Turkish: A Comprehensive Grammar

(51)
Turkish: A comprehensive grammar 390
‘…at people [who don’t like opera]’
(a) [Biz-im dik-ecek]-ler-imiz-de (hata var).
we-GEN sew-PART-PL-1PL.POSS-LOC
‘(There is a fault) with the ones [that we shall be making].’
(b) [biz-im dik-eceğ-imiz] elbise-ler-de…
‘…with the dresses [that we shall be making]’
Note that, in the case of -DIK/-(y)AcAK, the marker for plural associated with the omitted
head noun (e.g. elbise-ler ‘dresses’ in (51b)) occurs before the person marker in the
headless relative clause, following the order of nominal inflectional suffixes (8.1).
There is also a highly productive use of headless relative clauses as the subject of an
existential sentence.
(52) Öğleden sonra ara-yan ol-ma-dı. (cf.…arayan birisi olmadı.)
call-PART be-NEG-PF
‘No one called in the afternoon.’ (lit. ‘There was no one who…’.)
(53) Bu konuda bil-diğ-im yok. (cf.…bildiğim bir şey yok.)
know-PART-1SG.POSS non-existent
‘I don’t know anything about this matter.’ (lit. ‘There is nothing I know.’)
See 18.4 (vi), examples (116)–(117) for a comparison of headless relative clauses and
pronominalized complex adjectivals.
25.4 THE EXPRESSION OF TENSE AND ASPECT IN RELATIVE
CLAUSES
None of the participle suffixes -(y)An, -DIK and -(y)AcAK have a unique time reference.
They attach directly to a verb stem which is uninflected for tense and aspect (8.2.3), and
therefore using any of them on their own may result in ambiguity. For example, yüz-en
kadın (swim-PART woman) can mean ‘the woman who is/was swimming’, or ‘the
woman who swims/ swam/has swum’, and çiz-diğ-im resim (draw-PART-1SG.POSS
picture) can mean ‘the sketch I am/was making/make/made/have made’.
In order to indicate the time location of the situation in a relative clause either time
adverbials are used, or a compound verb form is constructed by means of the auxiliary ol-
(13.3.1.2), in order to enable the addition of certain tense and aspect markers (25.4.1).
-(y)An typically refers to non-future situations:
(54) [dün başla-yan] fırtına
yesterday start-PART storm
‘the storm [that started yesterday]’
(55) [iki yıldır süren] kuraklık
‘the drought [that has been going on for two years]’
(56) [şu anda çalan] parça
‘the piece [that is playing at the moment]’