What do you do with gelse, when you have geliyorsa, gelirse, gelecekse, geldiyse and gelseydi and corresponding negative forms. What is the secret meaning which all these tense-marked forms cannot express?

V + -sa/-se is called "dilek-şart" (wish and condition) that is it may be used to make conditional (hypothetical) statement or a wish

gelse = I wish s/he came (wish)

gelse = if s/he came (but s/he didn´t(doesn´t) (hypothetical condition)

Now in old Turkish we had a verb called "er-mek" (to be) and we had "er-se" form using -se suffix mentioned above.

Over time, "er-mek" became "i-mek" (with it various forms er-di > i-di; er-miş > i-miş; er-se > i-se; er-ken > i-ken; in Uyghur/Uzbek language: er-mez > i-mez = not). Then they all became suffixes:

i-se > -se/-sa

i-di > -(y)di/-(y)dı/-(y)du/-(y)dü/-(y)dı/-ti/-tı/-tu/-tü

i-miş > -(y)miş/-(y)mış/-(y)muş/-(y)müş

i-ken > -(y)ken

geliyor = s/he is coming

geliyor ise = geliyor-sa = if s/he is coming

gelir = s/he comes

gelir ise = gelir-se = if s/he comes

gelecek = s/he will come = s/he has an intention to come

gelecek ise = gelecek-se = if s/he will come;if s/he has an intention to come

geldi = s/he has come

geldi ise = geldi-yse = if s/he has come

or

geldi = s/he came

geldi ise = geldi-yse = if s/he had come (past conditional, non-hypothetical)

gel-se = if s/he came (hypothetical)

gel-se idi = if s/he had come (past hypothetical)

Example:

Past hypothetical condition example:

3 dakika önce gelse idi, Ali burada idi. = If he had come 3 minutes earlier, Ali was still here (But he didn´t come and he and Ali couldn´t meet)

Present tense hypothetical condition example:

3 dakika önce gelse, Ali burada olur. = If he came 3 minutes earlier, Ali would be here.

Note: my English translation maynot be OK. Anybody can correct me.

And please see this thread:

http://www.turkishclass.com/forumTitle_11957

Thanks, I will. So the secret meaning is some kind of counter-reality?

___

Oh, no, I can´t possibly get such long paradigms into my old head. There must be a way to see the logic in it. But I quess I got a step further with your examples. The conditional is really a tricky problem, probably because it is so tied to the situation. In its tight packaged informativeness it´s sooo Turkish.

There is heading in aslan2´s post "looking at it in a different way", have you checked it out?

Yes, I understand it´s seen like some kind of puzzle where different combinations create different meanings. Analyzing the meaning of a single verb form beginning from the last bricks doesn´t sound impossible.

What in my level confuses me the most is the difference between

V + sa and

V + tense mark (especially simple present which means habitual action) + sa.

I studied some examples yesterday and noticed that the difference is not very strict. As the matter of fact my word "counter-reality" may be too strong to describe V + sa. It´s more about hypothetical situations whose probability the speaker is evaluating when he is making these choises.

A couple of examples:

1. Fazla içersen sarhoş olursun. (You might go and do that but you know the consequenses.)

2. Her ne zaman çok kahve içsem uyuyamam. (That´s why I don´t.)

and

1. Her ne zaman İstanbul´a gelirsen bizi ziyaret edebilirsin. (I´m being hopeful, of course you will come one day.)

2. Her ne zaman Bursa´ya gitsek dağa tırmanırız. (I wouldn´t be so sure it will ever happen.)

Is there any idea in my interpretations?

Well when there is a "her", we have somewhat different meaning:

her + question word + ...+ -sa/-se or ise = question word + ever + ... + verb

her nerede isen = wherever you are

her kimsen = whoever you are

her ne zaman gelirsen = whenever you (do) come

her nasıl gelirsen = however you (do) come

her nasılsa= somehow or however it is

I leave it you to apply this meaning to your examples above.

Here are some useful tips:

1- The personal suffixes used with -sa/-se

Well this is the same as past tense suffixes.

gel-di-m and gel-se-m

gel-di-n and gel-se-n

gel-di-. and gel-se-.

gel-di-k and gel-se-k

gel-di-niz and gel-se-niz

gel-di-ler and gel-se-ler

Well that´s a nice memory hook.

2- Always use personal suffixes with -sa/-se

Stick to this rule as a beginner.

gelir ise-m

geliyor ise-m

gelecek ise-m

geldi ise-m

gelmiş ise-m

gelmeli ise-m

2- Always use personal suffixes with -sa/-se

Stick to this rule as a beginner. And when there is idi/imiş write them as a separate word rather than a suffix.

gelir ise-m

gelir idi ise-m

gelir imiş ise-m

geliyor ise-m

geliyor idi ise-m

geliyor imiş ise-m

gelecek ise-m

gelecek idi ise-m

gelecek imiş ise-m

geldi ise-m

geldi idi ise-m

geldi imiş ise-m

gelmiş ise-m

gelmiş idi ise-m

gelmiş imiş ise-m

gelmeli ise-m

gelmeli idi ise-m

gelmeli imiş ise-m

to be:

iyi ise-m

iyi idi ise-m

iyi imiş ise-m

And you may have many combinations of any of these. Leave it for now but be able to recognise them if you see any.

For example:

iyi idi ise-m = iyi-ydi isem = iyi idi-yse-m = iyi-ydi-yse-m

=iyi idi-m ise = iyi-ydi-m ise = iyi-ydi-m-se

=iyi-yim idi ise = iyi-yim idi-yse = iyi-yim-di ise = iyi-yim-di-yse

3- Know and spot the difference between ise and V+-sa/-se

gel-se-m vs gelir ise-m

And -sa/-se is somewhat overloaded in that it may be used for wish or condition.

gel-se = I wish s/he came

or gel-se = if s/he came

And modify the second lead above and use personal suffixes with idi or imiş when they exist.

gel-se idi-m

gel-se imiş-im

Sağ olun, si++.

I wanted to comment this before but some repair men came to the door...

What I was after with the sentences which I found was that they were otherwise quite similar. What separated the pairs was the presence or the absense of simple present tense mark. I thought it might be a sign of the speaker´s idea about the probability of the sentence but obviously I stumbled and fell.

I understand these questions are not my level and what I need is practical hints. Thanks for them. But it´s nice to play on a large field sometimes.

 Number 2 of the 1st set and both of the second set are more like "whenever".

çok kahve içsem uyuyamayacağım: If I drink lot´s of coffee I won´t be able to sleep

(I am talking about drinking coffee now and its result on my being able to sleep later)

Her ne zaman çok kahve içsem uyuyamam: whenever I drink lots of coffee I can´t sleep

(this is a general rule: it applied to me in the past and will apply now and in the future I think)

The Turkish is different in each case, just as the English is different