I always find this choice difficult:

         ?Ampul/Ampulun/Ampulu değiştirmesi zor bir iş değil.

And what if it was a passive verb?

 Ampul değiştirmek zor bir iş değil ---> To change a bulb is not a difficult job.

                                                    Changing a bulb is not a difficult job.

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Ampulu değiştirmesi zor bir iş değil ---> It is not difficult for him to change the bulb.

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Passive:

Ampulun değiştirilmesi zor bir iş değil. ---> Getting the bulb changed is not a difficult job.

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That´s why I thought I have seen them all... So there can´t be a genitive unless the verb is passive?

Good old tunci, thank you.

 There can be genitive without passive ;

Ampulun değişmesi zaman alan bir iş[tir] ---> The bulb´s changing is a job that takes time.

Bir ampulun değişmesi zaman alan bir iş[tir]. ---> A bulb´s changing is a job that takes time.

But then you removed the causative?

 Ahmet´in ampulu değiştirmesi zaman alır. ---> Ahmet´s changing the bulb takes time.

                                                              It takes time for Ahmet to change the bulb

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In other words, in the light of your examples it seems to me that the logical object (ampul) of the infinitive takes genitive only if it is in the syntactic position of the real grammatical subject (that´s what happened when you added passive or deleted causative).

What do you say, could

         Ampulu değiştirmesi zor bir iş değil ---> It is not difficult for him to change the bulb.

be understood as a generic sentence? Does this "he" have to be a specific person?

 If the person you are telling this sentence knows who are you referring to [specific person] , then you dont have to put "Ahmet´in", otherwise you have to put "Ahmet´in".

what about this ;

Ampulun rengini değiştirmesi alışılmadık bir durum. --> The bulb´s changing it´s colour is an unusual thing.

--- We got causitive now..

ampul|un = stem + gen (modifying the next word, renk)

reng|i|n|i = stem + poss sg 3rd + -n- + acc

değiş|tir|me|si = stem + caus + inf + poss sg 3rd

What is the pink part doing there? Does it refer to

1. the preceding parts of the compound (ampulun rengini) or

2. a person, someone, anyone, who cares who?

Another example of ergativity:

Ampul değişti = The bulb changed. (Somebody has changed the bulb)

I had earlier provided some other examples: here

 It refers the action that is performed by "ampul" , [Ampul´s changing, its changing]

Literally ;

Ampul´s colour´s it´s changing ....

Ampul´un rengini  değiştirmesi.........

I have noticed marks of ergativity in Turkish but I didn´t understand them well enough even to ask. It seems that this innocent topic brings us to the heart of it. I will see the examples. Thanks, tunci. Thanks, si++.

I heard this dialog when I was watching something on TV.

- Ne yapmayı planlıyorsun.

- Öncelikle okulu bitirmeyi düşünüyorum.

- Evet okul bitmeli

Well, the red one is another example of ergativity.

Okul bitmeli = school must finish

What is meant is:

Okul bitirilmeli = school must be finished (or you must finish the school)

Wow... very interesting, and a lot of different examples, that´s excellent. Thanks for all the translations  

Never knew it would be that difficult to change a bulb in Turkey  

I always had trouble in understanding the concept of ergativity and I was glad I didn’t really have to deal with it. It seems that everything I thought I have once abandoned I find in front of me while studying Turkish.

Ok, here we go.

I have noticed two types of verb stems in Turkish what comes to the role of subject and object:

Some non-derived stems are transitive (bulmak) and some are intransitive (bitmek) by nature. Usually if we want to change the status of the object of the transitive verb we need to undress the verb from its transitivity by adding passive or reflexive. Ergative use is an exception of this principle.

Maybe I misunderstand something but I thought ergative use needs a transitive stem (the second type). If the object of bulmak was risen to the position of subject without deriving the basic verb any further -  I don’t know if it ever could  -  it would be ergative use, right?

Ergative use according to its narrowest definition is like the use of the verb translate in the English sentence

The sentence translates…

Thus, from the mentioned examples

Makarna pişiyor

İstemez (in the meaning ‘I don’t want it’ )

represent ergative use of transitive verbs at its purest.

