Turkish: A Comprehensive Grammar

18
PRONOUNS
Pronouns are expressions that are used when referring to persons, things or states of
affairs that have previously been mentioned, whose referents are obvious from the
context or whose content is only partially specified, such as:
(1) Onlar eşyalarını daha toplamamış.
‘They haven’t packed their luggage yet.’
(2) Şuradakinden de bir tane istiyorum.
‘I also want one of the kind over there.’
(3) Kapıda birisi var.
‘There’s someone at the door.’
This chapter describes personal pronouns such as ben ‘I’, kendim ‘myself’, birbir- ‘each
other’ (18.1), and the conditions under which they are used (18.1.5), demonstrative
pronouns such as bu ‘this (one)’ (18.2), locative pronouns such as şurada ‘here’, ‘over
there’ (18.3), pronouns formed by the suffix -(s)I, such as iyisi ‘a nice(r) one’, bazısı
‘some (of them)’ (18.4), pronouns formed by the suffix -ki, such as benimki ‘mine’, öteki
‘the other (one)’ (18.5), pronominal quantifiers such as herkes ‘everyone’, bir şey
‘something’, and other pronominal expressions (18.6).
Interrogative pronouns (e.g. kim ‘who’, nerede ‘where’) are discussed in 19.2, and
pronominal quantifiers which interact with negation (e.g. kimse ‘no one’, ‘anyone’) are
discussed in 20.5. Another type of pronominal construction, headless relative clauses, is
discussed in 25.3.
18.1 PERSONAL PRONOUNS
18.1.1 SIMPLE PERSONAL PRONOUNS
The simple personal pronouns of Turkish are:
ben ‘I’ biz ‘we’
sen ‘you’ (familiar) siz ‘you’ (plural), (formal singular)
o ‘he’, ‘she’, ‘it’ onlar ‘they’
biz:
biz ‘we’, which is the 1st person plural form, may also refer to the 1st person singular,
either in very formal contexts where the speaker wishes to express his/her humble status
as compared to the addressee(s), or ironically in imitation of such a stance: