Turkish: A Comprehensive Grammar

Turkish: A comprehensive grammar 336
-GM
‘The smell of honeysuckle is lovely.’
(c) Hanımelinin kokusu çok güzel-di.
-P.COP
‘The smell of the honeysuckle was lovely.’
(a) is ambiguous between a generic reading (honeysuckle plants in general) and a definite
one (referring to a particular honeysuckle plant). The addition of -DIr in (b) forces the
generalized reading. (c), on the other hand, shows that, just as in verbal sentences
perfective aspect is usually incompatible with generic reference, so in nominal sentences
past tense marking usually excludes the generic interpretation. The latter would be
possible only in the case of a change in the situation of an entire class of entities over
time, as in (81):
(81) 1920’lerde otomobil yaygın değildi.
‘Cars were not common in the 1920s.’