Turkish: A Comprehensive Grammar

Conjunctions, co-ordination and discourse connection 457
(a) It points to a redeeming feature of a seemingly undesirable state of affairs:
(110) Hafta sonunda hep yağmur yağdı. Neyse, okuduğum romanı
bitirebildim.
‘It rained all weekend. Oh well, I was able to finish the novel I was reading.’
(b) It expresses acceptance or resignation:
(111) Neyse, bizim yapabileceğimiz bir şey yok.
‘Oh well, there’s nothing we can do.’
(ii) hiç olmazsa, hiç değilse, en azından and bari all mean ‘at least’. hiç olmazsa, hiç
değilse and en azından are used interchangeably, and can introduce statements of all
modalities. Bari, on the other hand, can be used only in volitional utterances (21.4.4):
(112) Hiç olmazsa birimiz bileti kullanabildik.
‘One of us was at least able to use the ticket.’
(113) Bari/Hiç olmazsa birimiz bileti kullanabilseydik.
‘I wish one of us could at least have used the ticket.’
28.4 THE EFFECTS OF CO-ORDINATION AND DISCOURSE
CONNECTION
When identical items occur in co-ordinated constructions all but one of them may be
omitted to avoid repetition. This kind of omission is called ellipsis. In Turkish, suffixes
and clitics can be elided (28.4.1) as well as phrases (28.4.2). Ellipsis of noun phrases can
also occur across sentence boundaries when a referent can be identified by the hearer
from previous mention (28.4.3).
28.4.1 THE ELISION OF SUFFIXES AND CLITICS IN
COORDINATED CONSTRUCTIONS
If a series of conjoined phrases or clauses contain certain identical suffixes and/or clitics,
these may be omitted in all of the conjuncts except the last one. For example, in (114) the
copular marker -(y)DI, which appears on giderdi, can be omitted in the first two
predicates, leaving giyer and alır as ‘incomplete’ forms in terms of the meaning
expressed:
(114) Ziya her sabah paltosunu giyer(…), şemsiyesini alır(…) ve işe giderdi.
‘Every morning Ziya would put on his coat, pick up his umbrella and leave for
work.’
This is known as ‘suspended affixation’. Below we explain the most common types of
suspended affixation.