Turkish: A Comprehensive Grammar

(42) Arkadaş-lar-ınız ne kadar kalacaklar?Z
friend-PL-2PL.POSS
‘How long are your friends going to stay?’
(43) Ahmet oda-sın-ı arıyordu. Numara-sı akl-ın-da kalmamıştı.
room-3SG.POSS -ACC number-3SG.POSS mind-3SG.POSS-LOC
‘Ahmet was looking for his room. Its number was no longer in his head.’
If there is a need to be more explicit about, or to emphasize, the identity of the possessor,
this can be done by a genitive-possessive construction, that is, by modifying the
possessed constituent with a genitive-marked noun phrase (see 14.4 below).
Certain combinations of the possessive suffixes with plural and/or case suffixes give
rise to potential ambiguity:
(i) Following a consonant-final stem, the sequences [2SG.POSS+case] and
[3SG.POSS+case] are indistinguishable, because of the ‘n’ that is included in the 3rd
person possessive suffix before a case suffix or -CA (6.2, 8.1.2). (44) can therefore be
read in two ways:
(44) Ev-in-i daha gör-me-di-m.
(a) house-2SG.POSS-ACC
‘I haven’t seen your house yet.’
(b) house-3SG.POSS-ACC
‘I haven’t seen his/her house yet.’
(ii) A single -lAr can sometimes express two different notions of plurality
simultaneously: plurality of the thing possessed, and plurality of the (3rd person)
possessor. The form -lArI on a subject noun phrase is capable of three interpretations:
(a) plural+3rd person singular possessive
(b) 3rd person plural possessive
(c) plural+3rd person plural possessive
This ambiguity is illustrated in (45):
(45)
Turkish: A comprehensive grammar 152
(a) Bilet-ler-i burada.
ticket-PL-3SG.POSS
‘His/her tickets are here.’
(b) Bilet-leri burada.
ticket-3PL.POSS
‘Their ticket is here.’
(c) Bilet-leri burada.
ticket-PL.3PL.POSS
‘Their tickets are here.’
In (a) -lAr indicates the plurality of the tickets. In (b) it is part of the suffix -lArI,
indicating a 3rd person plural possessor (‘their’). In (c) it is performing both functions
simultaneously.