Turkish: A Comprehensive Grammar

14
THE NOUN PHRASE
A noun phrase is any sequence of words that can function as the subject of a sentence:
(1) Bunu sen al.
‘You take this one.’
(2) [Her gün oraya gidip gelmek] zor.
‘It’s difficult [to go there and back every day].’
A noun phrase can also function as some kind of complement, such as:
An object:
(3) Yeni komşuları tanımıyordum.
‘I didn’t know the new neighbours.’
A subject complement:
(4) O sırada lise öğrencisiydik.
‘We were high school students at the time.’
The complement of a postposition:
(5) Bunları [Amerika’nın diç politikasını daha iyi anlamak isteyenler] için
yazıyorum.
‘I’m writ ing all this for people who want to understand American foreign policy
better.’
The most complex kinds of noun phrases are subordinate clauses, which are discussed
elsewhere in this book: noun clauses (exemplified in (2) above) form the subject of
Chapter 24, and headless relative clauses (as in (5) above) are explained in 25.3.
In this chapter we look first at the structure of the noun phrase (14.1), then consider
the extent to which distinctions of countability are grammaticalized (14.2). The next
sections explain how noun phrases are inflected for number (14.3.1), possession (person)
(14.3.2) and case (14.3.3). The last two sections examine composite structures involving
a combination of two noun phrases: the genitive-possessive construction (14.4) and
partitive constructions (14.5).
14.1 STRUCTURE OF THE NOUN PHRASE
The Turkish noun phrase consists of an obligatory constituent, called the head, and one
or more optional constituents, known as modifiers. (6)–(8) are noun phrases of varying
degrees of complexity. In each case the head is shown in bold:
(6) oda
‘the room’