Turkish: A Comprehensive Grammar

(iii) Compounds in which the first noun specifies the material from which the item
denoted by the second noun is made:
çelik kapı ‘steel door’
taş duvar ‘stone wall’
yün çorap ‘wool sock(s)’
(iv) The names of various cooked dishes:
şiş kebap ‘shish kebab’
kuzu fırın ‘oven-cooked lamb’
(v) Street names in which the second noun is sokak ‘street’:
Akgül Sokak ‘Akgül Street’
The use of bare noun compounds for street names is a fairly recent development, and
forms such as Akgül Sokak are used interchangeably with the corresponding -(s)I
compound form (with Sokağı instead of Sokak; see 10.2). Even official usage is not
consistent, and the abbreviation ‘Sok.’, commonly used in postal addresses and on street
signs, obscures this variation.
10.1.2 ADJECTIVE-NOUN COMPOUNDS
These compounds are made up of an adjective and a noun. As in bare-noun compounds,
there is no suffixation to mark the relation between the two components. The majority of
these compounds are written as single words:
karabiber ‘pepper’
karafatma ‘cockroach’
darboğaz ‘(economic) bottle-neck’
kabakulak ‘mumps’
akciğer ‘lung(s)’
sarı humma ‘yellow fever’
10.2 -(s)I COMPOUNDS
This is by far the more common type of compounding in Turkish. -(s)I compounds
consist minimally of two juxtaposed nouns, the first of which has no suffixes while the
second is marked with the 3rd person possessive suffix -(s)I (8.1.2). Some examples are:
otobüs bilet-i ‘bus ticket’
el çanta-sı ‘handbag’
Noun compounds 95