Turkish: A Comprehensive Grammar

Conditional sentences 435
‘[Whenever Necla takes an exam] she gets nervous.’
Occasionally the wh-phrase in the subordinate clause is echoed by a resumptive
pronoun in the main clause:
(89) [Kime sorduksa] hepsin-den aynı cevabı aldık. (cf. (85))
all.of.them-ABL
(90) Hayriye Hanı m [nereye giderse] köpeğini de oraya yanında götürüyordu.
(cf. (86))
(91) [Bu resimlerden hangisini seçerseniz] hemen çerçeveletiriz onu. (cf. (87))
If the question phrase is kim ‘who’, ne ‘what’ or nere- ‘where’, the idea of universality
can be reinforced by placing her ‘every’ before this item:
(92) Hayriye Hanım [her nereye giderse] köpeğini de yanında götürüyordu.
Universal conditionals with nasıl ‘how’ are often used in a sense removed from any kind
of conditionality, to express simply a similarity between two situations:
(93) [Nasıl Hakan akşamları garsonluk yapıyorsa] sen de derslerine engel
olmayacak bir is bulabilirsin. (cf. (17) in Chapter 26)
‘[Just as Hakan works in the evenings as a waiter], you too could find a job that
wouldn’t interfere with your academic commitments.’
If, on the other hand, nasıl actually modifies the verb in the subordinate clause, it is
echoed by öyle ‘so’, ‘in that way’ in the main clause:
(94) [Bir baba çocuklarını nasıl severse] Mustafa da köpeklerini öyle seviyor.
‘Mustafa loves his dogs [in the same way that a father loves his children].’
27.5.1 UNIVERSAL CONDITIONAL CONCESSIVES
Many universal conditional constructions express a concessive relation, particularly the
failure (predicted or actual) to achieve an objective in spite of the efforts expressed in the
conditional clause. Two alternative strategies may optionally be used to reinforce this
concessive meaning:
(i) dA may be placed after the conditional verb:
(95) [Bu konuda ne kadar iyi bir kitap yazsan (da)] meşhur olamayacaksın.
‘[However good a book you write on this subject], you won’t become famous.’
(96) Adam [ne söylediyse (de)] karısını suçsuz olduğuna inandıramadı.
‘[Whatever the man said], he couldn’t convince his wife that he was innocent.’
(97) [Kemal bana kaç defa anlatsa (da)] gene anlamayacaktım.
‘[However many times Kemal explained [it] to me] I still wouldn’t have
understood.’
Note that dA is generally not used where the verb in the conditional clause has aorist
marking.