turkish phonology and morphology (türkçe ses ve b‹ç‹mb‹lg‹s‹)

Unit 8 - Word Classes
Another difference between nouns and pronouns is that nouns are the members
of the open classes whereas pronouns are those of closed classes. What does this
mean? Nouns are open to new derivations, but pronouns are very restricted in this
respect. Only few derivations are possible: benlik, senlik, senli benli, bensiz, sensiz,
buncac›k (Korkmaz, 2003: 399).
Types of Pronouns
Various subclasses of pronouns are distinguished in Turkish: personal, reflexive,
reciprocal, demonstrative, indefinite, interrogative, and genitive.
Personal pronouns, as mentioned earlier, are used to refer to the speaker,
the person spoken to, and other person/s absent from the context. The equivalent
of personal pronouns is expressed by person markers on the verb too.
Reflexive pronouns are coreferential with the subject. They are formed with
the pronoun kendi inflected in different persons: kendim, kendin, kendisi,
kendimiz, kendiniz, kendileri.
Reciprocal pronouns are coferential with the subject also, but they reflect
mutual participants. The reciprocal pronoun in Turkish birbiri is formed with
birbir followed by the possessive marker. It is always plural, therefore cannot be
inflected for the singular persons: birbirimiz, birbiriniz, birbirleri.
Demonstrative pronouns are items which specify the spatial location of an
object with respect to the location of the speaker and the hearer. Like the category
person, demonstrative is a deictic category too. That is, demonstrative pronouns
bu, flu, o, bunlar, flunlar, onlar take their referents from the context. They express
varying degrees of proximity bu being the nearest, flu farther and o the farthest
from the speaker and the hearer. They can also be used as adjectives: bu kitap, o
çocuk. Their adverbial form is bura-, flura-, and ora-; böyle, flöyle, and öyle.
Another subclass of pronouns is composed of those pronouns called the
indefinite pronouns. They are non-deictic in that they do not have any specific
referents. Kimse, herkes, falan, filan, fley are some examples in Turkish. The
second person pronoun sen can be used in this way too: Önce sebzeleri y›k›yorsun,
sonra kaynat›yorsun. In this example the speaker is not necessarily referring to
the hearer, but using it more generically to refer to anyone who is interested in
cooking this particular dish. Other pronouns are formed by adding the possessive
marker to some indefinite adjectives, adverbs and other pronouns: baflkas›, baz›s›,
baz›lar›, biri, birisi, biriniz, ço¤u, gerisi, hepsi, kimi, öbürü, öteki, tümü, etc. Some
indefinite pronouns are formed as compounds as in birço¤u, birkaç›, her biri, hiç
biri, hiç kimse, bir fley, her fley, her kim (Korkmaz, 2003: 433). Finally, possessive
pronouns are formed by adding ki to the genitive of personal pronouns: benim-ki,
senin-ki, onun-ki, bizim-ki, sizin-ki, onlar›n-ki.
Interrogative pronouns represent persons, places, things in questions: kim,
ne, hangi; and the relative pronoun ki is used to replace the head noun in the
relative clause: ‹stanbul ki, yedi tepe üstünde kurulu, bay›r bacadan geçilmiyor.
It should be noted that all pronouns, like nouns, can be inflected for case.
Some examples are illustrated in Table 8.3 in the singular and plural.
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