Turkish: A Comprehensive Grammar

16.8 PARTICULARIZING ADVERBIALS
This small class of adverbials has a function somewhat similar to that of the exclusive
adverbials, but are less absolute in their restrictive effect. The main items are daha çok
‘mainly’, en çok ‘mostly’, asıl ‘really’ and özel-likle/ bilhassa ‘especially’,
‘particularly’:
(109) Buraya daha çok üniVERsite öğrencileri geliyor.
‘It’s mainly university students who come here.’
(110) En çok/Özellikle AKdeniz ülkelerinde yetişir zeytin ağacı.
The olive tree grows mostly/particularly in Mediterranean countries’.
For özellikle/ bilhassa as conjunction/discourse connectives see 28.3.5 (iii).
asıl as a particularizing adverbial is quite colloquial:
(111) Bunu asıl senin AMcan iyi yapar.
‘It’s your uncle who would really make a good job of this.’
Another type of particularizing adverbial comprises those formed with the construction
başta…olmak üzere ‘particularly’, ‘above all’ (16.1.10). Here the identification of the
particularized individual or group precedes the mention of the larger set of which it forms
a part, and the particularized constituent is not focused:
(112) Başta kamu işçi-ler-i olmak üzere bütün işçi-ler sıkıntı-da.
head-LOC public.sector worker-PL-NC ADV all worker-PL hardship-LOC
‘All manual workers, especially the public sector workers, are suffering.’
16.9 MODIFICATION OF ADVERBS
The only kinds of adverbials that can be modified are adjectives functioning as adverbs
(16.1.2), and the quantitative adverbs çok ‘much’, fazla ‘(too) much’, az ‘little’ and daha
‘more’ (16.5). Note that while fazla on its own (at least in affirmative sentences) means
‘too much’, daha çok and daha fazla are synonymous, meaning ‘more’ (see (113)).
Modification of adverbs occurs in exactly the same way as modification of adjectives
(see 15.4). Some examples are:
(113) Sen bu konu üzerinde (benden) daha çok/fazla çalıştın
‘You have worked more (than me) on this topic.’
(114) [Bu sorunu en iyi anlayan] kişi sizsiniz.
‘You are the person [who understands this problem best].’
(115) Nazlı [şaşılacak kadar] hızlı yürür.
‘Nazlı walks amazingly fast.’
See also (30) and (99) above.
Adverbial constructions 213