Hello!

In all the Turkish courses I went through, I was taught that the possesive suffix -i is not added to the owned noun only when the owning word describes the material that something is made of, eg. tahta kapı for "wooden door" and not tahta kapısı.

However, surfing Turkish websites I find many constructions that despite the fact that join two nouns together and do not describe material, are used with neither possesive nor genitive suffix. The last example I saw was Anahtar Kelimeler - keywords/tags. The "words" are not made of "key", so why don´t you say Anahtar Kelimeleri like in other similar compounds?

I don´t know but I think it has to do with the border between nouns and adjectives. The border that doesn´t really exist. Sometimes they just use nouns like they were adjectives and vice versa. A group of similar compounds are those where the first part defines the gender of the referent:

                   erkek çocuk

                   kadın doktor

 This has been long going problem in Turkish Grammar. The linguists were divided into two groups , the first group [T.N Gencan] suggested the constructions like "tahta kapı" , "anahtar kelime"...etc are classified as "noun compound" whereas the second group [Hamza Zülfikar] classfied them as "adjective compound".

Although "adjective compound" idea accepted widely. That´s why we see them with no suffixes.

In compound nouns there must be relation between Modifier and Modified [ Ali´nin kalemi--> Ali´s pen] whereas we don´t see that sort of relation in those constructions [ Taş köprü, Tahta kaşık, Anahtar kelime...]

The thought of the first part being an adjective attribute in this type of words very much makes sense to me but I don´t have enough example material in my yabancı head to give reasons to it.

An example that is often presented to learners, a kind of minimum pair is

                  kadın doktor ´female doctor´

                  kadın doktoru ´gynaecologist´.

Maybe in sufler´s example the abstract, metaphorical use of anahtar makes it impossible for the compound relation to be realized. That´s why it is understood as an adjective, synonyme to önemli or something. Maybe maybe.

Well,

We usually state it as:

Possessor + possessed for noun compounds

and as:

Modifier + modified for adjective compounds.

I think English is problematic for us where there is no disctinction as in Turkish as there is no additional suffix for noun compounds:

Garden party = bahçe partisi

Great party = muhteşem parti

Sufler, My advice for you on the subject is that if you see two nouns in compound form with no suffixes at all as in your example " "Anahtar kelime ", approach them as "adjective compound" and try to find out if there is an adjectival relation in there by asking the modified the question "how" [but in turkish "nasıl"].

Anahtar kelime --> Nasıl bir kelime ?

                          Anahtar bir kelime ?

The "kelime" in that compound is not an ordinary "kelime", it is most important "kelime" as it is like a "key" in the paragraph or text , or context. So it stresses the importance of "kelime".

Therefore  when we replace it with  " The very important word" the meaning is not changing much. "Anahtar " works as "adjective", that is why it doesnt need any suffixes.