Talk:Turkish grammar

Start

I started an article on Turkish grammar because there wasn't one. I am only a student of the language, informally; I don't speak much, but I read more, and I think I have a fair scholarly understanding of the language. Some notes that I have prepared during my studies are on my webpage; I shall draw on them (and my primary sources), as I have time, to continue this article.
David Pierce 13:05, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

Good work!

Thank you. I have now done most of what I wanted to do. Some remaining possibilities:

• The section on "Adverbs from verbs" could be more complete and systematic.
• A new article called "Turkish vocabulary" might be created. This could contain the discussion, now in the present article, of the "structural suffixes". It could also contain the long list of synonyms on the discussion page of the Turkish language article.
• Replace or supplement all made-up examples with real quotations. (I have made a start at this.)
• Say something about word-order. Its strangeness to English-speakers is now only implicit in some of the quotations.
• Say more about compound verbs and conditional sentences.

In the references, I referred to the Turkish Language Society. This is how Lewis translates Türk Dil Kurumu. Somebody changed my society to foundation for reasons unexplained; I should have thought that foundation would suggest the Turkish vakıf rather than kurum.
David Pierce 08:20, 26 July 2005 (UTC)

Now I am trying to create the article on Turkish vocabulary. The beginnings of two new articles are on my user page [now obsolete---David Pierce 11:58, 15 August 2005 (UTC)]:

• User:David Pierce/Turkish grammar
• User:David Pierce/Turkish vocabulary

But I haven't got the distinction between these clearly worked out. I should like to transfer enough information from the grammar to the vocabulary article to get the former down below the suggested 32KB. This does not seem possible, so perhaps the grammar article can be broken up further, possibly in a way corresponding to the noun/verb distinction.
David Pierce 11:29, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

Now I have spun off an article on Turkish vocabulary as planned; but since I have also added to Turkish grammar, it is no shorter than before. Most of its longer examples involve participles and verbal nouns; so I am considering whether to move those to a new article called, perhaps, Turkish verbals.
David Pierce 11:58, 15 August 2005 (UTC)

I read this page, because I have been chatting online with someone from Turkey. I want to have a better idea about how her language works so that I can help with her English better. This page is well written, but it stays in a jargon mode most of the time. What do people think of a page such as this one explaining its concepts more so that the average person can follow them better?

Before starting new pages, I recommend studying how some other language pages have been written and organized.

Grammar is so regular

Everything is so regular. Exept.one.thing, "ben" turns in. "bana"; seni --> sana... Why?

-Ben means "I", bana means "to me". The same applies for sen -> sana.

I think he asked why "ben" doesn't turn into "bene" and "sen" doesn't turn into "sene" what I also don't know.

-in Turkish (Istanbul dialect):

     1. "me" is "ben" & "to me"  is  "bana"
     2. "you" is "sen" & "to you" is "sana"

but in Azerbaijan Turkish (Turkish which is spoken in Azerbaijan) it is like this:

     1. "me" is "men" & "to me"  is  "mene"
     2. "you" is "sen" & "to you" is "sene"

-This is probably due to dominance of "ona". It had been used much more frequently than "sene" and "bene" since it's the third person pronoun and corresponds to all genders (he, she, it). In time, it may have forced "sene" and "bene" to sound closer to it. (Tylose 19:22, 4 February 2007 (UTC))

-Actually in rural anatolia it is used as, bene, and sene, but Istanbul dialect, the "proper Turkish" uses sana and bana.

Noun plural weirdness

Any Turkish guys here?? This sounds so terribly wrong to me: Turkish_grammar#Inflexion PLURAL: I know it so far that 'a'-words like 'kitap' - (book) take the -lar, and 'e' words like 'kelime' (word) take the -ler. I've googled around a little and found this: http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/21400935/ Current WP article only refers to -ler being the "only possible" plural ending and that -lar means something as "some ... ". In fact, a saz (an instrument) will ALWAYS be pluralized "sazlar", no matter if it is supposed to mean "some ... " or not. Who put this crap in the article? -andy 80.129.96.136 06:14, 11 June 2006 (UTC) -ler/-lar are the plural suffixes for turkish. And -ler or -lar is used according to vowel harmony of the stem. As in your examples, saz-lar means, more than one saz, and kelime-ler means, more than one kelime. You don't need [some] for every plural. (actually some has a specific word for it, and its 'bazı'). Btw, there's nothing called 'a' word or 'e' word, but (ince sesliler - thin vowels (eiüö) and kalın sesliler - thick vowels (aıou)) so the -ler/-lar suffixes are added looking the vowel type of the previous spell. ie. okul-lar, süpürge-ler, çoçuk-lar, kitap-lar.. (I hope this clarifies things a bit)

"Helping verbs"

I have changed "helping verbs" to auxiliary verbs. Though I do not know much about turkish language, probably this is a more exact translation, following english language linguistics terminology.--Michkalas 14:47, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

It's better than "helping verb", if only because the the article auxiliary verb can be linked to (and because the article had already used the term earlier). But the terminology suggests that Turkish verbs like "et-", "ol-" etc. work in conjunction with a main verb. They work with verbal nouns from Arabic, but not Turkish verbal nouns. Suffixed verbs like "bil-", "ver-" etc. are a bit more like auxiliary verbs in the English sense.

I think the section needs to be broken up and distributed appropriately. It is called "auxiliary verbs", but is a subsection of "nouns". Verbs like "et-" can be discussed further up, where "et-" was already mentioned, under "verbal nouns"; and "ver-" etc. can be discussed where "bil-" already was, under "Negation and potential in verb-stems."

David Pierce 12:06, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

Verbs out of nouns

"Many verbs are formed from nouns by addition of -le: Köpekle-" this, without any mention of other such suffixes, makes one think "-le" is the only method with which verbs can be made out of nouns. In fact there are others like "-leştir" (köpekleştir-), "-sizleştir" (köpeksizleştir-), etc. I am no linguist, only a native speaker so I won't "touch" this article in case I am making a mistake but I'd be glad if a more knowledgeable person considers it. 85.96.26.37 20:57, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

You are quoting from the section called "Parts of speech". The section is not meant as a complete account of how complex words are derived from simple ones. Do you think this point is not clear? The suffix -le is mentioned again near the beginning of the section "Verbs". Presently it is pointed out that "A verbal root, or a verb-stem in -le, can be lengthened with certain extensions." This accounts for -leş, -leştir, and so forth. There are other ways to make verbs from nouns, but they are not so common as these, and the article is already too long.

David Pierce 12:07, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Anchor Links

Is it Wikipedia style to include the # in anchor links?

Good question. I couldn't get a straight answer from the Help desk. I personally don't like the look of the hash, so tend to suppress it on aesthetic grounds; but it does have the advantage of making it clear that you're not linking to a different article.

One thing is clear: you should suppress the hash when you are linking to another article. In fact one of the Help pages describes just such a link as "stylish". --NigelG (or Ndsg) | Talk 10:50, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Future tense in verbs

Does Turkish have a future tense? The reason I ask is that I met a Turkish girl once and her English was pretty damn good, but whenever she would speak about stuff in the future, she used the present tense. Thanks.Cameron Nedland 23:51, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

- Of course it has! (Tylose 19:25, 4 February 2007 (UTC))

So right, like Tylose was saying, Turkish's future tense marker is -ecek(/-acak), which takes the non-past copula -im,-sin,-tir (or bare),-iz,-siniz,-lar (or bare). Thus, we have etmek -> edeceğim, edeceksin, edecek(tir), edeceğiz, edeceksiniz, edecek(tir)(ler). Dextrose (talk) 10:46, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Participles

In the subsection on Past participles, you should make it clear that -diği forms may equally well refer to the present. Cf your example:

Yaşamın bittiği yer'de hayat: "Life in the place where life ended." More probably " ... where life ends" ( ... funerals taking place every day!).

Other typical examples with a present meaning would include sentences like:

• Herkes olduğu yerde kalsın "[Let] everyone stay [in the place] where they are."

Congratulations on an interesting article. --NigelG (or Ndsg) | Talk 23:11, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Geoffrey Lewis, to whose Turkish Grammar you refer in the article, points out this ambiguity of tenses in his section on the "personal participle". The context usually makes the meaning clear; & he shows how the distinction can be made if necessary:

Dün yaptığım ve bugün yapmakta olduğum işler

(" ... which I did yesterday & am doing today").

In my old (1967) edition of his Grammar he has some nice examples, such as:

Beatles'lerin her yaptığı İngiltere'de moda oluyor.

("Everything the Beatles do ...", not "did".) --NigelG (or Ndsg) | Talk 09:58, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

I edited in line with your comments; but since you have Lewis to refer to, you could have done the editing as authoritatively as I! David Pierce 07:04, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Sure, but I'm still a little reluctant to do so when an article is clearly one person's brainchild. I guess I haven't quite got the WikiMentality yet! For the time being, I prefer to bring these things up on the Talk page—unless it's something pretty minor.

I left a message on the Talk page of one article (Gwoyeu Romatzyh, if you're interested in Chinese), but got no answer for a couple [of] weeks, so went ahead & made a pretty thorough revision of the whole thing.

I've changed "sometimes with present meaning" to "Past/present", because it is just as likely to be one as the other. Eg okuduğum bir kitap really means, to use one of Lewis' phrases, "a book characterized-by-my-reading", leaving the tense to be determined by the context. "A book of my reading", perhaps, to stretch English grammar a bit.

BTW The book that I read was a pretty crafty example in the present case! --NigelG (or Ndsg) | Talk 10:44, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

-ki suffix

One other minor thing that caught my eye. Under Pronouns you write:

"There is a suffix -ki, usually not enclitic, acts as a relative pronoun in that it creates what, in English, would be called relative clauses."

1. (There's a typo somewhere: "which" missing?)
2. That "usually" is a bit of a tease! I presume you're referring to the vowel harmony after ö/ü, as in dünkü ("yesterday's"), are you? If so, I think you should spell it out—or perhaps relegate it to a footnote.

--NigelG (or Ndsg) | Talk 10:12, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Yes, that's what I was referring to. I was just worried that, if every detail were clarified, the article would grow to the length of Lewis's grammar. But the example of dünkü, now supplied, is perhaps useful. David Pierce 07:08, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

an

Redhouse dictionary and verb convention

I happen to own a Redhouse Turkish-English Büyük Elsözlüğü (big hand-dictionary, thus I assume abridged, but nonetheless Redhouse), and happen to have looked up many a-verb by its infinitive. Not exactly a citation needed -moment, but it does seem we have a conflict between reality and the internet here. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Dextrose (talk • contribs) 10:51, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Personal endings of the verb

I don't see a proper list here, just some examples in the first person.--91.148.159.4 (talk) 13:55, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

They're listed in Turkish grammar#Inflexional suffixes. CapnPrep (talk) 14:46, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

Noun to verb

Turkish has many ways to make nouns out of verbs, but fewer for the other way. Fewer, still, more than one. The article only gives "-le" with the funny example of "köpeklemek". What about "köpekleşmek" - which makes more sense - "to become like a dog"? Or "köpeksemek" - "to feel that something is similar to a dog"? 213.211.19.142 (talk) 23:22, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

Incoveniently organized

The idea of listing the suffixes separately from the things they express (verb person and tense, noun possession and case) is not a good one. This is the second time I'm trying to do a quick check regarding some feature of Turkish grammar and I lose a lot of time trying to find where in this article the information is. Most wiki articles show the morphological expression of a category X in the section titled "category X", and this is where people look for it. But in this article, information about morphological expression is listed in the section "inflectional suffixes", and in the sections "category X" we get general talk about the use of the category and suchlike. Uniformity across articles is a Good Thing.--91.148.159.4 (talk) 20:12, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Comments

Is there any reason why the first sentence of the article is included?? "Turkish grammar is the grammar of the Turkish language." That is not only obvious and clarifying the unambiguous, but it is telling and not showing. That would be a definition and Wikipedia is not a dictionary. It's an encyclopedia. I'm deleting it. If someone disagrees, please present information about how it is not against Wikipedia rules to include such information.

