Turkish: A Comprehensive Grammar

(41) [Mehmet borcunu ödemediği için] Ali bu yıl kendi borçlarını zor
ödeyecek.
‘[Because Mehmet hasn’t paid his debt] Ali will pay his own debts with great
difficulty this year.’
(42) [Bozulmasın diye] annem köfteyi buzdolabına koymuştu.
‘My mother had put the meatballs in the fridge [so that they wouldn’t go off].’
Most adverbials of time may also precede the subject:
(43) Dün annem doktora gitti.
‘Yesterday my mother went to the doctor.’
(44) Hafta sonları çocuklar burada olmuyor.
‘The children are not here at the weekends.’
Where two adverbials of time or place occur together, the one with the broader meaning
precedes the other:
(45) Her gün 14.30-da uçak kalkıyormuş.
every day 14.30-LOC
‘It seems a plane goes at 14.30 every day.’
23.3 WORD ORDER VARIATIONS
The major constituents of a sentence can appear in any order, provided that none is
indefinite. For example, a sentence containing a subject, a direct object (with an
accusative case marker) and a verb has six possible orders (with the further possibility of
inserting adverbials at the beginning, the end or between constituents):
(46)
(b) Evi Ali sattı.
(c) Ali sattı evi.
(d) Evi sattı Ali.
(e) Sattı Ali evi.
(f) Sattı evi Ali.
Word order 343
(a) Ali ev-i sat-tı.
Ali house-ACC sell-PF
‘Ali sold the house.’
Although these sentences are equally grammatical, they are used in different contexts.
For example, (b) and (c) are interchangeable if Ali is stressed, a strategy which guides the
hearer to focus his/her attention on Ali, and indicates that it was Ali who sold the house.
(e) and (f) emphasize the selling of the house, as a verb which is at the beginning of a
sentence obligatorily carries stress. On the other hand, (b) and (d) are more or less
interchangeable if evi ‘the house (ACC)’ bears stress. These sentences are used in