Turkish/Postpositions

< Turkish

Turkish has a large number of postpositions, which are used the same way as prepositions in English. Unlike in English, which postposition you can use depends on the noun's case.

With genitive and absolute

The following are used after the genitive pronouns benim, bizim, senin, sizin, onun, and kimin, and after the absolute case of other pronouns and nouns:

For example, a certain corporation may describe its soft-drink as

buz gibi "like ice", that is, "ice cold".

However, another corporation may say of itself

Gibisi yok "Its-like non-existent", that is, "There's nothing like it".

Thus the label of postposition does not adequately describe gibi; Turkish vocabulary#Schaaik proposes calling it a predicate, because of its use in establishing similarity:

Eşek gibisin "Thou art like a donkey";
beni küçümseyecekmiş gibi bir duygu "me s/he-will-look-down-on like a feeling", that is,           
"a feeling as if s/he will look down on me".

The particle ile can be both comitative and instrumental; it can also join the preceding word as a suffix:

Deniz ile konuştuk or Deniz'le konuştuk "Deniz and I [or we], we spoke":

here the literal translation "We spoke with Deniz" may be incorrect;

çekiç ile vur- or çekiçle vur- "hit with a hammer".

With dative

Used after nouns and pronouns in the dative case are:

With ablative

With absolute

The following postpositions are case-forms of nouns with the third-person possessional suffix; they can be understood as forming nominal compounds, always indefinite, with the preceding words (see also Turkish grammar#Nouns):


References

    Books of use in the writing of this article include:

    Turkish/TOC

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