Basics of Turkish Grammar

Pronouns & Nouns, Possession, Postpositions, Adjectives, Adverbs, Conjunctions

The Sultanahmet Cami (Blue Mosque) in İstanbul. See my travel page for many more pictures.

We are studying Turkish grammar, and so far we have looked at some fundamentals like the alphabet, vowel harmony, and word order. Now it's time to tackle the first class of words, the things and their modifiers. Nouns and pronouns to start with, and how they decline (or change their forms) with number and case. Then the somewhat complicated, or at least confusing, possession. Plus conjunctions, questions, comparisons, and more.

Pronouns make for a simple place to start, a little more so in Turkish than in many languages. Turkish doesn't have the needless complexity of gender, and the numbers are just one versus more than one. We have just six cases to handle, as in Russian, as opposed to the fourteen in Estonian.

There are several suffixes providing meanings -with, -without, -ish, and so on. Then the postpositions, separate words added after the word of interest, functioning like prepositions in English and creating phrases with many meanings.

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Pronouns

Note the irregularities:

• In the dative case ben and sen become bana and sana instead of the anticipated *bena and *sena.
• The plurals of ben and sen are biz and siz instead of the anticipated *benler and *senler.
• The plural of o is onlar instead of the anticipated *olar.

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Question words

Nouns

Noun declension

Lewis' book distinguishes between the indefinite accusative case which uses the absolute form, and the accusative case. His examples are as follows, but his explanation is not at all clear to me...

• Gazete çıkarmak zor bir iş.
  To publish newspapers is a hard job. (absolute form)
• Bu gazeteyi çıkarmak zor bir iş.
  To publish this newspaper is a hard job. (accusative form)

In the first example, Gazete is indefinite, as in a general example — Generally speaking, the publishing of newspapers is a hard job.

In the second example, Bu gazeteyi is definite, as in a very specific example — Publishing this specific newspaper is a hard job.

While the above are Lewis' examples, they might get the point across better with the following English explanations:

• Gazete çıkarmak zor bir iş.
  To publish a newspaper — any newspaper in general — is a hard job.
  (indefinite or general accusative, absolute form)
• Bu gazeteyi çıkarmak zor bir iş.
  To publish this newspaper is a hard job.
  (definite or specific accusative, accusative form)

Noun declensions by example

Adjectival forms and modified nouns (sections 12.6, 15.1-2, 17.1-7; pp 83, 100, 111-114)

Comparison and superlatives

Demonstratives

The roots bu-, şu-, o- are used to form "such X as these" phrases:

Locations

Add from/to endings to these stems to build location words:

Possession

There is what G.L. Lewis terms "indefinite" ownership, in which -i is added to the noun which is owned in a way that is not very possessive. Compare this to the more possessive "definite" version:

The definite possessive is complicated, and I'm skipping details here, but the form is:
       owner(n)in ownedX
where X is replaced by:

So, since fil is "elephant" and ev is "house," filin evi means "the elephant's house", and fillerin evleri means "the elephants' houses". Note that you often leave off the possessor, especially when it's a pronoun or can be derived from context. Thus:
       Filim büyük. = My elephant is big.
       Bu benim büyük filim. = Hey, this is my big elephant, get your own!
filim would mean "my elephant", while benim filim would very adamantly make the case that the elephant was, in fact, mine, and not anyone else's.

Sahip means "owner" or "master", and halı means "rug". Note the logic of "the owner of the rug", where the rug has an owner, and thus "rug" is the possessor (of an owner) and the owner is the thing possessed (by the rug). Thus halının sahibi for "the rug's owner".

Finally, note that çocukların bahçeleri is ambiguous, it could mean either "the garden of the children" or "the gardens of the children". It must be derived from context (about the number of gardens), or by intentionally malforming the possessed item as çocukların bahçesi to explicitly mean the one garden of the multiple children.

Postpositions (section 13.1, pp 87-89)

They work somewhat as prepositions do in English, and fall into three classes depending on the declension of the modified word.

Other qualifiers or pronouns

Conjunctions

Morphology, Character Shifts and Some Irregularities and Complications

Many thanks to Fatih Aygün for explaining these to me! These are his examples:

1. In most nouns ending in -ç, -k, -nk and -p, the last consonant lenites (softens or weakens) before a vowel to become -c, -ğ, -ng and -b, respectively. However, this does not always happen. The word for "tail", "queue", "follower" etc changes as expected to form the accusative -i/ı/ü/u:
   kuyruk —> kuyruğu
   but the word for "law" does not:
   hukuk —> hukuku
2. In some nouns the final consonant geminates (lengthens) before an added vowel. However, this does not always happen. The word for "forgiveness" changes as expected to form the dative -e/a:
   af —> affa
   but the word for "shelf" does not:
   raf —> rafa
3. Some nouns lose the vowel before a final consonant when a vowel is suffixed. The word for "breast" does when forming the accusative:
   koyun —> koynu
   but the identically spelled word for "sheep" does not:
   koyun —> koyunu
4. Sometimes that vowel loss is followed by an internal assimilation where the consonant ending of the previous consonant becomes hard or voiceless; for example, the word for "transcript" or "records":
   zabıt —> zaptı
5. Some nouns end with a back vowel (a/ıo/u) but take a front vowel (e/i/ö/ü) in suffixes. The word for "left" changes as expected forming the dative:
   sol —> sola
   but the identically spelled word for the musical note does not:
   sol —> sole
   I wonder if this may have something to do with the second of those being a rather arbitrary and borrowed "word" or really just a name.
6. Some pronouns and some compound nouns formed from noun phrases take n rather than y before a suffixed vowel, and sometimes even before a suffixed consonant. The word for "army" behaves as expected forming the accusative and nominative plural:
   ordu —> orduyu
   ordu —> ordular
   but the word for the plant purslane formed the accusative differently than expected:
   semizotu —> semizotunu
   and the demonstative pronoun "this" forms both differently:
   bu —> bunu
   bu —> bunlar
   Similarly, see the pronoun o with its plural onlar. As for the compound nouns, see the following!
7. The interrogative pronoun ne or "what" is irregular in forming the possessive:
   ne —> neyim, but nem is also somewhat acceptable
   and the genitive:
   ne —> neyin (and not the expected *nenin)
   The word for "water", su, is similarly irregular.
8. There is a morphologic process of partial reduplication to make Turkish adjectives and adverbs stronger in meaning. Take the beginning of the word through the first vowel, add m, p, r or s, then repeat the entire adjective. However, there is no pattern for predicting which letter will be used (other than it's always p if the adjective starts with a vowel), and sometimes extra letters appear:

   yeni	"new"	—>	yepyeni	"all new", "very new"
   yeşil	"green"	—>	yemyeşil	"all green", "very green"
   mavi	"blue"	—>	masmavi	"all blue", "very blue"
   temiz	"clean"	—>	tertemiz	"all clean", "very clean"
   and worse yet, plus a vowel or even a vowel-consonant pair:
   yalnız	"alone"	—>	yapayalnız	"all alone", "very alone"	Not the expected yapyalnız
   çıplak	"naked"	—>	çırılçıplak	"all naked", "very naked"	Not the expected çırçıplak

Now, as for those compound nouns, John Guise pointed out that the word for purslane is a compound noun made of two words that does not follow vowel harmony rules internally. Semiz (fat or meat) + ot-u (its-plant-or-grass). The second of those is already suffixed, so adding a further suffix requires a buffer letter -n- so we have semizotunu (as if it were semiz otunu) and not the expected semizotuyu. As for other examples John pointed out:

Hava + gaz became the compound havagazı (town its-gas):

• Evet, aşağı yukarı bir sene evvel havagazını açık bırakarak böyle bir iş yapmak istemişti.
• Yes, about a year ago she had wanted to do such a thing by leaving the town gas open.
  (Cumhuriyet Gazete, possibly reporting a suicide attempt)

Hanım + el became the compound hanımelı (lady her-hand, or honeysuckle)

• Önce bir tutam hanımelını bir bardak su ile kısık ateşte.
  Siz hiç çocukluğunuzda hanımelını çiçeklerinin balılnı emdiniz mi?
  Çiçeklerden en çok hanımelını seviyorum.
• Firstly boil a handful of honeysuckle with a tumbler of water.
  Didn't you ever suck the honeysuckle flower's nectar when you were a child?
  Of (all) flowers I like the honeysuckle best.
  (WWW)

Ayak + kap became the compound ayakkabı (foot its-cover, or shoe(s)):

• Ayakkabını nasıl bağlarsın?
  Kendi ayakkabını tasarlayabilmek ne kadarda süper bir şey.
• How do you tie your shoes?
  How great to be able to design your own shoes.
  (WWW)

Semiz + ot became the compound semizotu (meat its-grass, or purslane).

• Semizotunu ayıklayarak bol su ile iyice yıkayıp üçe bölün, dövülmüş sarımsakları, süzme yoğurdu, semizotunu, tuz ve zeytinyağını bir kapta karıştırın.
  Supyalı semizotu'nu seviyorum.
• Wash the purslane thoroughly with plenty of water and divide into three, crushed garlic, strained yogurt, purslane, and mix in a bowl with salt and olive oil.
  I like cuttlefish with purslane.
  (WWW, Ayvalık Recipe)

Verbs are next, here comes the big part!