Turkish: A Comprehensive Grammar

verb-like to retain its oblique object insana ‘to one’, is preceded by the sequence hoş bir
(ADJ bir) ‘a nice’, which occurs only in noun phrases.
(106) [O kedinin insana hoş bir sokuluşu] vardı.
‘That cat had a nice way of snuggling up to one.’
Similarly, in the single instance reading, -(y)Iş clauses, unlike those formed with -mA or -
DIK/-(y)AcAK, are countable:
(107) [Zehra’yı her gör-üş-ün]-ü ayrı bir zevkle hatırlıyordu.
every see-VN-3SG.POSS-ACC
‘S/he remembered with a separate pleasure each occasion on which s/he had seen
Zehra.’
(108) [Türkiye’ye ikinci ve üçüncü gidişlerimiz] 1982’de oldu.
‘Our second and third visits to Turkey took place in 1982.’
24.4.5 OVERLAPPING USES OF -mA, -DIK/-(y)AcAK AND -(y)Iş
24.4.5.1 As direct object of verbs of perception or cognition
All noun clause types capable of taking possessive suffixes can occur as objects of verbs
of perception such as gör- ‘see’, duy- ‘hear’, anla- ‘understand’, hatırla- ‘remember’, and
unut- ‘forget’. However, the choice of subordinator in these cases has a clear effect on the
meaning. While the use of -DIK/-(y)AcAK expresses the perception of a situation merely
as a fact, the use of -mA or -(y)Iş expresses rather the perception of an inherent quality of
the event or state. We illustrate this with two contrasting examples:
(109)
(a) [Çocuğ-un ağaç-tan düş-tüğ-ün]-ü gör-dü-m.
(b) [Çocuğ-un ağaç-tan düş-me-sin]-i gör-dü-m.
(c) [Çocuğ-un ağaç-tan düş-üş-ün]-ü gör-dü-m.
child-GEN tree-ABL fall-VN-3SG.POSS-ACC see-PF-1SG
All of the sentences in (109) could be translated ‘I saw the child fall from the tree’.
However, (a) is also open to the interpretation ‘I saw that the child had fallen from the
tree’, where the fact is perceived only after the event has taken place; (b) and (c), on the
other hand, tell us that the speaker witnessed the process of the child’s fall. In a sense,
therefore, both -mA and -(y)Iş in such contexts evoke more the idea of how something
happens than the fact that it happens. Indeed, neither (109b) nor (109c) could be used in a
context in which the fact of the child’s fall had not already been established.
(110)
Noun clauses 371
(a) Hakan [anne-sin-i sev-me-diğ-imiz]-i anlı-yor-du.
Hakan mother-3SG.POSS-ACC love-NEG-VN-1PL.POSS-ACC understand-
IMPF-P.COP
‘Hakan was aware [that we didn’t like his mother].’