Turkish: A Comprehensive Grammar

Relative clauses 397
(92) Sınıflarında Gülten diye çok şımarık bir kız vardı, [ki Hülya
ondan/kendisinden nefret ederdi].
‘There was a very self-indulgent girl in their class called Gülten, [whom Hülya
hated].’
(93) Dayımın çocukları, [ki biz onlarla/kendileriyle her yaz buluşurduk], çok
güzel tenis oynuyorlardı.
‘My cousins, [whom we used to meet every summer], were very good at playing
tennis.’
25.6.2 ki IN RESTRICTIVE RELATIVE CLAUSES
ki also has a certain limited usage in forming restrictive relative clauses. In such
constructions (which have a rather literary flavour), the head is usually the subject of the
relative clause, and the verb of this clause is negative and has optative marking. The main
clause is also usually negative:
(94) Bizim okulda hiçbir öğrenci yok [ki Bilge Hanım’dan azar işitmemiş olsun].
‘There is no student in our school [who has not been reprimanded by Bilge
Hanım].’
If the head is not the subject of the main clause a resumptive pronoun has to be used,
such as ona in (95):
(95) Bir ahçı [ki baklava yap-may-ı bil-me-sin,] ben on-a ahçı de-me-m.
a cook RP baklava make-VN-ACC know-NEG-3SG.OPT I s/he-DAT cook call-
[AOR.]NEG-1SG
‘A cook [who can’t make baklava]! I don’t call that a cook.’
25.6.3 COMMENT USAGE OF ki
ki clauses can also be used, in a way somewhat similar to a certain use of ‘which’ in
English, to introduce a comment on, or expansion of, something that has just been said.
The clause introduced by ki usually contains some kind of demonstrative, such as the
pronoun bu ‘this’ (18.2), or the adverbial öyle ‘like that’ (16.4.3), which refers to the
entire situation expressed in the previous clause:
(96) Ziya beni görmek istemiyormuş, [ki bunu daha önce söylemişti].
‘Apparently Ziya doesn’t want to see me, which he said before.’
This kind of ki clause often occurs parenthetically within a sentence, following an
adverbial clause, on the content of which it provides a comment. For example, in (97) ki
follows a conditional clause and in (98) it follows a temporal clause.
(97) [Parası yoksa,] [ki öyle olduğunu tahmin ediyorum,] şirketi kurtaramaz.
‘[If s/he doesn’t have any money,] [which I think is the case,] s/he won’t be able
to save the company.’