There are a lot of intransitive stems but I have understood ergativity can happen with only certain types of transitive verbs (introduced by tunci under the above link) and it is more usual in English than Turkish.

Correct me.

Hmm!

I refer to the definition in this page.

An ergative verb is a verb that can be either transitive or intransitive, and whose subject when intransitive corresponds to its direct object when transitive.

Okulu bitirmelisin = you must finish the school (bitirmek is tr. obj is school)

Okul bitmeli = school must finish (bitmek is intr. and conforms to the ergative verb definition; i.e. a verb suggesting a change of state. The object is in the subject position which was the object of tr. verb)

So you think bitmek and bitirmek are the same verb. Basically they are, of course, but wouldn´t it be clearer to talk about underived stems when we discuss ergativity? I mean, playing with passive, reflexive and causative we can turn the NP roles upside down in the sentence anyway.

Sort of.

Take this one for example:

Arabayı durdurmalısın = You must stop the car

Araba durmalı = The car must stop (i.e. Arabayı durdurmalısın = you must stop the car)

durdurmak = to stop

durmak = to stop

But if there are two verbs (ok, with the same stem) and their action in the sentence is different, I think they are two and not one. I think your last example tells something about English ergativity rather than Turkish. In English there is stop and stop but in the Turkish variants syntactic governance is carefully marked in the verbs.

Yes. A verb cannot be both transitive and intransitve in Turkish. So some sort of modification has to be applied to get the other one from one of them.

Araba durmalı = Car must stop

That gives the following meaning:

Arabayı durdurmalısın = you must stop the car

transitive <-> intransitive

object <-> subject

Don´t you think there is correspondence here?

I understand what you mean. The usual way to play with the grammatical roles of NP´s is with passive, causative and reflexive marking. Ergative use of verbs is one of the options but not so usual in Turkish (if we want to see it in the narrow sense which I suggested). If we stick to cars

         ?Araba sürdü

would be the most impressive example of ergativity. I´m not sure if it is possible.

I recently bagged some examples of Turkish sentences which I found in texts and which in my opinion seemed ergative but I can´t find them now in my files. I´ll add them here when they kindly pop up from somewhere.

That does not sound OK but the following makes sense:

Araba güzel sürüyor = Cars drives nicely

and also

Arababın sürüşü (sürmesi) güzel = Car drives nicely (lit. Car´s driving is nice)

That´s it. When things and items begin to do things on their own that´s my idea of ergativity. But as I said my knowledge on this field is not great.

I have a feeling ergative expressions are usual in children´s talk even in languages which are not using ergative so much. For some reason I see in my eyes a small boy with his toy cars. Or a big boy to that point.

"Bu belgede ne yazıyor?" diye sorduğumuzda, Dr. Marmara belgenin en üstünde yazan cümlenin önce orijinalini okudu.

This question seems ergative to me: ´What does it write in this document?´ There is no candidate for a third person actor in the context and in normal conditions I would expect a passive voice verb.

Does it make sense to anyone?

Yes it does! Good spot!

Unutması zor.

Is it

                             - it is difficult to forget her OR

                             - it is difficult for her to forget OR

                             - is it meaningless   ?

And also can be used as an adjective

Unutması zor bir kadın = a woman hard to forget

That is what I was afraid of. This is crucial ambiguity. Does passivizing help?

                    Unutulması zor. ´It is difficult to forget her.´

Unutulması zor bir kadın = a woman hard to forget

Thank you for the clear answer, si++.

Here´s another example of ergativity. I hear this every time I watch a volleyball game on TV.

Servis kaçtı. X (player´s name) servisi kaçırdı.

(lit. the service missed. X missed the service) X made a service error.

It is not very surprising that ergative uses of verbs rise in sports coverages where dynamity is aspired by means of language. Active eats passive.

We want more examples. Stay awake everyone.

Kitap iyi satar (satılır).

One of the not so common examples of Turkish ergativity.

i have understood it at first glance:

His changing the bulb´s color is an unusual thing. (he started to use blue or white bulb instead of red bulb)! Not a clear sentense even for a native.