Turkish: A Comprehensive Grammar

(67) Kedi köpeği kovar.
‘A cat drives away/can drive away a dog.’
(68) Mühendis mimarı kıskanır.
‘The/An engineer is usually jealous of the/an architect.’
Two other types of bare generic also have to be accusative-marked when they are direct
objects:
(i) -sI compounds (10.2) whose modifier constituent is a noun of nationality:
(69) Arkadaşım Türk kahvesini sevmiyor.
‘My friend doesn’t like Turkish coffee.’
(ii) Noun phrases expressing entities regarded as social ‘institutions’:
(70) Kızın ailesi [okulu önemsemiyor] görünüyor.
‘The girl’s family appears [not to regard school as important].’
Indefinite and plural generics occurring as direct objects are obligatorily accusativemarked:
(71) Ahmet o anda [koşuya hazırlanan] bir atleti andırıyordu.
‘At that moment Ahmet looked like {an athlete [preparing for a race]}.’
(72) Ali doktorları sevmez.
‘Ali doesn’t like doctors.’
22.5 THE EFFECT OF WORD ORDER ON REFERENTIAL STATUS
In the case of a subject noun phrase, its position in the sentence can have a determining
effect on its referential status. In (73), where the noun phrase is not plural-marked, the
difference in word order gives a categorial reading in (a) and a definite reading in (b).
This is because a categorial subject has to occupy the immediately preverbal position
(23.2.1 (v)), whereas the usual position for a definite subject is at the beginning of the
sentence (23.1). While it is possible for a definite subject to be placed in the immediately
preverbal position for purposes of emphasis or contrast (23.3), the likelihood of (a) being
uttered with the meaning of ‘It was the burglar (not anyone else) who got in through
here’ is small.
(73)
Definiteness, specificity and generic reference 333
(a) Buradan hırsız girmiş. (cf. (43))
‘A burglar/Burglars got in through here.’
(b) Hırsız buradan girmiş.
‘The burglar got in through here.’
In (74) the subject noun phrase has plural marking, which gives the possibility of an
indefinite or (contrastive) definite reading in (a), but exclusively a definite reading in (b).
As explained in 23.2.1, a plural-marked indefinite subject without determiner has to
occupy the immediately preverbal position.