız "We must go".
(Source: same as the last example.)
Both an infinitive and a gerund are objects of the postposition için "for" in the third sentence of the quotation within the following quotation:
Tesis yetkilileri, Facility its-authorities
"Bölge insanları genelde tutucu. "District its-people in-general conservative.
Sahil kesimleri Shore its-sections
yola yakın olduğu için to-road near their-being for
rahat bir şekilde göle giremiyorlar. comfortable a in-form to-lake they-cannot-enter.
Biz de We and
hem yoldan geçenlerin görüş açısını kapatmak both from-road of-passers sight their-angle to-close
hem de erkeklerin rahatsız etmemesi için and men's uncomfortable their-not-making for
paravan kullanıyoruz" screen we-are-using"
dedi. they-said.
Ancak paravanın aralarından But curtain's from-its-gaps
çocukların karşı tarafı gözetlemeleri children's other side their-spying
engellenemedi. cannot-be-hindered.
(Source: Cumhuriyet, 9 August 2005, Tuesday, p. 1.) A free translation is:
verbs from nouns. These verbs are called auxiliary verbs. A concise list follows:
Verbs that are used with nouns to agglutinate new verbs
Examples
* farz (assumption) -> farz etmek (to assume)
* hak (right) -> hak etmek (to deserve)
* af (amnesty) -> affetmek (to excuse)
* kayıp (loss) -> kaybetmek (to lose)
* terk (leaving) -> terk etmek (to leave)
* arz (submission, supply) -> arz etmek (to submit, to supply)
If there is a change in the noun root through the process of agglutination, it is written adjacently.These are mostly Arabic loan-words, which switch to their more original form.
Remember that in Turkish words, two consonants of a syllable need a vowel to be pronunciated. There are exceptions on loan words only, but those that lost their original form are more common. This occurs in two ways:
If two identical consonants exist in the end of the word, one is dropped such as hall "state,status" to hal, aff "amnesty,forgiving" to af.
If any two consonants exist in one syllable, a vowel appears such as hükm "judgement" to hüküm.
Exceptions: taht "throne", renk "colour", kart "card" frequent for the ones with nk, rt, rk. Note that most of these are loan-words from Persian or western languages.
Examples
* kayıp + et- -> kaybetmek (to lose; "kayıp" lost is originally "kayb", an Arabic loan-word)
* haciz + et- -> haczetmek (to sequestrate; "haciz" sequestration is originally "hacz", an Arabic loan-word)
* haz + et- -> hazzetmek (to relish or to enjoy; "haz" delight is originally "hazz", an Arabic loan-word)
Verbs that are used with other verbs to enhance the meaning
Examples
* düş- (fall) -> düşeyazdım (I almost fell)
* git- (go) -> gidiverdim (I just went, je viens d'aller)
* yavaşla- (slow down) -> yavaşlayabilirim (I can slow down)
* yaz- (write) -> yazaduruyorlar (They keep on writing)
* söyle- (tell) -> söylenegelir (is kept being told)
yeşil çim "[the] green grass"
Çim yeşil(dir) or Yeşildir çim "Grass is green."
In a positive comparison, the object takes the ablative case; the adverb daha "more" is optional, unless the object is left out.
tüyden (daha) hafif "lighter than a feather".
In a negative comparison, the adverb az "less" is needed; the object still takes the ablative; daha can still be used as well.
kurşundan (daha) az ağır "less heavy than lead"
The superlative degree is expressed by the adverb en "most".
en büyük yalancı "the biggest liar" (büyük "big", yalan "lie");
en az güvenilir "least trustworthy" (güven- "trust").
These are used only predicatively:
Gökte bir bulut yok "There is not a cloud in the sky";
Balcının var bal tası, "Honey-seller's exists honey his-pot,
oduncunun var baltası. wood-cutter's exists his-axe."
(This is a proverbial expression: "The honey-seller has a honey-pot; the wood-cutter has an axe"; bal "honey", odun "(fire) wood", tas "bowl", balta "axe"; the more usual order would make the saying Balcının bal tası var, oduncunun baltası var).
. Word-order can make the difference:
güzel bir gün "a nice day";
bir güzel gün "one fine day".
Unless it is being used by itself, elliptically, the adjective hiç "no" requires an additional word with negative force:
Hiç param yok "I have no money" (para "money");
Hiç bir adam ada değildir "No man is an island" (adam "man", ada "island", değil "not").
Bir şey görüyorum "I see something", but
Hiç bir şey göremiyorum "I can't see anything."
In a personal participle, the suffix of possession signifies the subject of the underlying verb; if this possessor is third person, then the possessor may be further specified with a noun in the genitive case.
The noun modified by a personal participle as an adjective may be the direct object of the underlying verb; the connexion may also be more vague.
The noun modified by an impersonal participle is generally the subject of the underlying verb (but see Lewis (1967: IX,2)).
The aorist tense (geniş zaman "broad time") is for habitual actions; the present tense (şimdiki zaman "time that is now") is for actions ongoing or contemplated.
Aorist:
akarsu "water that flows", hence "stream" (ak- "flow", su "water");
akaryakıt "fuel oil" (yakıt "heating fuel");
çıkmaz "not going out, cul-de-sac";
inilir "got down from" (sign at rear door of bus; in- "go down")
sürdürülebilir turizm "tourism that can be continued", that is, "sustainable tourism
"
(sür "drive"; sürdür "continue")
Present:
that is, "No legal process has begun concerning the AKP
members who pulled out guns and fired them in the air" [Birgün Halkın Gazetesi, 25 July 2005]; for -ip see #Adverbs below.
Future:
gelecek hafta "week that will come", that is, "next week";
okunacak bir kitap "a book that will be read" (okun- "be read");
okuyacağım bir kitap "a book that I shall read" (oku- "read").
Past/present:
okunmuş bir kitap "a book that was read";
okuduğum bir kitap "a book that I read/am reading";
Yaşamın bittiği yer'de hayat "Life in the place where life ends."
(The last example is a newspaper headline [Birgün, 20 July 2005] about cemetery workers; bit- "end"; yer "place"; hayat [Arabic] and yaşam [neologism from yaşa-] "life".)
A personal participle can be construed as a noun and used in parallel with verbal nouns:
Çocukların
yüzde 68'i evinin ihtiyaçlarına katkıda bulunmak,
yüzde 21'i ailesi istediği için,
yüzde altısı iş öğrenmek ve meslek edinmek için,
yüzde 4'ü ihtiyaçlarını karşılaşmak için
çalışıyor
"Children's
in-100 their-68 house's for-its-needs in-aid be-found,
in-100 their-21 their-family that-they-wanted for,
in-100 their-six work learn and profession be-made for,
in-100 their-4 their-needs meet for
are-working."
(Source: Birgün Halkın Gazetesi 13 August 2005, Saturday, p. 1.) That is,
The following sentence from a newspaper headline contains twenty-two words, nine derived from verbs, four of these as participles, three as gerunds. Note also the use of kontrol from French as a verbal noun with et-:
Source: Cumhuriyet, 17 July 2005; more smoothly:
Evde değilim "I am not at home."
It may also negate part of sentence:
İŞGALE DEĞİL DİRENİŞE DESTEK "To-invasion not to-resistance support", that is,
"Support the resistance, not the invasion"
(slogan on placard at demonstration).
A number of adverbs are derived from verbs:
The ending -e is seen in:
Güle güle "[Go] smilingly" (said to somebody departing);
Güle güle kullanın "Use [it] smilingly" (said to somebody with a new acquisition);
Beşe çeyrek kala kalktım "To-five a-quarter remaining I-got-up", that is,
"I got up at a quarter to five";
Onu yirmi geçe uyudun "You slept at twenty past ten"
(uyu- "sleep", although uy- "heed").
The ending -erek denotes action at the same time as, or preceding, that of another verb:
Geceyi konuşarak geçirdik "The-night talking we-caused-to-pass", that is,
"We spent the night talking."
Akıl yürüterek bu sonuca ulaşıyorum "By using reason, I arrived at this conclusion"
[the latter is Bülent Ecevit
as quoted in Cumhuriyet
, 20 July 2005].
Doğaya en az zarar vererek yaşamak "To live while giving the least harm to nature"
[Buğday magazine, 7–8/2005, no 32].
