Turkish: A Comprehensive Grammar

(vi) Complex adjectivals formed by the attachment (to a verb stem) of the participial
suffix -(y)An (25.1.1.1) or one of its compound verb forms (25.4.1) -mAz olan, -mIş
(olan) or (less commonly) -(y)AcAk (olan): okunamayanı ‘the illegible one’, anlaşılmaz
olanları ‘the ones which are incomprehensible’, kullanılmışı ‘a used one’:
(115) Boya-n-mış-ların-da hatalar gözükmüyor.
dye-PASS-PF-3PL.POSS-LOC
‘The mistakes are not visible on the ones which have been dyed.’
These are a specific kind of relative clause that looks deceptively similar to headless
relative clauses (25.3):
Pronominalized complex adjectival:
(116) Opera sev-me-yen-ler-i Verona’da konaklamayacaklar.
like-NEG-PART-PL-3SG.POSS
‘Those [among them] who don’t like opera won’t be staying (overnight) in
Verona.’
Headless relative clause:
Turkish: A comprehensive grammar 248
(117) Opera sev-me-yen-ler Verona’da konaklamayacaklar.
like-NEG-PART-PL
‘Those [people] who don’t like opera won’t be staying (overnight) in Verona.’
Pronominalized complex adjectivals can be formed only from participles containing -
(y)An (including compound forms such as -mAz olan and -mIş (olan)). Headless relative
clauses, on the other hand, can be formed with the other participial suffixes (-DIK and -
(y)AcAK) as well. Like other pronominalized adjectivals, pronominalized complex
adjectivals draw attention to a subgroup or a specimen within another group (14.4–5).
Headless relative clauses, by contrast, simply define a group or class without referring to
a larger group of which it is a part.
Pronominalized complex adjectivals can be used in partitive constructions with
ablative modifiers (14.5.2), particularly those formed from iç- and ara- (see 17.3.1.3):
(118) İç-lerin-den en zor oku-n-an-ı bana düşmüş.
inside-3PL.POSS-ABL most difficult read-PASS-PART-3SG.POSS
‘I seem to have got the least legible [one] of all.’
(119) Aralarında(n) opera sevmeyenleri Verona’da konaklamayacaklar.
‘Those among them who don’t like opera won’t be staying (overnight) in Verona.’
They can also sometimes be used with genitive modifiers:
(120) onlar-ın çalış-ma-yan-lar-ı
they-GEN work-NEG-PART-PL-3SG.POSS
‘the ones among them who/that don’t work’
A rather unproductive type of pronominalized complex adjectival is one where the
possessive marker does not refer to a subtype within another type but is used in its
standard function of marking the possessed constituent. The unusual aspect of these
constructions is that the genitive noun phrase in such a construction is the direct object of
the verb inside the adjectival. These adjectival constructions are semi-lexicalized, since