Merhaba:

New to list.  Just found this.  Have been trying to teach myself for well over a year.  I´m hoping that I can get some answers to questions that I have since the Turkish community where I live seems to be hiding. 

Have a number of resources at home.  And some new ones for which I am trying to get a handle on the suffix notation shorthand; there seems to be some information left out that would really help. 

One older resource that I have been using uses V4 for ı, i, u and ü and V2 for a and e, which the author explained and I understand.  He also uses brackets around buffer letters that you might need to use and uses t/d to indicate harmony with unvoiced letters and voiced letters respectively.  Kinda works like a math formula with verb tense endings!  However, the dictionary I have uses (-i) for ı, i, u and ü and (-e) for a and e.  The new Dictionary of Verbs in Usage and in Theme I bought uses D, I and A.  The A is for a and e; the D is for t or d, and the I is for ı, i, u and ü.    However, my question is: what is the suffix shorthand for when the choice is just ı and i (which occurs in some tense endings) determined by vowel harmony and what is the notation for using c or ç when using these with voiced and non-voiced consonants (this would occur in the ´habitual doer´ suffix).  Is there a link somewhere which will explain the standard shorthand for all these and more because this would help me streamline the flashcard decks that I have been developing for myself?

Going a little cross-eyed here!   

Teşekkür ederim in advance for any light you can shed on this.

what is the suffix shorthand for when the choice is just ı and i?

It´s not possible to have only ı or i, there have to be u and ü as well.

Examples:

-(y)i or -(n)i accusative suffix

kedi-yi

kedim-i

kedisi-ni

çakal-ı

kuş-u

kuşum-u

kuşu-nu

öküz-ü

It can be shown as:

-(buffer letter)letter(s)

so

-(y)i means any of -i -ı -u -ü (after a consonant) or -yi -yı -yu -yü (after a vowel)

-lik means any of -lik -lık -luk -lük (no buffer letter)

d/t is shown as d

-de means any of -de -da (if not after any of ş,f,k,s,p,t,h,ç ) -te -ta (after any of ş,f,k,s,p,t,h,ç )

c/ç is shown as c

-ci means any of -ci -cı -cu -cü (if not after any of ş,f,k,s,p,t,h,ç ) or -çi -çı -çu -çü (after any of ş,f,k,s,p,t,h,ç )

I was thinking about one of those "math formula" verb tenses, in the older grammar text I have, for the future tense.  I took another look just now.  The ending for first person singular looks like this (seriously!):

-(y) V2 c V2 ğ i/ı m

and the others follow in similar fashion, which is why I was asking about ı and i.  Okay then using the I for ı, i, u and ü makes sense because after an ´a´ it would have to be ı and after an ´e´ it would have to be i so when I streamline my flashcards with the verb tenses I´ll use "I" and when I need to include the c and ç I´ll use a C to make sure I know that there is a harmony choice.  Seeing a capital in the middle of a word or suffix will give me a heads up regarding this.  I think that was their intention in the newer texts that I have because both of them use capitals as part of their suffixes.  I just haven´t found where they are hiding the suffix for the "habitual doer" yet in the grammar texts.

Thank you for your swift reply.  It has really helped.

PS.  I just wish that the editors of all these language resources would put some kind of shorthand appendix at the back of their books so that we can translate their shorthand from what has been used in other books into what is being used in their book.  For some reason they seem to think that their books are the only ones we ever stuck our noses into.

Future tense suffix can be shown as:

-(y)ecek + -(i)m

gel-eceğ-im or iste-yeceğ-im

gel-ecek-sin or iste-yecek-sin

gel-ecek-. or iste-yecek-. (-. means "no suffix")

gel-eceğ-iz or iste-yeceğ-iz

gel-ecek-siniz or iste-yecek-siniz

gel-ecek-ler or iste-yecek-ler

Turkish Grammmar by David Pierce use a different convention for example he says:

I shall indicate the variability of vowels with the following symbols:
-@ for an open unround vowel (a or e);
-# for a close vowel (ı, i, u or u).
I have not seen such symbols used elsewhere in this way. (Perhaps using æ
instead of @ would be more logical, but its appearance seems more confusing.)
Used in a complete word (or sentence), each symbol resolves to a vowel that
agrees as far as possible with the preceding vowel. In particular, after @, the
only possibilities for # are the unround vowels ı and i.

The variability in consonants will not be indicated. However, when it begins a suffix appended to a word ending in an unvoiced (that is, strong) consonant, the letter d is unvoiced (`strengthened´ to t. Also, terminal k changes to ğ when a suffix beginning with a vowel is added. (These changes affect the suffix -d#r and the termination -k mentioned below. Other such changes can occur, as between c and ç.)
Example. The question Avrupa + l# + l@ş + d#r + @m@ + d#k + l@r
+ #m#z + d@n m# + s#n#z? resolves to Avrupalılaştıramadıklarımızdan
mısınız? meaning Are you one of those whom we could not Europeanize?

I think that e for a/e and i for i/ı/i/u/ü is better.

I´ve never seen @ and # used before...and I thought the "math formula suffixes" for verb tenses were just different but initially they worked for me since I tend to remember phone numbers by making up math patterns or sentences around them...however as the tenses started to get longer, the V4, V2 bit wasn´t working for me.

The newer books that I have as references and am begining to use, use Capitals in their suffixes, therefore I needed to know how this translated from what I had been exposed to previously.  And I´m not saying that using e or i is wrong or incorrect, but I tend to be a very visual learner (which doesn´t help for decoding the spoken word) and if I see a lower case letter it is just going to blend into the rest of its surroundings.  One of the books states that they are using Capitals to make the learner focus on the fact that certain letters are variable depending on grammatical rules and harmony and I think that this will help me.  The people who wrote these books have every intention of helping people learn.  But everyone learns a bit differently.

Maybe this thread will help some other people understand the notation used in other references so that they can read and use them more easily.

Thank you for your input.