From ol- "be, become", olarak forms adverbial phrases corresponding to those in English with "as":
Size bir dost olarak söylüyorum "To-you a friend as I'm-telling", that is,
"I'm telling you this as a friend";
ciddi olarak "seriously" (ciddi "serious").
The ending -meden on a verb-stem looks like the ablative gerund, but it is not (Lewis [XI,12]).
It indicates an action not occurring at all, or following that of the main verb:
Bakmadan atlama "Don't leap without looking";
Bakmadan önce atlama "Don't leap before looking."
Bir soruyu cevaplamadan tartışmak,
tartışmadan cevaplamaktan iyidir
"A particular-question without-answering to-debate
without-debating from-to-answer is-good," that is,
"It is better to debate without answering than to answer without debating."
(Source of the last sentence: Joseph Joubert
as quoted on p. 20 of Gündelik Bilmeceler by Partha Ghose and Dipankar Home, translated by Özlem Özbal, Tübitak Popüler Bilim Kitapları 25, Ankara, 1996.)
Complementing önce "before" is sonra "after", which can follow a verb-stem given the ending -dikten:
Baktıktan sonra atla "After looking, leap";
Ayşe baktıktan sonra Neşe atladı "After Ayşe looked, Neşe lept."
Simultaneity is expressed by iken or its (not enclitic) suffixed form -(y)ken; but if it follows a verb, then the verb appears, not as a stem, but as a base; see #Bases of verbs:
Eve girmekteyken, bir şey hatırladım "As I was entering the house, I remembered something";
Ben eve girmekteyken, telefon çaldı "As I was entering the house, the telephone rang."
If two verbs of the same grammatical form have the same subject, the endings on the first verb can be replaced by -ip; see the example under #Participles.
The other persons, ben "I", sen "thou", biz "we", siz "you", are declined like nouns, except for a vowel change in the dative, and an anomalous genitive; also the plural forms do not involve -ler:
The absolute case is generally needed only for emphasis:
Nasılsınız? "How are you?"
İyiyim; siz nasılsınız? "I am fine; how are you?"
Ben de iyiyim. "I too am fine."
The third-person pronoun can clear up an ambiguity mentioned above:
onların fikri "their idea";
onların fikirleri "their ideas";
onun fikirleri "her [or his] ideas".
The pronoun o is also one of the demonstrative pronouns:
The latter two are declined like o (that is, treated as if they were bun and şun).
The interrogative pronouns (and adjectives) are:
These serve as relative pronouns only in a limited way:
Buzdolabında kaçtane var, o bilir "S/he knows how many are in the refrigerator."
There is a suffix -ki, borrowed from Persian, that acts as a relative pronoun in that it creates what, in English, would be called relative clauses. It does not display vowel harmony, except in a few common formations:
benimki "mine (that which is mine)";
buzdolabındaki bira "beer that is in the refrigerator" (no vowel harmony);
bugünkü "today's (which is today)" (with vowel harmony);
dünkü "yesterday's (which was yesterday)" (with vowel harmony).
The reflexive pronoun (dönüşlü zamir from dön- "turn") is kendi "own, self":
Kendi kendinden korkma "Do not be afraid of thyself."
Many of the indefinite adjectives can function as pronouns, taking case-endings.
These endings might seem to be inflexional in the sense of the #Introduction above; but their meanings are not always clear from their particular names, and dictionaries do generally give the resulting forms, so in this sense they are constructive endings.
The causative extension makes an intransitive verb transitive, and a transitive verb factitive. Together, the reciprocal and causative extension make the repetitive extension -iştir.
Any of these three (kinds of) stems can be made potential by addition of -e and then -bil. The -bil is not enclitic, but represents the verb bil- "know, be able"; the first syllable of the impotential ending represents an obsolete verb u- "be powerful, able" #Lewis [VIII,55].
So far then, there are six kinds of stems:
Such stems are not used for aorist forms, which have their own peculiar means of forming negatives and impotentials.
The progressive base in -mekte is discussed under #Verbal nouns.
Another base, namely the necessitative (gereklilik), is formed from a verbal noun.
The characteristic is -meli, where -li forms adjectives from nouns, and -me forms gerunds from verb-stems.
A native speaker may perceive the ending -meli as indivisible; the analysis here is from #Lewis [VIII,30]).
The present base is derived from the ancient verb yorı- "go, walk" #Lewis [VIII,16]; this can be used for ongoing actions, or for contemplated future actions.
The meaning of the aorist base is described under #Adjectives from verbs: participles.
There is some irregularity in first-person negative and impotential aorists. The full form of the base -mez (or (y)emez) reappears before the interrogative particle mi:
The definite past or di-past is used to assert that something did happen in the past.
The inferential past or miş-past can be understood as asserting that a past participle is applicable now; hence it is used when the fact of a past event, as such, is not important; in particular, the inferential past is used when one did not actually witness the past event.
A newspaper will generally use the di-past, because it is authoritative. The need to indicate uncertainly and inference by means of the miş-past may help to explain the extensive use of ki in the newspaper excerpt at Turkish vocabulary#The conjunction ki.
The conditional (şart) verb could also be called "hypothetical"; it is used for remote possibilities, or things one might wish for. (See also #Compound bases.)
The various bases thus give distinctions of tense, aspect and mood. These can be briefly tabulated:
In common practice then, there is one series of endings to express something wished for:
-(y)eyim, -(y)elim, —, -(y)in, -sin.
(The longer second-person plural imperative ending -(y) iniz is generally used only in writing.)
The form iken given under #Adverbs from verbs is also descended from er-.
Since no more bases are founded on the stem i-, this verb can be called defective. In particular, i- forms no negative or impotential stems; negation is achieved with the #Adverb of negation, değil, given earlier.
Verbs i- are often made into suffixes; the corresponding bases then are
where the y is used only after vowels.
The verb i- serves as a copula. When a copula is needed, but the appropriate base in i- does not exist, then the corresponding base in ol- is used; this stem otherwise means "become".
The verb i- is irregular in the way it is used in questions: the particle mi always precedes it:
By means of ise or -(y)se, a verb can be made conditional in the sense of being the hypothesis or protasis of a complex statement:
The simple conditional can be used for remote conditions:
Agglutinative language
An agglutinative language is a language that uses agglutination extensively: most words are formed by joining morphemes together. This term was introduced by Wilhelm von Humboldt in 1836 to classify languages from a morphological point of view...
language, i.e., Turkish words have many grammatical suffixes or endings that determine meaning. Turkish vowels undergo vowel harmony. When a suffix is attached to a stem, the vowel in the suffix agrees in frontness
Front vowel
A front vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a front vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far in front as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Front vowels are sometimes also...
or backness
Back vowel
A back vowel is a type of vowel sound used in spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a back vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far back as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Back vowels are sometimes also called dark...
and in roundedness
Roundedness
In phonetics, vowel roundedness refers to the amount of rounding in the lips during the articulation of a vowel. That is, it is vocalic labialization. When pronouncing a rounded vowel, the lips form a circular opening, while unrounded vowels are pronounced with the lips relaxed...
with the last vowel in the stem. Turkish has no gender
Grammatical gender
Grammatical gender is defined linguistically as a system of classes of nouns which trigger specific types of inflections in associated words, such as adjectives, verbs and others. For a system of noun classes to be a gender system, every noun must belong to one of the classes and there should be...
.
Suffixes
A suffix (ek) is attached to a stem (gövde). A stem may be a root (kök) or further analyzable. The suffixes used in Turkish fall roughly into two classes: constructive suffixes (yapım ekleri) and inflectional suffixes (çekim ekleri). A constructive suffix makes a new word from an old one, that is, it is a derivationalDerivation (linguistics)
In linguistics, derivation is the process of forming a new word on the basis of an existing word, e.g. happi-ness and un-happy from happy, or determination from determine...
suffix. An inflectional suffix indicates how a word is used in a sentence. The article on Turkish grammar pertains chiefly to inflectional suffixes. The article on Turkish vocabulary
Turkish vocabulary
This article is a companion to Turkish grammar and contains some information that might be considered grammatical. The purpose of this article is mainly to show the use of some of the yapım ekleri "structural suffixes" of the Turkish language, as well as to give some of the structurally important...
treats the constructive suffixes.
A Turkish suffix can be called enclitic
Clitic
In morphology and syntax, a clitic is a morpheme that is grammatically independent, but phonologically dependent on another word or phrase. It is pronounced like an affix, but works at the phrase level...
if its vowel undergoes vowel harmony, agreeing with the last vowel of the stem the suffix is attached to.
