My acquaintance with kendi has been a difficult one. This is probably because its deceptive similarity with the English reflexive myself, yourself, himself… As soon as the learner falls asleep strange uses of kendi pop up from various texts and she realizes there are still a few eureka moments to come before this flexible pronoun is under control.
The first moment is there when you notice that there is an adjective kendi and a pronominal kendi which is the case with so many Turkish pronouns. Aha, that’s why you so often see it unconjugated. The adjective kendi simply means ‘own’. It takes the role of an attribute like any other adjective, but I don’t think you can ever see it as a predicative. That’s because it doesn’t carry an independent meaning. As an adjective it doesn’t show who the owner is, that is done by genitive case + possessive suffixes in the governing noun, kendi just stresses the quality of its main word as being someone’s own.
(fully agree with this part)
Yes, it is used to give emphasis to the idea of personal possession, to the peculiar or individual character of something (in noun compounds)
kendi elim - my own hand
(onu) kendi ellerimle yaptım - I did it with my own hands.
Kendi yemeğimi ben/kendim pişiriyorum - I do my own cooking
kendi gözün - your own eye
(onu) kendi gözlerinle göreceksin - you will see it with your own eyes
kendi fikri - his/her own idea
(o) onun kendi fikriydi - it was his/her own idea
As soon as a possessive suffix is fixed to kendi we are talking about pronouns. The learner must notice that the form kend|i is already possessed by 3rd person singular and even though you feel like adding another suffix –si to the end it’s not necessary (but not wrong either, I guess). Respectively, as kendi is already seen as a derived form it takes the pronominal –n- between the possessive suffix and the case ending.
But we are not done yet. As a reflexive pronoun, kendi conjugates perfectly in person and case. Bu hata kendimin. ‘This is a mistake that I made myself/my own mistake.’ Neden kendinizi bu kadar üzüyorsunuz? ‘Why do you get so upset yourself?” There is also an adverb derived from the same stem kendimce, kendince… ‘in one’s (own) opinion’.
(Only disagree with the underlined part above. It is a common error that "kendi" is used for 3rd per.sing. If i in kendi is 3rd per.possessive suffix, we can´t explain why "kendi elim" means "my own hand". Examples like "kendi sevdi", "kendi buldu" are incorrect and they should be, "kendisi sevdi", "kendisi buldu".)
We form reflective pronouns by adding personal endings to kendi.
Turkish reflective pronouns are:
kendim - myself
kendin - yourself
kendisi - himself, herself, itself
kendimiz - ourselves
kendiniz - yourselves
kendileri - theirselves
(notice the PE in the predicate)
(onu) kendim yaptım - (..not yaptı I did it myself
kendin geldin - (..not geldi) you came yourself
(onu) kendisi getirdi - he brought it himself
kendimce, kendince, kendisince, kendimizce, kendinizce, kendilerince
kendisince nedenlerle - for reasons of his own
kendi is often used as an emphatic pronoun. What gives it special strength is reduplication of the stem: Çocuk kendi kendini yıkamadı ‘The child washed himself (with his own hand)’. We must notice that this structure only works when there is a case ending in the second part of it: *kendi kendim is not a valid form for ‘myself’. Sometimes a dative form is used in places where you might expext nominative: Bu aptal kararı kendi kendine verdin ‘You made this stupid decision on your own’, Adaya kendi kendime yüzdüm ‘I in my own person swam to the island’. In these cases the translation might be ‘for one’s own account, personally’. Of course kendi- can be used alone, too, but then you don’t need a dative ending: Adaya kendim yüzdüm.
kendi kendime - to myself, by myself
kendi kendine - to yourself, by yourself
kendi kendisine - to himself/herself, by himself/herself
kendi kendimize, kendi kendinize, kendi kendilerine
***
possessive reflective pronoun + e
kendime, kendine,kendisine, kendimize, kendinize, kendilerine
onu kendime alabilir miyim? - May I have it for my very own?
Bu meyvenin tamamen kendisine has bir kokusu var - this fruit has a flavour all its own
***
possessive reflective pronoun + in
kendimin, kendinin,kendisinin, kendimizin, kendinizin, kendilerinin
bu ev kendimin - this house is my own
***
kendi başıma, kendi başına, etc.
kendi başına yaşıyor - s/he lives on her own
kendi başına çalışıyor - s/he is working on her/his own
Sometimes it seems to me that kendi is used as a grammatical hanger, a quiet servant to the sentence structure. If you have extra suffixes in your hands and don’t know where to put them, kendi may come to help. Neden kendisinden korkuyorsun? ‘What are you afraid of?’ sounds odd in the learner’s ear: yes, we got used to seeing ablative ending close to korkmak but normally fixed to the stem which refers to the thing one is afraid of. But it seems that kendi- can make itself small enough to carry the ending without causing trouble in understanding.
neden kemal´den korkuyorsun? - why are you afraid of Kemal?
kemal =>o
neden ondan korkuyorsun? - Why are you afraid of him?
kemal=>o=>kendisi (?)
neden kendisinden korkuyorsun? - why are you afraid of himself (it sounds strange, doesn´t it?)
But this one is correct:
kendisinden korkmaya başladı - he began to be afraid of himself
Ne(y)den korkuyorsun - What are you afraid of
Maybe this is the reason why the whole meaning of kendi- is difficult to catch. In some cases it can strongly emphasize a sentence constituent and in other cases it can hardly be seen.