Turkish: A Comprehensive Grammar

Turkish: A comprehensive grammar 320
21.5.3 COMPOUND FORMS IN WHICH THE LEXICAL VERB IS
MARKED WITH -(y)AcAk
This pattern is in very restricted use in main clauses, although it is highly productive in
conditional clauses (27.2.1.3, 27.2.6) and in relative clauses (25.4.1). The combination -
(y)AcAk oldu expresses an action that a person decided (somewhat hesitantly) to perform.
It is nearly always followed by a statement expressing or implying the reversal of that
decision:
(192) Bir şey söyleyecek oldum, ama tam o anda kapı çaldı.
‘I was about to say something, but just at that moment the door (bell) rang.’
Compounds with -(y)AcAk oluyor give the same kind of situation a habitual context:
(193) Bazen bir şey söyleyecek oluyorum ama bir türlü çıkmıyor.
‘Sometimes I get almost to the point of saying something, but it just doesn’t come
out.’
21.5.4 COMPOUND FORMS IN WHICH THE LEXICAL VERB IS
MARKED WITH -(A/I)r OR -mAz
Aorist marking of the lexical verb is restricted to compounds in which the auxiliary has
perfective marking (the modally neutral -DI or evidential -mIş).
(i) -(A/I)r oldu/olmuş:
The affirmative aorist form followed by oldu/olmuş expresses the fact that an event
began or has begun to happen recurrently, or as a matter of habit:
(194) Son zamanlarda sık sık tiyatroya gider olduk.
‘Recently we have started going to the theatre a lot.’
(ii) -mAz oldu/olmuş:
The negative aorist form with oldu/olmuş expresses the fact that a formerly recurrent
event (has) ceased to happen:
(195) O olaydan sonra Hakan bir süre bize uğramaz oldu.
‘After that incident Hakan stopped calling on us for a while.’
21.5.5 THE ADDITION OF THE PAST COPULA -(y)DI TO
COMPOUND VERB FORMS
The past copula -(y)DI (21.2.1 (ii)) can be added to the auxiliary component of any
compound verb form. It has one of two functions:
(i) In most cases it provides a reference point in absolute past time (time prior to the
moment of speech) for the relative tense or aspect marked on the lexical verb:
(196) Genellikle saat yediye kadar dükkanı kapatmış oluyorduk.
‘We had usually shut the shop by seven o’clock.’