How to use the Turkish Suffix Dictionary

First column ["Suffixes" / "Formulas" / "Functions"]

The first column of the dictionary contains a list of the most frequently used inflectional suffixes of Turkish. Click on any item in the list to see its Formula (the morpheme's canonical form) and meaning appear in the second column. In some cases, such as acak, the suffix itself is ambiguous and you will see two or more Formulas in the Second column.

You can also change the contents of the list in the First column by clicking on the options in the menu list on the left. Using this menu, you can view Suffixes (default), Formulas, or Functions in the First column.

A Turkish word may contain several suffixes. To analyse a word you segment it into its root and suffixes, and identify each suffix. You need practice in order to be able to do this.

There may be several possible ways of segmenting a word. For example: kitabını can be segmented as

• kitab:SECOND.PERSON.POSSESSIVE:ACCUSATIVE or
• kitab:THIRD.PERSON.POSSESSIVE:PRONOMINAL.N:ACCUSATIVE

kitabını is ambiguous, and only its context can help you to decide the correct reading.

Consult a grammar to learn which suffixes can be combined and in which order. And remember that the list of suffixes provided here is not complete: it does not include all the suffixes used in Turkish. Thus, if the suffix you are looking for is not included in this list, please consult a grammar.

Second column ["Morpheme information"]

The second column displays one or more Formulas - the suffix's (morpheme's) canonical form, together with the Formula's meaning. A Formula is a single written form that represent all the variants (allomorphs) of the suffix that appear in the First column. Two or more Formulas appear if the suffix is ambiguous - in this case, you can click a Formula to see its examples in the Third column.

Capital letters are used to show where a sound occurs in several variants:

Letter		Variants
A		a, e
I		i, ı, u, ü
D		d, t
K		k, ğ

Brackets indicate that a sound occurs in some contexts but not others. For example, the suffix -(s)I:

• occurs as -sI when it follows a vowel, eg. anne-si 'his/her mother'
• occurs as -I when it follows a consonant, eg. ev-i 'his/her house'

The suffix -Iyor has a specific property. When a stem ends in a vowel, the vowel is dropped and the suffix -Iyor is added:

• gel- 'come' > gel-iyor 'he/she/it comes'
• bekle- 'wait' > bekl-iyor 'he/she/it waits'

Third column ["Examples"]

The third column contains sentence examples illustrating the use of the suffixes. There is an example for each suffix variant.

Font/character set display

Turkish orthography uses special characters, such as the following:

Turkish characters may or may not display correctly, depending on your computer's operating system, installed fonts, the browser, and its settings. The dictionary generates text dynamically, which may produce inconsistent results in some browsers. This page can help you to check your browser's ability to correctly display these Turkish characters.

The table below will indicate if you are likely to see the characters correctly. If the box in the centre looks similar to one on its left, the characters may display correctly. However, you should also check the dynamically generated characters by pressing the button which will generate the characters in a new window. If any of the characters look different from the correct versions, then you may not be able to view the dictionary correctly.

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© 2003 Éva Á. Csató & David Nathan