Gender
Turkish is a gender-neutral language except for a few sex-specific compound words (mostly naming professions). English third person singular pronouns "she", "he", and "it" all correspond to a single Turkish pronoun o. Since many given names in Turkish are also gender-neutral, it is possible to describe someone without their sex being made known.Person
Turkish has a strong T-V distinctionT-V distinction
In sociolinguistics, a T–V distinction is a contrast, within one language, between second-person pronouns that are specialized for varying levels of politeness, social distance, courtesy, familiarity, or insult toward the addressee....
and usage of honorific
Honorific
An honorific is a word or expression with connotations conveying esteem or respect when used in addressing or referring to a person. Sometimes, the term is used not quite correctly to refer to an honorary title...
s. Turkish uses second-person pronoun
Pronoun
In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun is a pro-form that substitutes for a noun , such as, in English, the words it and he...
s that distinguish varying levels of politeness, social distance
Social distance
Social distance describes the distance between different groups of society and is opposed to locational distance. The notion includes all differences such as social class, race/ethnicity or sexuality, but also the fact that the different groups do not mix...
, age, courtesy or familiarity toward the addressee. The plural second-person pronoun and verb forms are used referring to a single person out of respect, as is done in French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
and Russian
Russian language
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
.
T-V distinction
Family members and friends speak to one another using the second singular person "sen" as well as adults use "sen" to address minors. In formal situations (meeting people first time, business, customer-clerk, colleagues) pluralPlural
In linguistics, plurality or [a] plural is a concept of quantity representing a value of more-than-one. Typically applied to nouns, a plural word or marker is used to distinguish a value other than the default quantity of a noun, which is typically one...
second-person "siz" is used almost exclusively. In very formal situations, double plural
Double plural
A double plural is a plural form to which an extra suffix has been added, mainly because the original plural suffix had become improductive and therefore irregular. So the form as a whole was no longer seen as a plural .Examples of this can be seen in the history of English and Dutch...
second-person "sizler" may be used to refer to a much-respected person. Rarely, third plural conjugation of the verb (but not the pronoun) may be used to emphasize utmost respect. In imperative, there are three forms: second singular person for informal, second plural person for formal and double plural second person for very formal situations: "gel" (second singular, informal), "gelin" (second plural, formal), "geliniz" (double second plural, very formal). The very formal forms are not frequently used.
Honorifics
Turkish honorifics generally follow the first name, especially if they refer to gender or particular social statuses (e.g. Name Bey (Mr.), Name Hanım (Ms.), Name Hoca (teacher or cleric)). Such honorifics are used both in formal and informal situations. A newer honorific is "Sayın," which precedes the surname or full name, and is not gender-specific. (e.g. Sayın Name Surname, or Sayın Surname). They are generally used in very formal situations.Turkish terminology
In the Turkish terms for the constructive and inflexional endings, three roots are involved:- ek "supplement, affix" (notably Turkish has no prefixes)
- yap- "make"
- çek- "pull, draw"
For the last two verbal roots, the constructive suffix -im can be added to form nouns for instances of the actions denoted by the roots:
- yapım "construction";
- çekim "[a] pull or draw" (or a "take" in cinema).
Either of these nouns can be compounded with the noun ek, resulting in an indefinite compound (belirtisiz tamlama), the sign of which is the inflexional suffix -i attached to ek:
- yapım eki "structure-suffix";
- çekim eki "inflexion-suffix".
The inflexional suffix -ler comes before the -i to form the plural, so yapım ekleri, çekim ekleri.
Many words in Turkish—particularly many grammatical terms—are neologisms invented to replace earlier words borrowed from Arabic or Persian. (See the main article on Turkish language.) In some cases, the older term continues to be in used alongside the neologism.
Parts of speech
There are nine parts of speech (sözcük türleri "word-kinds") in Turkish.- nounNounIn linguistics, a noun is a member of a large, open lexical category whose members can occur as the main word in the subject of a clause, the object of a verb, or the object of a preposition .Lexical categories are defined in terms of how their members combine with other kinds of...
(isim or ad "name"); - pronounPronounIn linguistics and grammar, a pronoun is a pro-form that substitutes for a noun , such as, in English, the words it and he...
(zamir "inner being", or adıl from ad); - adjectiveAdjectiveIn grammar, an adjective is a 'describing' word; the main syntactic role of which is to qualify a noun or noun phrase, giving more information about the object signified....
(sıfat "role, quality", or önad "front-noun"); - verbVerbA verb, from the Latin verbum meaning word, is a word that in syntax conveys an action , or a state of being . In the usual description of English, the basic form, with or without the particle to, is the infinitive...
(fiil "act, deed", or eylem "action" from eyle- "make, do"). - adverbAdverbAn adverb is a part of speech that modifies verbs or any part of speech other than a noun . Adverbs can modify verbs, adjectives , clauses, sentences, and other adverbs....
(zarf "envelope", or belirteç from belir- "determine"); - postposition (ilgeç from ilgi "interest, relation");
- conjunctionGrammatical conjunctionIn grammar, a conjunction is a part of speech that connects two words, sentences, phrases or clauses together. A discourse connective is a conjunction joining sentences. This definition may overlap with that of other parts of speech, so what constitutes a "conjunction" must be defined for each...
(râbıt [obsolete], or bağlaç from bağ "bond"); - particleGrammatical particleIn grammar, a particle is a function word that does not belong to any of the inflected grammatical word classes . It is a catch-all term for a heterogeneous set of words and terms that lack a precise lexical definition...
(edat); - interjectionInterjectionIn grammar, an interjection or exclamation is a word used to express an emotion or sentiment on the part of the speaker . Filled pauses such as uh, er, um are also considered interjections...
(nidâ [obsolete], or ünlem from ün "fame, repute, sound").
Postpositions are analogous to prepositions in English, only they follow their objects. Postpositions can be reckoned as particles. However, there are particles in Turkish that are not postpositions.
Only nouns, pronouns and verbs are inflected in Turkish. An adjective can usually be treated as a noun or pronoun, in which case it can also be inflected. Inflexion can give a noun features of a verb such as person and tense. With inflexion, a verb can become one of the following:
- verbal nounVerbal nounIn linguistics, the verbal noun turns a verb into a noun and corresponds to the infinitive in English language usage. In English the infinitive form of the verb is formed when preceded by to, e.g...
(isim-fiil); - verbal adjective (sıfat-fiil) or participleParticipleIn linguistics, a participle is a word that shares some characteristics of both verbs and adjectives. It can be used in compound verb tenses or voices , or as a modifier...
(ortaç); - verbal adverb (called a gerund by Lewis (1967)).
These have peculiarities not shared with other nouns, adjectives or adverbs.
For example, some participles take a person the way verbs do.
Also, a verbal noun or adverb can take a direct object.
Some verbal nouns are not inflected forms in Turkish, but are borrowed from Arabic or other languages.
A noun or pronoun alone can make a complete sentence. For example,
köpek "dog"; Köpek. "It is a dog."
Most dictionaries list verbs in their infinitive form, which alone usually cannot form complete sentences. For example,
koşmak "(to) run".
However, instead of the infinitive, the Redhouse Turkish-English Dictionary gives the stem of a verb as its headword
Headword
A headword, head word, lemma, or sometimes catchword is the word under which a set of related dictionary or encyclopaedia entries appear. The headword is used to locate the entry, and dictates its alphabetical position...
, and the present article follows this convention. The verb-stem is also the second-person singular imperative:
koş- "run"; Koş! "Run!"
Both a noun and a verb, without endings, can alone form a sentence.
Many verbs are formed from nouns by addition of -le. For example,
köpekle- "swim like a dog" (in any of several ways).
The aorist tense of a verb is formed by adding -(i/e)r.
The plural of a noun is formed by suffixing -ler.
Hence:
Köpek + ler "(They are) dogs."
Köpekle + r "S/he swims (like a dog)."
Thus -ler can indicate either a plural noun or a finite verb.
Most adjectives can be treated as nouns or pronouns. For example,
genç "young" or "young person" or "the young person referred to".
An adjective or noun can stand, as a modifier, before a noun. If the modifier is a noun (but not a noun of material), then the second noun word takes the inflexional suffix -i:
beyaz diş "white tooth";
altın diş "gold tooth";
köpek dişi "canine tooth".
Comparison of adjectives is not done by inflecting adjectives or adverbs, but by other means (described below).
Adjectives can serve as adverbs, sometimes by means of repetition:
yavaş "slow"; yavaş yavaş "slowly".
Word-order
Turkish is generally SOV. A general rule of Turkish word-order is that the modifier precedes the modified:- adjective (used attributively) precedes noun;
- adverb precedes verb;
- object of postposition precedes postposition.
Also, in a sentence,
- subject precedes predicate;
- objects precede verb;
- indirect object precedes direct object.
However, because the distinction between subject, indirect object, and direct object is also indicated with inflexion, Turkish word order can vary.
The order of morphemes in Turkish is often opposite to English:
Avrupa Europe
Avrupalı European
Avrupalılaş become European (command)
Avrupalılaştır Europeanize (command)
Avrupalılaştırama I wish you could not Europeanize
Avrupalılaştıramadık we could not Europeanize
Avrupalılaştıramadıklar those whom could not Europeanize
Avrupalılaştıramadıklarımız those whom we could not Europeanize
Avrupalılaştıramadıklarımızdan one of those whom we could not Europeanize
Avrupalılaştıramadıklarımızdan mı? Is S/he one of those whom we could not Europeanize?
Avrupalılaştıramadıklarımızdan mısın? Are you one of those whom we could not Europeanize?
Avrupalılaştıramadıklarımızdan mısınız? Are you one of those whom we could not Europeanize? (second plural or formal)
Within the same context, the longest Turkish word consists of 44 characters:
Çekoslovakyalılaştıramadıklarımızdanmışsınız = You are apparently one of those we weren't (or haven't been) able to make a Czechoslovakian. (And equally: İskandinavyalılaştıramadıklarımızdanmışsınız = same for a Scandinavian.)[longest Turkish word:
in Turkish "Muvaffakiyetsizleştiricileştiriveremeyebileceklerimizdenmişsinizcesine", which means something like (you are talking) as if you are one of those that we can not easily convert into an unsuccessful-person-maker (someone who un-educates people to make them unsuccessful)].
Inflexional suffixes
The plural suffix (çoğul eki) can be used with nouns and with third-person verbs:| Plural suffix |
|---|
| -ler |
The case
Declension
In linguistics, declension is the inflection of nouns, pronouns, adjectives, and articles to indicate number , case , and gender...
-endings (durum ekleri from dur- "stop, last", or hâl ekleri from hâl "state, condition") can be named (in English) and used roughly as in Latin:
| Case Declension In linguistics, declension is the inflection of nouns, pronouns, adjectives, and articles to indicate number , case , and gender... -endings |
|
|---|---|
| absolute (yalın "bare" durum) | — |
| definite-accusative Accusative case The accusative case of a noun is the grammatical case used to mark the direct object of a transitive verb. The same case is used in many languages for the objects of prepositions... (belirtme "clarifying" durumu) |
|
| dative Dative case The dative case is a grammatical case generally used to indicate the noun to whom something is given, as in "George gave Jamie a drink".... (yönelme "going-towards" durumu) |
|
| locative Locative case Locative is a grammatical case which indicates a location. It corresponds vaguely to the English prepositions "in", "on", "at", and "by"... (bulunma "being-found" durumu) |
-de |
| ablative Ablative case In linguistics, ablative case is a name given to cases in various languages whose common characteristic is that they mark motion away from something, though the details in each language may differ... (çıkma "going-out" durumu) |
|
| genitive Genitive case In grammar, genitive is the grammatical case that marks a noun as modifying another noun... (tamlayan "compounding" eki) |
|
If a case-ending is attached to a demonstrative pronoun (which ends in o or u), or to a noun that has already taken a third-person ending of possession (given below), then the case-ending is preceded by n (and the parenthetical y is not used).
Nouns derived from verbs in several ways. The number of ways of forming verbal nouns (fiil isimleri) from verb-stems can be debated; here are three:
| Verbal-noun suffixes | |
|---|---|
| infinitive Infinitive In grammar, infinitive is the name for certain verb forms that exist in many languages. In the usual description of English, the infinitive of a verb is its basic form with or without the particle to: therefore, do and to do, be and to be, and so on are infinitives... (mastar "template") |
|
| gerund Gerund In linguistics* As applied to English, it refers to the usage of a verb as a noun .... |
|
| Way of doing VERB | |
Several series of endings show distinctions of person
Grammatical person
Grammatical person, in linguistics, is deictic reference to a participant in an event; such as the speaker, the addressee, or others. Grammatical person typically defines a language's set of personal pronouns...
(kişi); they are given here, along with the personal pronouns for comparison:
| Indicators of person | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| person | 1 | 2 | 3 | ||||
| number | sing | pl | sing | pl | sing/pl | pl | |
| personal pronouns | ben | biz | sen | siz | o | onlar | |
| suffixes of possession (iyelik ekleri) | -(i)m | -(i)miz | -(i)n | -(i)niz | -(s)i | -leri | |
| personal endings (kişi ekleri) | predicative (I) | -(y)im | -(y)iz | -sin | -siniz | — | -ler |
| verbal (II) | -m | -k | -n | -niz | — | -ler | |
| optative (III) | -(y)eyim | -(y)elim | -(y)esin | -(y)esiniz | -(y)e | -(y)eler | |
| imperative (IV) | — | -(y)in(iz) | -sin | -sinler | |||
The names given to the personal endings here are not standard.
These endings are often just referred to as type I, II, III, and IV respectively; but the order in which the types are numbered is also not standard.
It should also be noted that Lewis (1967) refers to the suffixes of possession as "personal" endings.
However, of the endings called personal in Turkish and in this article:
- those labelled "predicative" above can be used to turn nouns into verbs;
- those labelled "verbal" attach only to verb-stems.
In the 3rd person, plural number is not always explicitly marked, and the same form is used for both singular and plural. If the plural suffix -ler is used, it combines with the personal endings as indicated in the final column of the table.
A suffix of possession gives the person of a possessor of the object named by the noun to which the suffix is attached; it also indicates a subject for a participle.
A predicative ending can assign a person to a noun, thus creating a complete sentence:
ada "island"; Adayım "I am an island."
See also Copula#Turkish and Turkish copula
Turkish copula
This article supplements the general articles on the copula and Turkish grammar.The English infinitive "to be" is rendered in Turkish as olmak, while "existence" is varlık. The latter word is the abstract noun derived from var, which is an adjective meaning "existing" or "present"...
.
All of the personal suffixes can be used in the formation of verbs.
Verb-stems have been mentioned.
A verb-base is obtained from a verb-stem by attachment of certain suffixes or characteristics given below.
Then the personal endings here called "predicative" and "verbal" attach only to verb-bases; the optative and imperative endings attach to verb-stems.
| Characteristics | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| with predicative endings | progressive | ||
| necessitative | |||
| aorist | positive | ||
| negative | |||
| impotential | |||
| future | |||
| inferential past | |||
| present | |||
| with verbal endings | |definite past | ||
| conditional | |||
The present characteristic is not fully enclitic: the first syllable shows vowel harmony, but the second is invariable.
The aorist negative and impotential characteristics are given here because they are anomalous. Note, that the "-z" of the aorist negative (-mez) and impotential (-(y)emez) is dropped in the 1st person singular and plural, in order to be able to suffix it. (Aorist negative 1st person singular: -mem; BUT: Aorist impotential 3rd person plural: -(y)emezler)
The non-aorist characteristics can be suffixed to the following endings:
| negative | -me |
|---|---|
| impotential | -(y)eme |
See #Negation and potential in verb-stems under #Verbs below.
Some third-person verbs are also participles.
Participles can be classified as personal, if they take a suffix of possession, and impersonal, if they do not. The following suffixes attach to verb-stems:
| Participial endings | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| impersonal | personal | ||
| aorist | positive | ||
| negative | |||
| impotential | |||
| present | |||
| future | -(y)ecek | ||
| past | |||
The interrogative particle (soru eki) is not written as a suffix, but it is enclitic:
| Interrogative particle |
|---|
| mi |
Inflexion
A Turkish noun has no genderGrammatical gender
Grammatical gender is defined linguistically as a system of classes of nouns which trigger specific types of inflections in associated words, such as adjectives, verbs and others. For a system of noun classes to be a gender system, every noun must belong to one of the classes and there should be...
.
