Turkish: A Comprehensive Grammar

Turkish: A comprehensive grammar 166
(125) Bu yıl bol misafirimiz oldu. {İçlerinden yirmi otuz aile} de şimdiden
gelecek yıl için rezervasyon yaptılar.
‘This year we had a lot of guests. {From among them, twenty or thirty families}
have already made reservations for next year.’
The forms with iç-/ara- are also preferred where the set is referred to in the 1st or 2nd
person:
(126) {İçimizden/Aramızdan birkaç kişi} geziden memnun kalmadı.
‘{Several of our number} were not satisfied with the tour.’
(iii) Partitive constructions in which the noun heading the head noun phrase is either the
enumerator tane (15.8) or a word expressing a concept such as measure (e.g. metre
‘metre’, dilim ‘slice’, şişe ‘bottle’), membership of a category (e.g. örnek ‘example’), or
identity (e.g. kopya ‘copy’):
(127) {Küçüklerden on tane] yeter mi?
‘Will {ten of the little ones} be enough?’
(128) {Şu kırmızı çiçekli kumaştan on metre} alalım.
‘Let’s buy {ten metres of that material with red flowers on it}.’
In this third subtype of bare-headed partitives, the meaning of the head noun phrase is
highly dependent on that of the modifier, just as it is in the -sI-marked constructions
described in the next section. The item(s) expressed by the head noun phrase in examples
such as (127) and (128) are not individuated; the emphasis is purely on quantification,
and the referents are almost invariably non-human.
In this type of partitive construction it is even possible for the head noun phrase to be
omitted altogether. The ablative-marked noun phrase then simply indicates some or any
undefined quantity of the substance or set of entities referred to:
(129) {Şu kırmızı çiçekli kumaştan} alalım.
‘Let’s buy {[some] of that material with red flowers on it}.’
(130) {Bunlardan} bizde de var.
‘We’ve got {[some] of these}, too.’
14.5.2 THE -(s)I-MARKED PARTITIVE CONSTRUCTION WITH
ABLATIVE-MARKED MODIFIER
In this type of partitive construction there is a close semantic dependency of the head
upon the modifier, indicated not only by the possessive suffix but also by the fact that the
head noun phrase does not contain a semantically autonomous noun. The head noun
phrase usually consists of one of the following items:
(i) a numeral (suffixed with -(s)I)
(ii) kaç-ı ‘how many of or birkaç-ı ‘a few of’, ‘several of’
(iii) a numeral, kaç or birkaç followed by tane-si
(iv) bazı-sı/kimi-si/bir kısm-ı/bir bölüm-ü ‘some of’
(v) birçoğ-u ‘many of’