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Adjective Heaven
Now with Sound !
Ordinary adjective usage
Adjectives in comparative situations
Intensive adjectives
Diminutive adjectives...
...ending in -ca (-ce)
...ending in -cik (-cIk, -cük, -cuk)
...ending in -msI (-ImsI, -imsi, -umsu)
...ending in -mtIrak (-ImtIrak, -imtIrak, -umtIrak)
Are prefixes only used to intensify adjectives?
Participles used as adjectives
Word order and Turkish adjectives
Turkish Adjectives Ordinary uses of Adjectives The other morning, we were careening down the road toward the Aegean coastal resort town of KusadasI in a beat-up dolmus thinking about Turkish adjectives. that the alternative to thinking about Turkish adjectives was thinking about the danger we were in -- as we careened down the road in a beat-up dolmus!!! It was not a happy choice of thoughts... Anyway
a particularly nasty bump in the road bounced us such that our head came to rest on the shoulder of a fellow passenger, two seats over and one row back. And we couldnt help noticing the opening paragraph of the novel she was trying to read
"As I awoke, my bloated head throbbed painfully from the cheap red wine of the awful night before. It was a dank steamy morning; the sopping wet bedsheets clung to my aching body and as I removed the edge of the spit-stained pillow from my sputtering mouth, I tasted dirty duck-feather. A subdued light peeked through the swamp-green curtains. And when I reached out my shaking hand to stroke my boyfriends shapely butt, I felt a rough furry texture that emitted a muffled oink. Something was wrong
"
Are those red words the adjectives, Marvin?
Don't bother me, Mabel. I'm concentrating on the literature. As you look at that English-language paragraph now, you probably notice that the adjectives perform ordinary modification of ordinary nouns, and help to give the nouns a little more life. Well, you can use Turkish adjectives in the same ordinary way. For example,
(The quick brown pooch bit the slow foolish mailman.)
But, as in English, Turkish adjectives may be used in more interesting ways |
Adjectives used in comparative situations Expressing inequality and equality When there is general inequality between (among) compared items, use -den/dan daha (more) or -den/dan daha az (less) together with the ordinary adjective
Bradley, Brunhilde
Bradley, Brunhilde
Bradley, Brunhilde ve Benjamin
If one of the compared items is definitely superior (or inferior) to the other(s), youll normally use en together with the adjective
Bradley
Brunhilde
En güzel
Heres a little chart that demonstrates the unequal comparative use of Turkish adjectives:
When there is equality between (among) compared items, you may use gibi or kadar together with the ordinary adjective form
Bradley, Brunhilde Bradley, Brunhilde Bradley, Brunhilde ve Benjamin |
Now, one of the more interesting Turkish adjectival constructions arises when you add a prefix to intensify the meaning of an adjective. You'll recall that we've had plenty of occasion to add suffixes
Prefixes ending in m...
'Deli' Googenheim bambaska bir karakter. 'Crazy' Googenheim was quite a different character. Huh? No one remembers Red Skelton's famous alter-ego? Jeez... Prefixes ending in p...
Sharon Stone IpIslak tisörtte çok iyi görünüyor. Sharon Stone looks great in a sopping wet tee shirt. What? Nobody except us has fantasies? Oh sure. Right... Prefixes ending in r
Michael Schumacher tertemiz bir araba kullanIyor. Michael Schumacher drives a mighty clean car. Anybody? European Formula One racing? hellooo...
Prefixes ending in s
Genghis Khan kaskatI bir adamdI. Genghis Khan was a very stern fellow. And he was cruel to animal-rights activists, too... Examples of intensified adjectives with irregular prefixes are:
UyarI: Plajda çIrIlçIplak dans etmek yasaktIr -- pazar günleri. Warning: No totally nude dancing on the beach -- on Sundays. Monday thru Friday was fully booked so we got lumped together with a group from Milwaukee on Saturday.
Do you think you can now construct your own intensified adjectives based on the examples above? Do you see any rules for the intensive prefixes ending in m, p, r, s?
Well, we only see one incontrovertible one
Brilliant, what ? Nothing gets by us ! (usually a friend of Turkish language strugglers everywhere) makes one other pretty obscure observation about these prefixes. He says Adjective Prefixes ending in p are usually constructed with back vowels (a, I, u, o) rather than front vowels (e, i, ö, ü). (Thats a real winner, innit? Sooorry, G.L. We still love you...)
that you use the prefix tap with the adjective 'taze' to make the intensified adjective taptaze (extremely fresh). But then, the 'rule' doesn't hold for yep in yepyeni (brand new)... And thats about it, in the way of so-called rules for these prefixes. Looks like were back to the need for rote memorization again <sigh> |
Thanks to Mehmet Hengirmen
for some of the ideas that appear on this page...
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