Turkish grammar

, similarly to other Turkic languages, is a highly agglutinative language, in that much of the grammar is expressed by means of suffixes added to nouns and verbs. It is very regular compared with many European languages. For example, evlerden "from the houses" can be analysed as ev "house", -ler, -den ; gidiyorum "I am going" as git "go", -iyor, -um.
Another characteristic of Turkish is vowel harmony. Most suffixes have two or four different forms, the choice between which depends on the vowel of the word's root or the preceding suffix: for example, the ablative case of evler is evlerden "from the houses" but, the ablative case of başlar "heads" is başlardan "from the heads".
Verbs have six grammatical persons, various voices, and a large number of grammatical tenses. Meanings such as "not", "be able", "should" and "if", which are expressed as separate words in most European languages, are usually expressed with verbal suffixes in Turkish. A characteristic of Turkish which is shared by neighboring languages such as Bulgarian and Persian is that the perfect tense suffix often has an inferential meaning, e.g. geliyormuşum "it would seem that I am coming".
Verbs also have a number of participial forms, which Turkish makes much use of. Clauses which begin with "who" or "because" in English are generally translated by means of participial phrases in Turkish.
In Turkish, verbs generally come at the end of the sentence or clause; adjectives and possessive nouns come before the noun they describe; and meanings such as "behind", "for", "like/similar to" etc. are expressed as postpositions following the noun rather than prepositions before it.

Morphology

Turkish words are routinely formed through the attachment to a stem of one or more suffixes. A stem may be a root or further analyzable into parts. Turkish suffixes fall roughly into two classes: constructive suffixes and inflectional suffixes. A constructive suffix makes a new word from an old one, that is, it is a derivational suffix. An inflectional suffix indicates how a word is used in a sentence.
The vowels of suffixes undergo vowel harmony. When a suffix is attached to a stem, the vowel in the suffix generally agrees in frontness or backness and in roundedness with the last vowel in the stem or of the preceding suffix.
Some suffixes show two-way vowel harmony between e and a, for example the plural suffix -ler/-lar. The e form is found after a syllable with i, e, ö or ü, and also after certain Arabic or French borrowings such as saatler "hours, clocks", kalpler "hearts". Other suffixes show four-way vowel harmony between i, ı, u, ü, for example the possessive ending -im/-ım/-um/-üm "my". These endings are found after syllables containing their own vowels or after e, a, o, ö respectively
A Turkish suffix can be called enclitic if its vowel undergoes vowel harmony, agreeing with the last vowel of the stem the suffix is attached to.

Gender

Turkish lacks grammatical gender. The English third-person singular pronouns she, he, and it all correspond to a single Turkish pronoun, o. Many given names in Turkish are unisex, so it is entirely possible to describe someone in the Turkish language without their gender being discernible from grammatical context.

Person

Turkish has a strong T–V distinction, using the second-person plural as the formal form, as in French and many other languages.
Turkish also uses various honorifics.

T–V distinction

Family members and friends speak to one another using the second singular person sen, and adults use sen to address minors. In formal situations plural second-person siz is used almost exclusively. In very formal situations, double plural second-person sizler may refer to a much-respected person. Rarely, third-person plural conjugation of the verb may be used to emphasize utmost respect. In the imperative, there are three forms: second person singular for informal, second person plural for formal, and double plural second person for very formal situations. Thus, the imperative forms of the verb gelmek, "to come", are gel, gelin, and geliniz. The very formal forms are not frequently used.

Honorifics

Turkish honorifics generally follow the first name, especially if they refer to gender or particular social statuses, Hanım, Öğretmen ). Such honorifics are used both in formal and informal situations. A newer honorific is Sayın, which precedes the surname or full name, and is not gender-specific.. They are generally used in very formal situations. While these honorifics are normally used in pre-position to Turkish first names, for foreigners, names are preceded by Bay or Bayan : Bay Mulder, Bayan Scully.