Also, how has it come to be that there is no section on Vowel Harmony? It's not an obscure phenomenon in Turkish, but rather something Turkish is often cited when talking about Vowel Harmony. I'll add something later when I have the time if it's still not there. cullen (talk) 15:20, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

It's already covered at Turkish phonology#Vowel harmony. CapnPrep (talk) 15:33, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

Assessment comment

The comment(s) below were originally left at Talk:Turkish grammar/Comments, and are posted here for posterity. Following several discussions in past years, these subpages are now deprecated. The comments may be irrelevant or outdated; if so, please feel free to remove this section.

The article utterly lacks in-line referencing, doesn't deal with aspect or evidentiality (and indeed doesn't cite any work by Lars Johanson) and several other fields of research and, last but certainly not worst, is visually quite chaotic. That is, C class, and not good at that. G Purevdorj (talk) 22:29, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

Last edited at 22:29, 21 July 2009 (UTC). Substituted at 09:22, 30 April 2016 (UTC)

second-person pronouns

"Turkish uses second-person pronouns that distinguish varying levels of politeness, social distance, age, courtesy or familiarity toward the addressee." Is this true? The pronouns section only mentions the six basic personal pronouns. Auximines (talk) 19:01, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

Lead

This seems a fascinating article. But I am in doubt about the lead. Are these two things, that it is an agglutinative language and that it has vowel harmony, the main things you can say when summing up the characteristics of Turkish grammar? Surely there are other things which make Turkish grammar different from the grammars of other well-known languages, such as English, Spanish, French, Swahili, and Japanese? How about, for example, the fact that it has six cases, rather like Latin, numerous participles, the verb at the end of the sentence, a variety of tenses, active and passive verbs and so on? Even the very regularity of the verbs is different from French, Spanish, and German. I think the lead could afford to be a bit longer in other words and sum up what makes Turkish interesting and attractive to study. Kanjuzi (talk) 10:16, 6 April 2017 (UTC) – I have now added more to the lead to make it more comprehensive. Kanjuzi (talk) 13:17, 6 April 2017 (UTC)

misleading comment in Turkish Terminology section

In the section on Turkish terminology there is a comment, namely "(notably Turkish has no prefixes)"- which is factually incorrect. While there may be no prefixes of Turkish origin, there are some loan prefixes that have become part of current Turkish usage- for example the prefix anti- (antidemokratik) or the prefix bi- (bihaber).Umbereenbmirza (talk) 07:17, 28 July 2017 (UTC)

Pseudo-cases

@TheWhistleGag: are there any reliable, mainstream grammars of Turkish that list -siz and the others as "pseudo-cases"? In all the grammars I've seen, there are many nominal suffixes which are not considered case-endings. After all, -siz does not mark the grammatical role — indeed, it can be combined with a case ending as in evsize 'to the homeless person' — and it forms a denominal adjective which can be used predicatively: bu adam evsiz 'this person is homeless'. --Macrakis (talk) 21:38, 10 February 2021 (UTC)

• I did initially add that the instrumental was essentially a case in all but name. I found [the Wikibooks article on Turkish noun cases] which displayed many other endings, but only the essive and abessive seemed like genuine cases to me out of those many (though, as stated, they can be expressed in different ways). However, I would argue that the instrumental postposition is on its way to becoming a genuine case, however, as it does not seem to be combinable with any other cases. For example, I would not know how to translate "arabalardan ile" (literally "with from cars"); you would only be able to say "arabalarla" ("by cars") or "alabalardan" ("from cars"). Here is a source that considers there to be an instrumental case in Turkish: http://fginter.github.io/docs/tr/feat/Case. TheWhistleGag (talk) 22:28, 10 February 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for removing all but -ile. There does seem to be some scholarly support for treating -ile as a case, which we should add to the article. On the other hand, the Wikibooks article is far from a WP:RS. --Macrakis (talk) 18:20, 11 February 2021 (UTC)

No problem. I'm happy to help; just seeing linguistic patterns and wondering whether they're grammatical. TheWhistleGag (talk) 08:18, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

It's fine to start with a personal observation, but you need to find a reliable source for it.... (cf. WP:OR) --Macrakis (talk) 17:31, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

Of course. Thanks. I've done this when editing other astronomical articles. TheWhistleGag (talk) 03:07, 13 February 2021 (UTC)