Turkish: A Comprehensive Grammar

ne kadar ‘how much’
nasıl ‘how’
niye ‘why’
neden ‘why’
niçin ‘why’
Wh-phrases are normally stressed, whether they are in the main clause or a subordinate
clause. The only exception to this is when they occur with another stressed constituent
(19.2.3). The intonation pattern of wh-questions is a slight rise followed by a fall-rise
(5.1).
(39) HANgi tablo-yu müze-ye bağışla-mak ist-iyor-sun?
which painting-ACC museum-DAT donate-VN want-IMPF-2SG
‘Which painting do you want to donate to the museum?’
(40) Ev-e NE zaman gid-ecek-sin?
home-DAT when go-FUT-2SG
‘When will you be going home?’
19.2.1 WH-PHRASES
19.2.1.1 kim ‘who’
kim is used in questions where the target of the question is a person. It can combine with
all the inflectional suffixes that attach to nouns (8.1, 14.3) and usually occurs in the
positions occupied by the corresponding noun phrases (Chapter 23):
(41) Resimleri kim değerlendirecek?
‘Who will evaluate the paintings?’
(42) Şule’nin babası kimdi?
‘Who was Şule’s father?’
kim obligatorily has accusative case marking when it functions as a direct object (see
22.1):
(43) Nuri kim-i görmüş?
who-ACC
‘Who(m) did Nuri see?’
Questions 259