Turkish: A Comprehensive Grammar

Turkish: A comprehensive grammar 428
‘[If they had been able to come in July], we were going to take them sightseeing
for a week.’
27.2.5 -sAymIş
The form -sAymIş is a combination of -sA and the evidential copula -(y)mIş, the use of
which in main clauses is explained in 21.4.3. A conditional clause marked with -sAymIş
is always followed by a main clause also marked with -(y)mIş:
(48) [Dişçi-ye birkaç ay once git-se-ymiş-im]
dentist-DAT few month earlier go-COND-EV.COP-1SG dis-im-i kurtar-abilecek-mis.
tooth-1SG.POSS-ACC save-PSB-FUT-EV.CO
‘Apparently [if I had gone to the dentist a few months earlier] s/he would have
been able to save my tooth.’
The ambiguity of tense reference which is a feature of all sentences marked with -(y)mIş
is seen in these conditionals also:
(49) [Filiz Türkiye’de olsaymış] nikahınız a gelirmiş.
(i) ‘Filiz says that [if she were in Turkey] she would come to your wedding.’
(ii) ‘Filiz says that [if she had been in Turkey] she would have come to your
wedding.’
It should be noted that because of the impossibility of combining the conditional copula
and the evidential copula on one stem, the only kinds of conditional clauses that can be
evidentially marked are the hypothetical and counterfactual predictives. In other types of
conditional sentences, such as the open conditional in (50), only the main clause can be
evidentially marked:
(50) [Hava kötü olursa] Cemil gelmeyecekmiş.
‘Apparently Cemil’s not going to come [if the weather’s bad].’
27.2.6 COMPOUND FORMS WITH olsa/olsaydı/olsaymış
Compound forms with olsa- are analogous in terms of their relative tense and aspect
values to their counterparts with olursa (27.2.1.3). They can occur in either hypothetical
or counterfactual contexts. The counterfactual versions are differentiated by past copular
marking of the main clause, as in (51b) and (c), and by the interchangeability of olsa and
olsaydı in the conditional clause.
The three sentences below illustrate the combinations with -mIş. (51a) might be
uttered in the course of planning a conference. (51c) could only be uttered after the
conference had ended. (51b) could be used in either situation, but if uttered in the
planning stage this would be as an argument against a decision that had already been
taken.