Turkish: A Comprehensive Grammar

Turkish: A comprehensive grammar 156
‘My hands were covered in mud.’
(c) Other possessive-marked postpositions, such as boyunca ‘all along’,
‘throughout’, yüzünden ‘on account of’ (for list see 17.3.2):
(61) Yol boyunca konuştu.
‘He talked all the way.’
(v) An adverbial, especially of time or distance (see also 16.1.4):
(62) O gün siz yoktunuz.
‘You were not there that day.’
14.3.3.2 The accusative case marker
The sole function of the accusative case marker is to indicate the direct object of a
transitive verb. However, as seen in the previous section, some direct objects are left in
the non-case-marked form. The rules for the use and omission of accusative case marking
are as follows:
(i) The use of the accusative suffix is obligatory where the direct object is definite:
(63) Bütün arkadaşlarımızı çağıralım.
‘Let’s invite all our friends.’
(ii) Accusative case marking is also necessary where a non-definite direct object
precedes the verb but does not occupy the immediately pre-verbal position:
(64) Birçok şeyi şu raflara koyabiliriz. (Indefinite)
‘A lot of things we can put on these shelves.’
(65) Patlıcanı her gün yiyebilirim. (Categorial)
‘I could eat aubergines every day.’
(iii) An indefinite direct object which is in the immediately pre-verbal position must still
take the accusative suffix in the following crcumstances:
(a) If the direct object is marked with a possessive suffix:
(66) Bir arkadaş-ım-ı getireceğim.
a friend-1SG.POSS-ACC
‘I’m going to bring a friend of mine.’
The only exception to this rule is where a 3rd person possessive suffix is functioning as
the marker of a -(s)I compound. Thus the indefinite direct object in (67) is non-casemarked:
(67) Her yemekten sonra bir Türk kahve-si içer.
a Turk coffee-NC
‘After every meal s/he has a (cup of) Turkish coffee.’
(b) If the direct object is an indefinite or plural generic (see 22.4.3).