"Ben ailemle tatil yaptım" or "Ben ailemle tatil yaptık."
First sentence is correct. Certainly, %100, a resounding NO!! to the second one. No way. Sounds like "we is on vacation."
In the second sentence, you are doing the action, regardless of who you do it with.
Time to confuse you now:
"Ailemle tatil yaptık." is correct though. Because it implies "ailemle ben tatil yaptık." Which is also correct. And that means "My family and I were on vacation." Then the subject is several people.
It´s similar in English. The difference is word order.
"My family and I were on vacation."
"I was on vacation with my family."
Apparently Turkish can be so flexible yet sometimes very strict about the word order.
Us Turkish people are taught Turkish sentence structure in school. You know, özne - nesne - yüklem - tümleç all that stuff. Our teacher taught us a trick: You should be able to cover the building blocks of a sentence, without changing the meaning, only "subtracting from the meaning."
This has two implications. 1st one enables you to determine whether the sentence is correct or not, that is, if there is an anlatım bozukluğu* in the sentence. 2nd one enables you to determine whether a group of words is a building block.
Unfortunately this tip was useful for us because even though we were 9, we were native speakers and we could tell when a sentence sounded funny. But I think even you could benefit from the principle.
So, let´s apply it to "ben ailemle tatil yaptık." Omit "ailemle" and you get "ben tatil yaptık." You don´t have to be a native to know this is wrong. (Example for the 1st implication)
Let´s apply it to "ben ailemle tatil yaptım." Omit "tatil" and you get "ben ailemle yaptım." Still correct. It raises a question, "what did you do?", but still correct. (Example for the 1st implication)
Let´s apply it to "ben ailemle güzel bir tatil yaptım." Omit "tatil" and you get "ben ailemle güzel bir yaptım." I don´t know about you but to my native ears, this sounds wrong. Therefore, you can determine "tatil" was a part of a building block, not a block on its own. (Example for the 2nd implication)
This is a rule of thumb, not a magic recipe. So it won´t work sometimes. But still, useful. For example:
"Ben ve ailem tatil yaptık." If you omit "ve ailem", you get "ben tatil yaptık." This is wrong but the original sentence was correct. Why? You omitted "ve ailem", and it was part of a building block, "ben ve ailem." You can only cover blocks. In this case you didn´t subtract from the meaning, you changed it. OK for this example it kind of works but I´m sure we´ll find examples if we try.
Returning back to your original question, "Ahmet´le Mehmet geldi." and "Ahmet´le Mehmet geldiler." are both correct. You can use 3rd person singular instead of 3rd person plural. Not vice versa, and not for 1st and 2nd person. Consider it an exception.
And if I may guide you through some other possibilities:
"Mehmet Ahmet´le geldi." is correct. (singular substitution instead of plural)
"Mehmet Ahmet´le geldiler." is incorrect. You now know, don´t you?
"Ahmet´le geldiler." is also correct. (hidden subject, several people)
"Ahmet´le geldi." is also correct. (hidden subject, not a substitution because there´s no way of knowing whether there are several people or not)
__________
Anlatım bozukluğu: I don´t know the concept in English. Incorrect sentences, basically. Many forms of this. "Are you ugly and feel desperate?" is wrong whereas "Do you look ugly and feel desperate?" would be correct, because the first one boils down to "are you feel desperate?"
Edited (5/7/2014) by olphon
Edited (5/7/2014) by olphon
Edited (5/7/2014) by olphon
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