I had decided not to open a thread about ki, because it´s a point that has been discussed many times in this site. But it seems that is exactly what I am going to do. Here we go.
I read a little bit about it. And it makes me think. I don´t know if the suffix -ki and the particle ki are historically related They are not. Non-suffix one is an import from Persian and is called Persian ki. but I would wonder if they weren´t because as far as I made remarks (from the very small corpus which I have) I think they both represent what is not said. This works with suffiz -ki on the sentence level in utterances like
Ali´nin arabası, Ayşeninkinden daha pahalıdır.
The speaker saves the hearer from hearing the same noun, car, twice and replaces it with the handy -ki.
What comes to the particle ki, it also comes to the place of things which are not present but which the speaker doesn´t bother to say, like in
Kirazı yedim ki şeker gibi.
We can break it into 2 sentences
I ate the cerries and it´s like sugar.
Şeker gibi = It´s like sugar. You know for 3rd grammatical person we don´t have to use is or are sometimes (like in Arabic or Russian).
It´s an example of copula.
See also: this thread.
which means something like ´I ate the cherry and found it sweet´. But there is no verb which means found or noticed or tasted. In my language we call it "the donkey´s bridge" and it is strictly forbidden in the matriculation exam. I don´t know for sure what it is in English. The dictionary gives awkward transition. Anyway, it means a situation, where the speaker gets straight ahead from the premises into the conclusions without mentioning that some perception or thinking was needed in the middle. In Turkish, ki represents this perception or thinking which is not mentioned.
Furthermore, ki works on an extralinguistic level also, where it refers to common knowledge, possible or probable worlds, the listeners imagination, the world of ideas, whatever you call it. I remember you (come on, si++, I know it´s you, no one else ever reads my posts) once mentioned here a song which said
Öyle sarhoş olsam ki bir an seni unutsam
The guy tells that even if he was so much drunk that... He doesn´t mention the typical things that happen when someone is drunk, meaning falling under the table, throwing up on his best shirt and all the unpleasant stuff that happens to drunkards and - above all - that he is not going to remember all this afterwards. ki stands for all these inconveniences which both the speaker and the listener already know from their life experience. And ki stresses the fact which is going to be stated loud in the next line: he wouln´t still forget the one he is singing about, not for a moment.
I don´t know if this covers all the uses of ki, but absent words, absent ideas seem to be in the very heart of it´s meaning.
Do you think I´m close?
You may drop the part after ki and I call it elliptical-ki (Not that a term I heard/read somewhere, I just call it so) We had a discussion about with CynicMystic about it in this thread. (Also see: this)
Öyle sarhoş olsam ki (...)
In your example you provide something for ellipsis part.
Öyle sarhoş olsam ki sızıp kalsam.
Öyle sarhoş olsam ki herşeyi unutsam.
If you drop the part after ki you leave it to listener´s imagination.
Öyle sarhoş olsam ki ...
Öyle mutluyum ki ...
Öyle bir yaptım ki ...
Gitmedim ki ...
etc.
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Of course there is nothing of my own here. It´s more like a fusion and personal experience of everything I read about the subject from this site and elsewhere.
