Turkish: A Comprehensive Grammar

ever board-NEG-PF-2SG
‘Haven’t you ever/Have you never been on a plane?’
20.5.2 hiçbir ‘NO’, ‘ANY’, AND EXPRESSIONS CONTAINING hiçbir
AND herhangi bir ‘NO’, ‘ANY’
Hiçbir functions as a determiner in noun phrases (15.6.1):
(51) Hiçbir çocuk arkadaşından ayrılmak istemez.
‘No child would want to be separated from his/her friend(s).’
It also occurs in the following:
Negation 279
(i) the pronominalized form hiçbiri(si) ‘none [of]’, ‘any [of]’ (14.5.2–3, 18.4)
(ii) the composite expressions hiçbir şey ‘nothing’, ‘anything’, hiçbir yer
‘nowhere’, ‘anywhere’, hiçbir zaman ‘never’, ‘ever’, which incorporate the noun
phrases şey ‘thing’, yer ‘place’ and zaman ‘time’
(iii) the adverbials hiçbir koşulda, hiçbir koşul/şart altında, hiçbir durumda
‘under no/any circumstances’.
All the forms that hiçbir appears in are found mainly in sentences containing one of the
markers of negation (-mA, değil or yok):
(52) Hiçbir yere gitmeyin.
‘Don’t go anywhere.’
(53) Yolculardan hiçbiri(si) yerini vermek istemedi.
‘None of the passengers wanted to surrender their seats.’
(54) Hiçbir zaman mutlu değil miydi?
‘Wasn’t s/he ever happy?’
(55) Dolapta hiçbir şey yok.
‘There’s nothing in the fridge.’
In informal speech some speakers use expressions containing hiçbir in affirmative
questions as well. But the more common alternative, which is also the only way of
expressing any in affirmative sentences that are not questions, such as (57), is herhangi
bir ‘any’ (15.6.1, 18.4 (iv)):
(56) Herhangi bir yerde su var mı?/Hiçbir yerde su var mı?
‘Is there [any] water anywhere?’
(57) Artık bunlardan herhangi birini alıp gidelim.
‘Let’s just take any one of these and go.’
20.5.3 (hiç) kimse ‘NO ONE’, ‘ANYONE’
Like hiç, kimse and its reinforced form hiç kimse are subject to different conditions
depending on whether the sentence in which they occur is a question or not. A sentence
which is not a question and which contains (hiç) kimse must also contain one of the
markers of negation (-mA, değil or yok):