The dictionary-form of a noun can take up to four (kinds of) #Inflexional suffixes, generally in the following order:
- plural suffix;
- suffix of possessionPossession (linguistics)Possession, in the context of linguistics, is an asymmetric relationship between two constituents, the referent of one of which possesses the referent of the other ....
(iyelik eki from iye "owner"); - caseDeclensionIn linguistics, declension is the inflection of nouns, pronouns, adjectives, and articles to indicate number , case , and gender...
-ending; - personalGrammatical personGrammatical person, in linguistics, is deictic reference to a participant in an event; such as the speaker, the addressee, or others. Grammatical person typically defines a language's set of personal pronouns...
suffix (kişi eki from kişi "person").
Through its presence or absence, the plural ending shows distinctions of number
Grammatical number
In linguistics, grammatical number is a grammatical category of nouns, pronouns, and adjective and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions ....
.
Number
A noun is made into an indefinite plural by addition of -ler. If a numeral is used with a noun, then the plural suffix is usually not used:baş "head",
başlar "[some] heads",
beş baş "five head(s)", but
Beşevler "Five Houses" (district of Ankara).
The plural ending also allows a family (living in one house) to be designated by a single member:
Aliler "Ali and his family";
teyze "maternal aunt",
teyzem "my maternal aunt";
teyzemler "my maternal aunt and her family".
In the last example, the first-person singular suffix of possession comes before the plural ending; this is an exception to the order of suffixes given above.
In the usual order, we have
teyzelerim "my maternal aunts".
Nouns are pluralized in standard temporal greetings.
gün "day", İyi günler! "Good day!";
yıl "year"; Mutlu yıllar! "Happy new year!"
Possession
As noted earlier, the suffixes of possession give the personGrammatical person
Grammatical person, in linguistics, is deictic reference to a participant in an event; such as the speaker, the addressee, or others. Grammatical person typically defines a language's set of personal pronouns...
(and number) of the possessor of what is named by the noun:
teyzem "my maternal aunt",
teyzeniz "you(formal/plural)r maternal aunt",
teyzeleriniz "you(formal/plural)r maternal aunts".
Note well that, when a word takes one of the endings of possession, the word becomes the name of something possessed, not possessing: the word for the possessor, if present, takes the genitive case-ending, as discussed below.
The plural ending will not be attached twice to the same word; therefore ambiguity is possible:
fikir "idea",
fikirleri "their idea" or
"their ideas" or
"her [or his] ideas".
Ambiguity can be resolved with #Pronouns.
Case
The absolute case combines the uses of the nominativeNominative case
The nominative case is one of the grammatical cases of a noun or other part of speech, which generally marks the subject of a verb or the predicate noun or predicate adjective, as opposed to its object or other verb arguments...
, vocative
Vocative case
The vocative case is the case used for a noun identifying the person being addressed and/or occasionally the determiners of that noun. A vocative expression is an expression of direct address, wherein the identity of the party being spoken to is set forth expressly within a sentence...
, and (in part) accusative
Accusative case
The accusative case of a noun is the grammatical case used to mark the direct object of a transitive verb. The same case is used in many languages for the objects of prepositions...
cases.
It is for subjects, and for names of people being addressed.
It is also used for indefinite direct objects.
Definite direct objects are in the definite-accusative case:
şiir "poem", so:
Şiir okur "S/he reads a poem";
Şiiri okur "S/he reads the poem."
The dative case tells whither, that is, the place to which.
Thus it has roughly the meaning of the English prepositions "to" and "into", and also "in" when it can be replaced with "into":
Birayı buzdolabına koy- "the-beer in-icebox put", that is,
"put the beer in the fridge".
The dative also is for objects: usually indirect objects, but sometimes objects that in English would be considered direct:
Güneşin batışına bak- "sun's at-its-sinking look", that is,
"look at the sunset";
hükümete güven- "in-government trust", that is,
"trust the government".
The locative case tells where, hence corresponds to the English prepositions "at" and "on", and "in" when it does not mean "into".
evde "at home" (ev "house");
Buzdolabında dört bira var "in-icebox four beer exist," that is,
"There are four beers in the fridge."
The ablative case tells whence, that is, the place from which (or through which), hence:
- material out of which something is made;
kumdan yapılmış kale "of-sand made castle", that is,
"castle made of sand";
- a cause by which something is effected;
açlıktan öl- "of-hunger die";
- that to which other things are being compared (see #Adjectives below).
In the Turkish terminology, the genitive case indicates a "compounding" (tamlayan) word.
The corresponding "compounded" (tamlanan) word will take the appropriate suffix of possession.
The pair of these words is then a definite compound (belirtili tamlama):
anne "mother",
annesi "her mother",
Ayşe'nin annesi "Ayşe's mother".
(The apostrophe in Turkish is used before suffixes attached to proper nouns.)
However, if two nouns are connected, but not by ownership, then the second noun generally takes an ending of possession, while the first takes no ending. The result is an indefinite compound (belirtisiz tamlama):
Türkiye'nin Cumhurbaşkanı "The President of Turkey" (definite);
Türkiye Cumhuriyeti "The Republic of Turkey" (indefinite).
If one noun names a material, the other noun need not take an ending:
nikâh yüzüğü "wedding ring";
altın yüzük "gold ring".
Predication
If a noun is to be in the first or second person, one of the predicative suffixes (or type-I personal suffixes) will show this:Dünyayız "We are the world" (dünya "world").
Çocuklarsınız "You are the children" (çocuk "child").
In the third person, no ending is required.
However, the ending -dir can be used; it is said (Lewis, 1967: VIII,3) to be the remnant of a verb turur "S/he stands".
Again in the third person, the plural suffix may be used:
Türk or Türktür "S/he is Turkish";
Türkler or Türktürler "They are Turkish";
Türklerdir "They are the Turks" (Lewis, 1967: VIII,5).
Several suffixes can be combined:
Evinizdeyim "I am at your house."
Ya benimsin, ya toprağın "Thou art either mine, or the earth's (that is, dead)."
(The last was spotted on a minibus in Turkey.)
Verbal nouns
The infinitive, formed with -mek as noted earlier, does not take a suffix of possession, or the genitive case-ending.It does take all other case-endings.
In particular, the progressive characteristic given earlier is the infinitive ending with the locative ending:
Konuşmaktayız "We are in (the act of) speaking."
Savaşmaktayız "We are in warmaking", that is, "We are at war."
The verbal noun in -me is called a gerund above, since it corresponds roughly to the English gerund
Gerund
In linguistics* As applied to English, it refers to the usage of a verb as a noun ....
.
It can take a suffix of possession and any case-ending:
The dative form of a Turkish gerund can correspond precisely to an English infinitive with to:
Ülkemizde nano teknolojik ürünler üretilmeye başlandı
"In-our-country nano technological products to-be-produced began"
that is, "Nano-technological products began to be produced in our country" (source: Cumhuriyet Bilim-Teknik 13 August 2005, p. 1).
Yet another verbal noun is from -iş:
yürüyüş "walk, walking" (yürü- "walk");
yağış "rain" (yağ- "rain");
alışveriş "getting [and] spending", that is, "shopping"
(al- "take" or "buy"; ver- "give" or "spend");
yaratılış "creation" (yara- "be of use",
yarat- "create",
yaratıl- "be created").
The verb et- "make, do" can be considered as an auxiliary verb, since for example it is often used with verbal nouns borrowed from other languages, such as Arabic:
kabul et- "accept" (kabul "[an] accepting");
reddet- "reject" (ret "[a] rejecting");
ziyaret et- "visit" (ziyaret "[a] visiting").
Considered as units, these are transitive verbs; but the nouns in them can, by themselves, take direct objects:
Antalya'yı ziyaret "visit to Antalya".
What looks like an ablative gerund is usually an adverb; the ending -meden usually has the sense of "without".
See #Adverbs below.
An infinitive in the absolute case can be the object of a verb such as iste- "want":
Kimi eğitime devam etmek, "Some-of-them towards-education continuation make
kimi de çalışmak istiyor. some-of-them also work want"
that is, "Some want to continue their educations, and some want to work"
(source: Cumhuriyet Pazar Dergi, 14 August 2005, p. 1.) Note here that the compound verb devam et- "continue, last" does not take a direct object, but is complemented by a dative noun.
Another way to express obligation (besides with lâzım as in the earlier example) is by means of zor "trouble, compulsion" and an infinitive:
Gitmek zoru "Go compulsion",
Gitmek zorundayız "We must go".
(Source: same as the last example.)
Both an infinitive and a gerund are objects of the postposition için "for" in the third sentence of the quotation within the following quotation:
Tesis yetkilileri, Facility its-authorities
"Bölge insanları genelde tutucu. "District its-people in-general conservative.
Sahil kesimleri Shore its-sections
yola yakın olduğu için to-road near their-being for
rahat bir şekilde göle giremiyorlar. comfortable a in-form to-lake they-cannot-enter.
Biz de We and
hem yoldan geçenlerin görüş açısını kapatmak both from-road of-passers sight their-angle to-close
hem de erkeklerin rahatsız etmemesi için and men's uncomfortable their-not-making for
paravan kullanıyoruz" screen we-are-using"
dedi. they-said.
Ancak paravanın aralarından But curtain's from-its-gaps
çocukların karşı tarafı gözetlemeleri children's other side their-spying
engellenemedi. cannot-be-hindered.
(Source: Cumhuriyet, 9 August 2005, Tuesday, p. 1.) A free translation is:
The facility authorities said, "The people of this district [namely Edremit, VanEdremit, VanThis article is on the town and the district of Edremit in Van Province, eastern Turkey. For the town and the district of Edremit in Balıkesir Province, on the Aegean coast in western Turkey, see Edremit , Balıkesir....
] are generally conservative. They cannot enter the lakeLake VanLake Van is the largest lake in Turkey, located in the far east of the country in Van district. It is a saline and soda lake, receiving water from numerous small streams that descend from the surrounding mountains. Lake Van is one of the world's largest endorheic lakes . The original outlet from...
comfortably, because the shore areas are near the road. So we are using a screen, both to close off the view of passersby on the road, and so that men will not cause discomfort." However, children cannot be prevented from spying on the other side through gaps in the screen.
Auxiliary verbs
Certain verbs in Turkish are used to enhance the meaning of other verbs, or to agglutinateAgglutinative language
An agglutinative language is a language that uses agglutination extensively: most words are formed by joining morphemes together. This term was introduced by Wilhelm von Humboldt in 1836 to classify languages from a morphological point of view...
verbs from nouns. These verbs are called auxiliary verbs. A concise list follows:
Verbs that are used with nouns to agglutinate new verbs
- etmek
- olmak
- kılmak
- eylemek
Examples
* farz (assumption) -> farz etmek (to assume)
* hak (right) -> hak etmek (to deserve)
* af (amnesty) -> affetmek (to excuse)
* kayıp (loss) -> kaybetmek (to lose)
* terk (leaving) -> terk etmek (to leave)
* arz (submission, supply) -> arz etmek (to submit, to supply)
If there is a change in the noun root through the process of agglutination, it is written adjacently.These are mostly Arabic loan-words, which switch to their more original form.
Remember that in Turkish words, two consonants of a syllable need a vowel to be pronunciated. There are exceptions on loan words only, but those that lost their original form are more common. This occurs in two ways:
If two identical consonants exist in the end of the word, one is dropped such as hall "state,status" to hal, aff "amnesty,forgiving" to af.
If any two consonants exist in one syllable, a vowel appears such as hükm "judgement" to hüküm.
Exceptions: taht "throne", renk "colour", kart "card" frequent for the ones with nk, rt, rk. Note that most of these are loan-words from Persian or western languages.
Examples
* kayıp + et- -> kaybetmek (to lose; "kayıp" lost is originally "kayb", an Arabic loan-word)
* haciz + et- -> haczetmek (to sequestrate; "haciz" sequestration is originally "hacz", an Arabic loan-word)
* haz + et- -> hazzetmek (to relish or to enjoy; "haz" delight is originally "hazz", an Arabic loan-word)
Verbs that are used with other verbs to enhance the meaning
- -(i)vermek (implies urgency)
- -(e)bilmek (implies ability)
- -(e)durmak (implies continuity)
- -(e)gelmek (implies repetition)
- -(a)kalmak (implies continuity)
- -(e)yazmak (implies a close escape)
Examples
* düş- (fall) -> düşeyazdım (I almost fell)
* git- (go) -> gidiverdim (I just went, je viens d'aller)
* yavaşla- (slow down) -> yavaşlayabilirim (I can slow down)
* yaz- (write) -> yazaduruyorlar (They keep on writing)
* söyle- (tell) -> söylenegelir (is kept being told)
Use
Adjectives used attributively precede the noun; used predicatively, they follow, unless something other than word-order shows that they are being used predicatively:yeşil çim "[the] green grass"
Çim yeşil(dir) or Yeşildir çim "Grass is green."
In a positive comparison, the object takes the ablative case; the adverb daha "more" is optional, unless the object is left out.
tüyden (daha) hafif "lighter than a feather".
In a negative comparison, the adverb az "less" is needed; the object still takes the ablative; daha can still be used as well.
kurşundan (daha) az ağır "less heavy than lead"
The superlative degree is expressed by the adverb en "most".
en büyük yalancı "the biggest liar" (büyük "big", yalan "lie");
en az güvenilir "least trustworthy" (güven- "trust").
Descriptive adjectives
Most adjectives in the dictionary are descriptive. The most fundamental descriptive adjectives are two:| var | "existing" |
| yok | "not existing" |
These are used only predicatively:
- with the sense of the English "There is" and "There is not":
Gökte bir bulut yok "There is not a cloud in the sky";
- in the construction that supplies the lack of a verb "have":
Balcının var bal tası, "Honey-seller's exists honey his-pot,
oduncunun var baltası. wood-cutter's exists his-axe."
(This is a proverbial expression: "The honey-seller has a honey-pot; the wood-cutter has an axe"; bal "honey", odun "(fire) wood", tas "bowl", balta "axe"; the more usual order would make the saying Balcının bal tası var, oduncunun baltası var).
Indefinite adjectives
The cardinal bir "one" can be used as an indefinite articleArticle (grammar)
An article is a word that combines with a noun to indicate the type of reference being made by the noun. Articles specify the grammatical definiteness of the noun, in some languages extending to volume or numerical scope. The articles in the English language are the and a/an, and some...
. Word-order can make the difference:
güzel bir gün "a nice day";
bir güzel gün "one fine day".
Unless it is being used by itself, elliptically, the adjective hiç "no" requires an additional word with negative force:
Hiç param yok "I have no money" (para "money");
Hiç bir adam ada değildir "No man is an island" (adam "man", ada "island", değil "not").
Bir şey görüyorum "I see something", but
Hiç bir şey göremiyorum "I can't see anything."
Participles
It is noted under #Parts of speech that Turkish participles (sıfat-fiiller) can be classified asIn a personal participle, the suffix of possession signifies the subject of the underlying verb; if this possessor is third person, then the possessor may be further specified with a noun in the genitive case.
The noun modified by a personal participle as an adjective may be the direct object of the underlying verb; the connexion may also be more vague.
The noun modified by an impersonal participle is generally the subject of the underlying verb (but see Lewis (1967: IX,2)).
The aorist tense (geniş zaman "broad time") is for habitual actions; the present tense (şimdiki zaman "time that is now") is for actions ongoing or contemplated.
Aorist:
akarsu "water that flows", hence "stream" (ak- "flow", su "water");
akaryakıt "fuel oil" (yakıt "heating fuel");
çıkmaz "not going out, cul-de-sac";
inilir "got down from" (sign at rear door of bus; in- "go down")
sürdürülebilir turizm "tourism that can be continued", that is, "sustainable tourism
Sustainable tourism
Sustainable tourism is tourism attempting to make a low impact on the environment and local culture, while helping to generate future employment for local people. The aim of sustainable tourism is to ensure that development brings a positive experience for local people, tourism companies and the...
"
(sür "drive"; sürdür "continue")
Present:
that is, "No legal process has begun concerning the AKP
Justice and Development Party (Turkey)
The Justice and Development Party , abbreviated JDP in English and AK PARTİ or AKP in Turkish, is a centre-right political party in Turkey. The party is the largest in Turkey, with 327 members of parliament...
members who pulled out guns and fired them in the air" [Birgün Halkın Gazetesi, 25 July 2005]; for -ip see #Adverbs below.
Future:
gelecek hafta "week that will come", that is, "next week";
okunacak bir kitap "a book that will be read" (okun- "be read");
okuyacağım bir kitap "a book that I shall read" (oku- "read").
Past/present:
okunmuş bir kitap "a book that was read";
okuduğum bir kitap "a book that I read/am reading";
Yaşamın bittiği yer'de hayat "Life in the place where life ends."
(The last example is a newspaper headline [Birgün, 20 July 2005] about cemetery workers; bit- "end"; yer "place"; hayat [Arabic] and yaşam [neologism from yaşa-] "life".)
A personal participle can be construed as a noun and used in parallel with verbal nouns:
Çocukların
yüzde 68'i evinin ihtiyaçlarına katkıda bulunmak,
yüzde 21'i ailesi istediği için,
yüzde altısı iş öğrenmek ve meslek edinmek için,
yüzde 4'ü ihtiyaçlarını karşılaşmak için
çalışıyor
"Children's
in-100 their-68 house's for-its-needs in-aid be-found,
in-100 their-21 their-family that-they-wanted for,
in-100 their-six work learn and profession be-made for,
in-100 their-4 their-needs meet for
are-working."
(Source: Birgün Halkın Gazetesi 13 August 2005, Saturday, p. 1.) That is,
Children are working, 68% to provide for their family's needs, 21% because their family wants it, 6% to learn a job or profession, 4% to meet their [own] needs.
The following sentence from a newspaper headline contains twenty-two words, nine derived from verbs, four of these as participles, three as gerunds. Note also the use of kontrol from French as a verbal noun with et-:
| Türkiye'nin AB'ye girmemesi ve | "Turkey's to-the-EU its-not-entering and |
| İslam dünyasına yaklaşması halinde | Islam to-its-world its-drawing-near in-its-state |
| şeriatçılığın kucağına itilmiş | sharia-favorer-ness's to-its-embrace pushed |
| olacağını | that-it-will-be |
| söyleyen Fransız senatör Duireux, | saying French senator Duireux, |
| İslami akımların | Islamic current's |
| kontrol edilmesi | control its-being-made |
| gerektiğini | that-it-is-necessary |
| belirtti. | he-made-clear." |
Source: Cumhuriyet, 17 July 2005; more smoothly:
Saying that, by not joining the EU and by drawing close to the Islamic world, Turkey would be pushed into the lap of those who favor sharia, French senator Duireux made clear that it was necessary to control the Islamic tide.
Adverbs
The adverb of negation is değil. It is used to negate sentences that are without verb or var; then it takes the appropriate personal ending:Evde değilim "I am not at home."
It may also negate part of sentence:
İŞGALE DEĞİL DİRENİŞE DESTEK "To-invasion not to-resistance support", that is,
"Support the resistance, not the invasion"
(slogan on placard at demonstration).
A number of adverbs are derived from verbs:
The ending -e is seen in:
Güle güle "[Go] smilingly" (said to somebody departing);
Güle güle kullanın "Use [it] smilingly" (said to somebody with a new acquisition);
Beşe çeyrek kala kalktım "To-five a-quarter remaining I-got-up", that is,
"I got up at a quarter to five";
Onu yirmi geçe uyudun "You slept at twenty past ten"
(uyu- "sleep", although uy- "heed").
The ending -erek denotes action at the same time as, or preceding, that of another verb:
Geceyi konuşarak geçirdik "The-night talking we-caused-to-pass", that is,
"We spent the night talking."
Akıl yürüterek bu sonuca ulaşıyorum "By using reason, I arrived at this conclusion"
[the latter is Bülent Ecevit
Bülent Ecevit
Mustafa Bülent Ecevit was a Turkish politician, poet, writer and journalist, who was the leader of Republican People's Party , later of the Democratic Left Party and four-time Prime Minister of Turkey.- Personal life :...
as quoted in Cumhuriyet
Cumhuriyet
Cumhuriyet is a centre-left Turkish daily newspaper, founded on May 7, 1924 by journalist Yunus Nadi Abalıoğlu. Based in Istanbul, it has been situated since October 17, 2005 in Mecidiyeköy. Cumhuriyet was the last newspaper to leave the old press district Cağaloğlu...
, 20 July 2005].
Doğaya en az zarar vererek yaşamak "To live while giving the least harm to nature"
[Buğday magazine, 7–8/2005, no 32].
From ol- "be, become", olarak forms adverbial phrases corresponding to those in English with "as":
Size bir dost olarak söylüyorum "To-you a friend as I'm-telling", that is,
"I'm telling you this as a friend";
ciddi olarak "seriously" (ciddi "serious").
The ending -meden on a verb-stem looks like the ablative gerund, but it is not (Lewis [XI,12]).
It indicates an action not occurring at all, or following that of the main verb:
Bakmadan atlama "Don't leap without looking";
Bakmadan önce atlama "Don't leap before looking."
Bir soruyu cevaplamadan tartışmak,
tartışmadan cevaplamaktan iyidir
"A particular-question without-answering to-debate
without-debating from-to-answer is-good," that is,
"It is better to debate without answering than to answer without debating."
(Source of the last sentence: Joseph Joubert
Joseph Joubert
Joseph Joubert was a French moralist and essayist, remembered today largely for his Pensées published posthumously....
as quoted on p. 20 of Gündelik Bilmeceler by Partha Ghose and Dipankar Home, translated by Özlem Özbal, Tübitak Popüler Bilim Kitapları 25, Ankara, 1996.)
Complementing önce "before" is sonra "after", which can follow a verb-stem given the ending -dikten:
Baktıktan sonra atla "After looking, leap";
Ayşe baktıktan sonra Neşe atladı "After Ayşe looked, Neşe lept."
Simultaneity is expressed by iken or its (not enclitic) suffixed form -(y)ken; but if it follows a verb, then the verb appears, not as a stem, but as a base; see #Bases of verbs:
Eve girmekteyken, bir şey hatırladım "As I was entering the house, I remembered something";
Ben eve girmekteyken, telefon çaldı "As I was entering the house, the telephone rang."
If two verbs of the same grammatical form have the same subject, the endings on the first verb can be replaced by -ip; see the example under #Participles.
Pronouns
The third-person personal pronoun o "she/he/it" is declined as if it were the noun on.The other persons, ben "I", sen "thou", biz "we", siz "you", are declined like nouns, except for a vowel change in the dative, and an anomalous genitive; also the plural forms do not involve -ler:
| singular | plural | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 1 | 2 | 3 | |
| absolute | ben | sen | o | biz | siz | onlar |
| accusative | beni | seni | onu | bizi | sizi | onları |
| dative | bana | sana | ona | bize | size | onlara |
| locative | bende | sende | onda | bizde | sizde | onlarda |
| ablative | benden | senden | ondan | bizden | sizden | onlardan |
| genitive | benim | senin | onun | bizim | sizin | onların |
The absolute case is generally needed only for emphasis:
Nasılsınız? "How are you?"
İyiyim; siz nasılsınız? "I am fine; how are you?"
Ben de iyiyim. "I too am fine."
The third-person pronoun can clear up an ambiguity mentioned above:
onların fikri "their idea";
onların fikirleri "their ideas";
onun fikirleri "her [or his] ideas".
The pronoun o is also one of the demonstrative pronouns:
- o "that";
- bu "this";
- şu "this or that" (thing pointed to).
The latter two are declined like o (that is, treated as if they were bun and şun).
The interrogative pronouns (and adjectives) are:
- kim "who";
- ne "what";
- hangi "which";
- kaç "how many" or "how much".
These serve as relative pronouns only in a limited way:
Buzdolabında kaçtane var, o bilir "S/he knows how many are in the refrigerator."
There is a suffix -ki, borrowed from Persian, that acts as a relative pronoun in that it creates what, in English, would be called relative clauses. It does not display vowel harmony, except in a few common formations:
benimki "mine (that which is mine)";
buzdolabındaki bira "beer that is in the refrigerator" (no vowel harmony);
bugünkü "today's (which is today)" (with vowel harmony);
dünkü "yesterday's (which was yesterday)" (with vowel harmony).
The reflexive pronoun (dönüşlü zamir from dön- "turn") is kendi "own, self":
Kendi kendinden korkma "Do not be afraid of thyself."
Many of the indefinite adjectives can function as pronouns, taking case-endings.
Stems of verbs
Many stems in the dictionary are indivisible; others consist of endings attached to a root.Verb-stems from nouns
The verb-stem temizle- "make clean" is the adjective temiz "clean" with the suffix -le; this suffix was mentioned earlier under #Parts of speech in connexion with the verb köpekle-. Many verbs are formed from nouns or adjectives with -le:- başla- "make a head", that is, "begin" (intransitive; baş "head");
- kilitle- "make locked", that is, "lock" (kilit "lock");
- kirle- "make dirty" (kir "dirt").
Voice
A verbal root, or a verb-stem in -le, can be lengthened with certain extensions. If present, they appear in the following order; they indicate distinctions of voice:| Extensions for voice | ||
|---|---|---|
| reflexive | ||
| reciprocal | ||
| causative | ||
| after polysyllabic stems in -l, -r, or a vowel; and | ||
| in other cases; except: | ||
| after some monosyllabic stems; and | ||
| there are some other exceptional forms as well. | ||
| passive | ||
| after stems ending in a consonant; otherwise, same as reflexive. | ||
These endings might seem to be inflexional in the sense of the #Introduction above; but their meanings are not always clear from their particular names, and dictionaries do generally give the resulting forms, so in this sense they are constructive endings.
The causative extension makes an intransitive verb transitive, and a transitive verb factitive. Together, the reciprocal and causative extension make the repetitive extension -iştir.
- bul- "find",
- buluş- "meet",
- bulun- "be present";
- yıka- "wash [something else]",
- yıkan- "wash oneself",
- yıkanıl- "be washed";
- kayna- "(come to a) boil",
- kaynat- "(bring to a) boil";
- öl- "die",
- öldür- "kill",
- öldürt- "have [someone] killed";
- ara- "look for",
- araştır- "investigate".
Negation and potential in verb-stems
A dictionary-stem is positive; it can be made:- negative, by addition of -me;
- impotential, by addition of -e and then -me.
Any of these three (kinds of) stems can be made potential by addition of -e and then -bil. The -bil is not enclitic, but represents the verb bil- "know, be able"; the first syllable of the impotential ending represents an obsolete verb u- "be powerful, able" #Lewis [VIII,55].
So far then, there are six kinds of stems:
| Paradigm for stems negative, impotential and potential | ||
|---|---|---|
| English infinitive | English finite form | |
| gel- | "come" | "come" |
| gelme- | "not come" | "do not come" |
| geleme- | "be unable to come" | "cannot come" |
| gelebil- | "be able to come" | "can come" |
| gelmeyebil- | "be able not to come" | "may not come" |
| gelemeyebil- | "able to be unable to come" | "may be unable to come" |
Such stems are not used for aorist forms, which have their own peculiar means of forming negatives and impotentials.
Bases of verbs
The characteristics with which verb-bases are formed from stems are given under #Inflexional suffixes. Note again that aorist verbs have their own peculiar negative and impotential forms.The progressive base in -mekte is discussed under #Verbal nouns.
Another base, namely the necessitative (gereklilik), is formed from a verbal noun.
The characteristic is -meli, where -li forms adjectives from nouns, and -me forms gerunds from verb-stems.
A native speaker may perceive the ending -meli as indivisible; the analysis here is from #Lewis [VIII,30]).
The present base is derived from the ancient verb yorı- "go, walk" #Lewis [VIII,16]; this can be used for ongoing actions, or for contemplated future actions.
The meaning of the aorist base is described under #Adjectives from verbs: participles.
There is some irregularity in first-person negative and impotential aorists. The full form of the base -mez (or (y)emez) reappears before the interrogative particle mi:
- Gelmem "I do not come" (cf. Gelmez miyim "Do I not come?");
- Gelmeyiz "We do not come" (cf. Gelmez miyiz "Do we not come?")
The definite past or di-past is used to assert that something did happen in the past.
The inferential past or miş-past can be understood as asserting that a past participle is applicable now; hence it is used when the fact of a past event, as such, is not important; in particular, the inferential past is used when one did not actually witness the past event.
A newspaper will generally use the di-past, because it is authoritative. The need to indicate uncertainly and inference by means of the miş-past may help to explain the extensive use of ki in the newspaper excerpt at Turkish vocabulary#The conjunction ki.
The conditional (şart) verb could also be called "hypothetical"; it is used for remote possibilities, or things one might wish for. (See also #Compound bases.)
The various bases thus give distinctions of tense, aspect and mood. These can be briefly tabulated:
| First-person singular verbs | |
|---|---|
| gelmekteyim | "I am in the process of coming" |
| gelmeliyim | "I must come" |
| gelirim | "I come" |
| gelmem | "I do not come" |
| gelemem | "I cannot come" |
| geleceğim | "I shall come" |
| gelmişim | "It seems that I came" |
| geliyorum | "I am coming" |
| geldim | "I came" |
| gelsem | "if only I came" |
Questions
The interrogative particle mi precedes predicative (type-I) endings (except for the 3rd person plural -ler), but follows the complete verb formed from a verbal, type-II ending:- Geliyor musunuz? "Are you coming?" (but: Geliyorlar mı? "Are they coming?")
- Geldiniz mi? "Did you come?"
Optative and imperative moods
Usually, in the optative (istek), only the first-person forms are used, and these supply the lack of a first-person imperative (emir).In common practice then, there is one series of endings to express something wished for:
-(y)eyim, -(y)elim, —, -(y)in, -sin.
(The longer second-person plural imperative ending -(y) iniz is generally used only in writing.)
| Non-indicative verbs | |
|---|---|
| Geleyim | "Let me come" |
| Gelelim | "Let us come" |
| Gel | "Come (thou)" |
| Gelin | "Come (you)" |
| Gelsin | "Let [her/him/it] come" |
| Gelsinler | "Let them come" |
The defective verb i-
The ancient verb er- #Lewis [VIII,2] exists in Turkish in three bases:- imiş,
- idi,
- ise.
The form iken given under #Adverbs from verbs is also descended from er-.
Since no more bases are founded on the stem i-, this verb can be called defective. In particular, i- forms no negative or impotential stems; negation is achieved with the #Adverb of negation, değil, given earlier.
Verbs i- are often made into suffixes; the corresponding bases then are
- -(y)miş,
- -(y)di,
- -(y)se,
where the y is used only after vowels.
The verb i- serves as a copula. When a copula is needed, but the appropriate base in i- does not exist, then the corresponding base in ol- is used; this stem otherwise means "become".
The verb i- is irregular in the way it is used in questions: the particle mi always precedes it:
- Kuş idi or Kuştu "It was a bird";
- Kuş muydu? "Was it a bird?"
Compound bases
The bases so far considered can be called "simple". A base in i- can be attached to another base, forming a compound base. One can then interpret the result by reading backwards. The following list is representative, not exhaustive:- Past tenses:
- continuous past: Geliyordum "I was coming";
- aorist past: Gelirdim "I used to come";
- future past: Gelecektim "I was going to come";
- pluperfect: Gelmiştim "I had come";
- necessitative past: Gelmeliydim "I had to come";
- conditional past: Gelseydim "If only I had come."
- Inferential tenses:
- continuous inferential: Geliyormuşum "It seems (they say) I am coming";
- future inferential: Gelecekmişim "It seems I shall come";
- aorist inferential: Gelirmişim "It seems I come";
- necessitative inferential: Gelmeliymişim "They say I must come."
By means of ise or -(y)se, a verb can be made conditional in the sense of being the hypothesis or protasis of a complex statement:
- önemli bir şey yapıyorsunuz "You are doing something important";
- Önemli bir şey yapıyorsanız, rahatsız etmeyelim "If you are doing something important, let us not cause disturbance."
The simple conditional can be used for remote conditions:
- Bakmakla öğrenilse, köpekler kasap olurdu "If learning by looking were possible, dogs would be butchers."
Grammars
"A classic, still used to teach Turkish grammar in many universities." "Turkish lessons with Turkish-English explanation[s] for foreigners." "A classic, still used to teach Turkish grammar in many universities." "The most recent comprehensive grammar in English." Second edition. Structural differences between the two editions are not named in the second, but appear to be as follows: IV,4 "-çe", VI,7 "Arithmetical terms", XI,16 "-diğinde", and XII,25 "tâ" are new, while XV,1 "Nominal sentences and verbal sentences" in the first edition was dropped. "Semantic and syntactic properties of words: subjects, examples, questions, answers with explanation (language ability for the university entrance examinations, 2)." "The Turkish language, language, and expression."Dictionaries
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