Turkish terminology

In the Turkish terms for the constructive and inflectional endings, three roots are involved:

ek "supplement, affix"
yap- "make"
çek- "pull, draw"

For the last two verbal roots, the constructive suffix -im can be added to form nouns for instances of the actions denoted by the roots:

yapım "construction"; "derivation".
çekim " pull or draw".

Either of these nouns can be compounded with the noun ek, resulting in an indefinite compound, the sign of which is the inflectional suffix -i attached to ek:

yapım eki "structure-suffix"; "derivational suffix".
çekim eki "inflection-suffix".

The inflectional suffix -ler comes before the -i to form the plural, so yapım ekleri, çekim ekleri.
Many words in Turkish— particularly many grammatical terms— are neologisms invented to replace earlier words borrowed from Arabic or Persian, which have largely been successful at permanently superseding the previously used foreign terms. In some cases, the foreign term continues to be in use alongside the neologism.

Parts of speech

There are nine parts of speech in Turkish.

noun ;
pronoun ;
adjective ;
verb ;
adverb ;
postposition ;
conjunction ;
particle ;
interjection.

Postpositions are analogous to prepositions in English, the main difference being that they follow their objects. Postpositions can be considered particles, but there are particles in Turkish that are not postpositions.
Only nouns, pronouns and verbs are inflected in Turkish. An adjective can usually be treated as a noun or pronoun, in which case it can also be inflected. Inflection can give a noun features of a verb such as person and tense. With inflection, a verb can become one of the following:

verbal noun ;
verbal adjective or participle ;
verbal adverb or gerund.

These have peculiarities not shared with other nouns, adjectives or adverbs.
For example, some participles take a person the way verbs do.
Also, a verbal noun or adverb can take a direct object.
Some verbal nouns are not inflected forms in Turkish but are borrowed from Arabic or other languages.
In Turkish, an ascriptive clause can be composed of a common noun standing alone as the Predicative, both the Subject and the Predicator being implicit and assumed from the situation. Example:
This means that both a noun and a verb can alone constitute an affirmative clause in Turkish, which is not the case in English.
There are two standards for listing verbs in dictionaries. Most dictionaries follow the tradition of spelling out the infinitive form of the verb as the headword of the entry, but others such as the Redhouse Turkish-English Dictionary are more technical and spell out the stem of the verb instead, that is, they spell out a string of letters that is useful for producing all other verb forms through morphological rules. Similar to the latter, this article follows the stem-as-citeword standard.

Infinitive: koşmak
Stem: koş-

In Turkish, the verbal stem is also the second-person singular imperative form. Example:
Many verbs are formed from nouns by addition of -le. For example:
The aorist tense of a verb is formed by adding -r. The plural of a noun is formed by suffixing -ler.
Hence, the suffix -ler can indicate either a plural noun or a finite verb:
Most adjectives can be treated as nouns or pronouns. For example, genç can mean "young", "young person", or "the young person being referred to".
An adjective or noun can stand, as a modifier, before a noun. If the modifier is a noun, then the second noun word takes the inflectional suffix -i:
Comparison of adjectives is not done by inflecting adjectives or adverbs, but by other means.
Adjectives can serve as adverbs, sometimes by means of repetition:

Word order

A general rule of Turkish word order is that the modifier precedes the modified:

adjective precedes noun;
adverb precedes verb;
object of postposition precedes postposition.

Although the most common order of Turkish transitive sentences is subject–object–verb, all six permutations are valid. The word order serves to express the theme and focus of the sentence: the sentence-initial portion is associated with the topic; the position just before the verb is used for the focus; and the post-verbal position is used for background or clarifying information.
The following sentences illustrate how subject–object–verb order changes the meaning.

Word order	Gloss	Notes
SOV
OSV
SVO
OVS		Same as SOV.
VSO		Anacoluthon
VOS		Anacoluthon

Meanings may be different depending on emphasis.
In one study, only about half of the transitive sentences used by a sample of Turkish speakers were found to be in the SOV order.
When a sentence has multiple informational components, the stressed component is positioned just before the verb: