Turkish: A Comprehensive Grammar

Turkish: A comprehensive grammar 434
combinations of the aorist-conditional forms -(A/I)rsA/-mAzsA with dA (which are rare),
mean ‘even if’, not ‘although’ (see 27.4.2.1 (i)).
(81) Banu [toplantılarımıza gel-iyor-sa da] pek bir şey söylemiyor.
come-IMPF-COND.COP
(cf. (76))
‘[Although Banu comes to our meetings] she doesn’t say much.’
(82) [Mehmet’i birkaç defa sokakta gör-dü-m-se de/gör-dü-yse-m de]
see-PF-1SG-COND.COP dA/see- PF-COND.COP-1SG dA
konuşmadık.
‘[Although I’ve seen Mehmet in the street a few times], we haven’t talked.’
(83) [Parası varsa da/var ise de] harcamak istemiyor.
‘Although s/he’s got money, s/he doesn’t want to spend [it].’
It is possible for clauses marked with -(y)sA dA to be introduced by (her) ne kadar (see
27.5). Although this adds nothing to the meaning, it enables the speaker to signal at the
beginning of the sentence that the message of the first clause is subsequently going to be
overridden by a conflicting or contrasting statement to come in the main clause:
(84) [Her ne kadar Banu toplantılarımıza geliyorsa da] pek bir şey söylemiyor.
‘Although Banu sometimes comes to our meetings, she doesn’t say much.’
For alternative ways of expressing concessive clauses see 26.3.3.
27.5 UNIVERSAL CONDITIONAL CLAUSES (CONTAINING A
QUESTION PHRASE)
Where a conditional clause contains a question phrase (wh-phrase, see 19.2), its meaning
is equivalent to a clause with ‘whoever’, ‘wherever’, etc. in English. We refer to this type
of conditional clause as universal, because (except where the question phrase is hangi
‘which’) there is no limit to the range of conditions that it encompasses. A striking
feature of these clauses is that -sA occurs interchangeably with various verbal -(y)sA
combinations:
(85) [Kime sor-du-k-sa/sor-sa-k] aynı cevab-ı al-dı-k.
who-DAT ask-PF-1PL-GOND.COP/ask-COND-1PL same answer-ACC get-PF-
1PL
‘[Whoever we asked] we got the same answer.’
(86) Hayriye Hanım [nereye giderse/gitse] köpeğini de yanında götürüyordu.
‘[Wherever Hayriye Hanım went] she took her dog with her too.’
(87) [Bu resimlerden hangisini seçerseniz] hemen çerçeveletiriz.
‘[Whichever of these pictures you choose], we’ll get [it] framed straight away.’
As in the case of -sA with dA (27.4.2.1), in universal conditionals also—sA can occur
with habitual meaning:
(88) Necla [ne zaman sınava girse] heyecan çekiyor.