Turkish: A Comprehensive Grammar

17
POSTPOSITIONAL PHRASES
Turkish has no prepositions, but a large number of postpositions, which follow their
complements. Turkish postpositions fall into two main categories: bare postpositions
(17.2), which carry no suffixes, and possessive-marked postpositions (17.3), which are
marked by a possessive suffix agreeing with the complement, and an oblique (dative,
locative or ablative) case marker. After discussing all these types of postposition, and
the principal members of each class, in 17.4 we consider the syntactic functions that
postpositional phrases can perform.
17.1 STRUCTURE OF THE POSTPOSITIONAL PHRASE
A postpositional phrase consists of a noun phrase followed by a postposition. The
postposition is the head of the phrase, and the noun phrase is its complement. In each of
the examples below the postposition is shown in bold:
(1) sen-in için
you-GEN for
‘for you’
(2) çıkış kapı-sın-a doğru
exit gate-NC-DAT towards
‘towards the exit’
(3) ev-imiz-in arka-sın-da
house-1PL.POSS-GEN back-3SG.POSS-LOC
‘behind our house’
(4) ben-im yer-im-e
I-GEN place-1SG.POSS-DAT
‘instead of me’
Turkish postpositions may be classified according to the way in which they relate
syntactically to their complements. There are two major subdivisions: bare postpositions,
exemplified in (1) and (2) above and discussed in 17.2, and possessive-marked
postpositions, exemplified in (3) and (4) above and discussed in 17.3.
17.2 BARE POSTPOSITIONS
Bare postpositions are invariable in form. They fall into distinct groups according to what
case marking they require on their complements.