Turkish: A Comprehensive Grammar

postman. There was a packet that had to be signed for. To cut a long story short, I
did manage to catch the 8.50.’
(105) Neyse, ben gitmeliyim artık.
‘Well anyway, I must be going now.’
For another function of neyse see 28.3.13.
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28.3.11 CORROBORATIVE
zaten ‘in any case’, ‘well’ occurs at the beginning or end of the second conjunct, and
presents a statement which makes the first conjunct predictable, thus corroborating or
overriding it:
(106) Oraya trenle gidemezsin. Zaten bugün trenler çalışmıyor.
‘You can’t go there by train. In any case, the trains aren’t running today.’
(107) A.– Ben o kadar aç değilim.
‘I’m not all that hungry.’
B.– Sen yemek yemiştin zaten.
‘Well, you had [already] eaten.’
Note that in this usage zaten is unstressed. For stressed zaten see 28.3.9.
28.3.12 REMINDING
The discourse connectives in this group occur in the first of the two conjuncts. They are
used by the speaker to remind the hearer of a person, thing or situation within their shared
knowledge, in order that the speaker may go on to say something on that topic. The
expressions in question are as follows:
(i) for recalling an event or state: (hani)…ya (used with ya placed immediately
after the predicate)
(ii) for recalling people or things: (hani)…var ya/yok mu.
All of these correspond to phrases such as ‘you know’ and ‘remember’ in English:
(108) (Hani) geçen gün okula gitmemiştim ya, meğer okul zaten tatilmiş.
‘Remember I didn’t go to school the other day? Well, it turns out it was a holiday
anyway.’ (For meğer see 16.3 (iv).)
(109) (Hani) şu marangoz İbrahim var ya/yok mu? İşte onun dükkanından söz
ediyorum. (For işte see 28.3.10 (i).)
‘You know İbrahim the joiner? I’m talking about his shop.’
28.3.13 CONSTRUCTIVE
The function of this group of discourse connectives is to present constructive
interpretations of, or responses to, undesirable situations that have been described, or
which are part of the shared knowledge of speaker and hearer(s):
(i) neyse ‘oh well’ has two constructive functions: