Turkish: A Comprehensive Grammar

genellikle ‘usually’, ‘generally’
bazen ‘sometimes’
kimi zaman ‘sometimes’
kâh…kâh ‘sometimes…sometimes’
arada bir/arasıra ‘occasionally’
arada sırada ‘occasionally’
zaman zaman ‘from time to time’
seyrek ‘seldom’
hiç ‘never’, ‘ever’
hiçbir zaman ‘never’, ‘ever’
asla/ katiyen ‘never’
pek ‘very often’ (only with negative verb)
Of these expressions, hiç, hiçbir zaman, asla, Katiyen and pek are discussed in 20.5.
Quantified frequency is expressed with locative marking of the noun expressing the
relevant time unit (day, week, etc.), followed usually by bir ‘once’, otherwise by a
numeral or quantifier followed by kez, defa, or kere, all meaning ‘time’ in the sense of
‘instance of repetition’:
(68) Şükran’la [ayda bir görüşmey]-e çalışıyoruz.
‘Şükran and I try [to get together once a month].’
(69) Artık makine yılda dört beş kez/defa/kere arızalanıyor.
‘The machine is now breaking down four or f ive times a year.’
16.4.1.4 Other time adverbials
(i) ancak:
As a temporal adverb, ancak (see also 16.7) means ‘only just [in time for something]’,
and is placed immediately before the predicate:
(70) Uçağa ancak yetiştik.
‘We only just caught the plane.’
Adverbial constructions 205
For ancak as an adversative connective see 28.3.4.2.
(ii) artık:
This indicates that a turning point has been reached.
(a) In affirmative sentences it is usually equivalent to ‘now’, but it is a ‘now’ that
expresses the climax of some development in the past:
(71) Artık Türkçe’yi güzel konuşuyorsun.
‘You now speak Turkish very well.’