Turkish: A Comprehensive Grammar

Adverbial clauses 401
26.1.1.4 Understanding
This type of diye clause expresses how the subject of the main clause understands a
situation that is relevant to the performance of the action in the main clause:
(7) Ali o işe [geceleri çalışılmıyor diye] girmişti.
‘Ali had gone into that job [on the understanding that there was no night
working].’
Where the subject is plural, this understanding may represent an agreement made
between the people referred to (cf. diye clauses as object of konuş-, 24.3.1 (i), and nonfinite
adverbial clauses with -mAk üzere, 26.3.2).
(8) [[Tülin İstanbul’a gelince] yeniden buluşuruz diye] ayrılmışlar o gün.
‘Apparently they had parted that day [on the understanding that they would meet
again [when Tülin came to Istanbul]].’
26.1.2 CLAUSES FORMED WITH ki
Adverbial clauses formed with ki share two basic structural features with noun clauses
(24.3.2) and relative clauses (25.6) formed with this subordinator: (i) they always follow
the main clause, and (ii) ki itself always stands at the beginning of its clause. (Note that
these characteristics are not shared by clauses formed with madem(ki), nasıl ki and
sanki.)
(9) Kalorifer yaptırdık [ki kışın üşü-me-ye-lim]. (cf.(5))
SUB in.winter be.cold-NEG-OPT-1PL
‘We’ve had central heating installed [so that we shan’t be cold in winter].’
There are three main types of adverbial ki clause, expressing respectively location in
time, purpose, and the basis for a deduction.
26.1.2.1 Location in time
In this type of clause ki is equivalent to ‘when’. The verb in the main clause is marked by
-(I)yordu (21.3.2), -mAktAydI (21.3.2) or -mIştI (21.2.1), and the verb in the ki clause is
marked perfectively by -DI . The reversal of the more usual order of time clause followed
by main clause, and the special phonological properties of ki (4.3.2.1; cf. 24.3.2) give
these sentence a much more dramatic quality than equivalent constructions involving
non-finite adverbial clauses of time. This is often reinforced by the use of the adverb tam
‘just’ or (with -mIştI) yeni ‘only just’:
(10) Tam yemeğ-e otur-uyor-du-k [ki bangır bangır kapı vur-ul-du].
just meal-DAT sit-IMPF-P.COP-1PL SUB violently door knock-PASS-PF
‘We were just sitting down to [our] meal [when there was a violent banging on
the door].’