Turkish is a highly agglutinative language, in that much of the grammar is expressed by means of suffixes added to nouns and verbs.
The e form is found after a syllable with i, e, ö or ü (e.g. evler "houses", günler "days"), and also after certain Arabic or French borrowings such as saatler "hours, clocks", kalpler "hearts".
Other suffixes show four-way vowel harmony between i, ı, u, ü, for example the possessive ending -im/-ım/-um/-üm "my".
In formal situations (meeting people for the first time, business, customer-clerk, colleagues) plural second-person siz is used almost exclusively.
[1] In the Turkish terms for the constructive and inflectional endings, three roots are involved: 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 inflectional suffix -i attached to ek: The inflectional suffix -ler comes before the -i to form the plural, so yapım ekleri, çekim ekleri.
Adjectives can serve as adverbs, sometimes by means of repetition: A general rule of Turkish word order is that the modifier precedes the modified: Although the most common order of Turkish transitive sentences is subject–object–verb (SOV), all six permutations are valid (the subject and object are distinguished by case suffixes).
[clarification needed] In one study, only about half of the transitive sentences used by a sample of Turkish speakers were found to be in the SOV order.
[4] When a sentence has multiple informational components, the stressed component is positioned just before the verb: AliAlibugüntodayeveto-housearabaylaby-cargidiyor.is-goingAli bugün eve arabayla gidiyor.Ali today to-house by-car is-goingToday, Ali is going to the house by car.AliAlieveto-housearabaylaby-carbugüntodaygidiyor.is-goingAli eve arabayla bugün gidiyor.Ali to-house by-car today is-goingToday, Ali is going to the house by car.AliAliarabaylaby-carbugüntodayeveto-housegidiyor.is-goingAli arabayla bugün eve gidiyor.Ali by-car today to-house is-goingToday, Ali is going to the house by car.The order of morphemes in Turkish is often opposite to English: The above example is also illustrative of the productive nature of Turkish suffixes in creating new verbs, nouns, etc.
The longest published word in Turkish, muvaffakiyetsizleştiricileştiriveremeyebileceklerimizdenmişsinizcesine, means "as if you are one of those that we cannot easily convert into an unsuccessful-person-maker" (i.e., someone who un-educates people to make them unsuccessful).
Note, that the -z of the aorist negative (-mez) and impotential (-(y)emez) is dropped in the first-person singular and plural, in order to be able to suffix it (but is retained when the interrogative particle mi intervenes; see below).
The dictionary-form of a noun can take up to four (kinds of) inflectional suffixes, generally in the following order: Through its presence or absence, the plural ending shows distinctions of number.
The pair of these words is then a definite compound (belirtili tamlama): (The apostrophe in Turkish is used before suffixes attached to proper nouns.)
An infinitive in the absolute case can be the object of a verb such as iste- "want": Kimisome-of-themeğitimetowards-educationdevamcontinuationetmek,makekimisome-of-themdealsoçalışmakworkistiyor.wantKimi eğitime devam etmek, kimi de çalışmak istiyor.some-of-them towards-education continuation make some-of-them also work wantSome want to continue their education, 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.
Sahil kesimleri yola yakın olduğu için rahat bir şekilde göle giremiyorlar.
We also both from-road of-passers sight their-angle to-close and men's uncomfortable their-not-making for screen we-are-using" they-said.
A free translation is: The facility authorities said: "The people of this district [namely Edremit, Van] are generally conservative.
This occurs in two ways: If a word ends in two identical consonants, one is dropped, e.g. hall ("state, status") becomes hal; aff ("amnesty, forgiving") becomes af.
Exceptions: Words which end in nk, rt, rk, such as taht ("throne"), renk ("colour"), kart ("card"), do not add a vowel.
enmostbüyükbigyalancıliaren büyük yalancımost big liar"the biggest liar"enmostazlessgüvenilirtrust-en az güvenilirmost less trust-"the least trustworthy"It is noted under #Parts of speech that Turkish participles (sıfat-fiiller) can be classified as 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 connection may also be more vague.
– akarsu – çıkmaz – inilir – sürdürülebilir turizm "flowing water", from ak- (to flow) "cul-de-sac", from çık- (to exit) "got down from" (sign at rear door of bus), from in- (to go down) "tourism that can be continued", i.e. "sustainable tourism", from sür- (to go on) Silahları çekip havaya ateş açan AKP'liler hakkında yasal işlem başlatılmadı.
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.
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 İslam dünyasına yaklaşması halinde şeriatçılığın kucağına itilmiş olacağını söyleyen Fransız senatör Duireux, İslami akımların kontrol edilmesi gerektiğini belirtti.
"AkılyürüterekbusonucaulaşıyorumAkıl yürüterek bu sonuca ulaşıyorum"By using reason, I arrived at this conclusion" [the latter is Bülent Ecevit as quoted in Cumhuriyet, 20 July 2005].DoğayaenazzararvererekyaşamakDoğaya 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": SizeTo-youbiradostfriendolarakassöylüyorumI'm-tellingSize bir dost olarak söylüyorumTo-you a friend as I'm-telling"I'm telling you this as a friend"The ending -meden on a verb-stem looks like the ablative gerund, but it is not (Lewis [XI,12]).
(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.
The other persons, ben "I", sen "you (singular/informal)", biz "we", siz "you (plural/formal)", are declined like nouns, except for a vowel change in the dative and an anomalous genitive.
These can be briefly tabulated: 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: Usually, in the optative (istek), only the first-person forms are used, and these supply the lack of a first-person imperative (emir).
The verb i- is irregular in the way it is used in questions: the particle mi always precedes it: The bases so far considered can be called "simple".