Lack of gender is one of the features of Turkish language which I feel gratitude for. As I don´t have the distinction of he and she in my native language either, gender is a constant stumbling block for me in every language which pays attention to the detail of the person in question being male or female. I will never really get fluent in it and I got used to these strange looks when I speak like everyone in the room was a man.

There are occasions, though, when there is need to make it clear whether the person we are talking about is a man or a woman.

         erkek çocuk

         kız kardeş

         erkek arkadaş

The other day tunci corrected me when I tried to talk about

         *kadın başkanı > kadın başkan

and it opened my eyes for these other examples. I had always thought of expressions like this is as izafet groups consisting of two nouns but actually they are not. There is no possessive suffix in the governing word. They look like the combination of an adjective attribute and a noun! When I look at the definitions of Turkish noun phrases they remind me of those where the modifier expresses what the noun is made of, like

         demir kapı

         naylon çorap

Maybe telling that the child is a boy or the president is a woman is like telling what he or she is made of. I like the thought. In Finland we have a nursery rhyme which even supports the idea: "Of sugar and cinnamon are small girls made, of snails and tail tips are small boys made."

On the social level these definitions also reflect the sexual roles. We understand that başkan is essentially a male and kadın başkan is a person who has been excused her sex. I guess it is a universal feature that the word referring to masculine is neutral and the word referring to feminine is marked, and it shows in language. Maybe Turkish is an exception, what do you think?

Başkan doesn´t convey any sex information. To perceive it as a male is just an assumption on the receiver side, which is not a Turkish language specific thing.

Kadın/erkek başkan conveys the information about the sex.

Interesting that you say that. The Finnish equivalent for president (or engineer, captain, doctor, even writer) in my opinion still carries the masculine meaning even though young doctors are mostly women and we even have a woman president. At least we more often talk about female writers than male writers.

I have heard opinions where the Finnish lack of gender is connected to the long gone equality between the sexes. The faces change when you add it is not so unique in world languages: it has gone even further in...Turkish.

I would connect it to the simplification of the grammar. Gender information is an extra baggage. I guess it was a natural evolution over a long time period. The same thing can be said for article. Some people believes that Proto-Turkish had its "article" like IE languages and it was dropped out of language. Maybe Proto-Turkish had also prepositions instead of postpositions and later switched to the postpositions, many of which later became suffixes.

Certainly lack of gender has nothing to do with the structure of the society. These are just the kind of generalizations that people love to make because they sound so smart.

Gender is a burden of language which really irritates me. It forces the speaker to take a stance on something which is not the issue. Suppose I talk to my doctor in the phone and want to report the discussion in any of these gender languages: I sooner or later have to mention the sex of the doctor. Even if I manage to avoid pronouns, in some languages the verb forms unveil these things. Or if I see my friend´s baby in the vagon dressed in green there is no way not to confess that I can´t remember if it was a girl or boy...the problems are numerous.

Another thing is what has been pulling Turkish language into a greater level of simplicity in this issue and many others. Aren´t there any relics of gender in the history of literary language? Didn´t the Arabs try to import masculine and feminine into Turkish as they brought so many words and even an alien orthography which you later gave up?

These Arabic loan words are still in use: 

müdür (mas), müdüre (fem)

memur (mas), memure (fem)

maktul (mas), maktule (fem)

And maybe there are some others that I don´t remember at the moment..

If there were plenty of them, certainly you would remember, scalpel. It would be more serious if this -e had begun to work as a productive derivation suffix. Under foreign pressure vocabulary is the most vulnerable part of language but getting into the grammatical structure is much more difficult, so it seems.

I don´t know if these issues are related or not but I also paid attention to the relatively big amount of unisex given names in Turkish. In my language, I can´t recollect but a couple of names which in principle could be given to both boys and girls and even those two are completely out of fashion.

I just listed the words that are somehow in use.. There must be many that are not in use anymore. For example I know this word muallim (male teacher) - muallime (female teacher) 

You can find it in many Arabic origin names:

kadir - kadriye /cemil - cemile / ferit - feride / melik - melike / saim - saime / zeki - zekiye / safi- safiye / şadi - şadiye (this one is Iranian loan word) / hadi - hadiye

...

Here are the names (that come to my mind at the moment) for both boys and girls:

deniz, derya, ismet, ayhan ..

There are 23 in this list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Turkish_unisex_given_names. It seems a lot to me. But how would I know? Maybe they are from another era or something.

Interesting examples Abla.

Another difficulty I faced was when you talk about general things that can be done by somebody (male or female) you first give the generic name of that somebody and then you have problems with the folowing sentences.

Say you describe a procedure to be performed by a customer during a cash withdrawal from an automated teller machine (ATM).

- Customer should first insert his or her card into the card reader

- He or she should enter his or her password

- He or she bla bla bla...

OK it can be solved by using they (and their) above but it is still strange to me.

For once we agree from the beginning, si++. (Usually we agree in the end.) Gender is a very clumsy unit of grammar. It just seems to be so that some languages serve in their sentences more information than is needed while others hardly serve the minimum and you have to guess the rest.

Do we?

Anyway, the Turkish grammar owes much of its simplicity to this fact.

Look at the tenses and personal endings used.

Usually 3rd person singular doesn´t have any personal ending (zero suffix). And Turkish being pro-drop language, we usually don´t need any personal pronoun either.

Gel-diğ-i-ni gördü.

Coming saw.

He/she saw you/him/her/it come.

An interesting thought and I tend to believe it. It is like a strategy that the ancient speakers have chosen: to carry with them only those things which are needed. Once you drop the 3rd person pronoun there is not much place to hang useless luxuries like gender marks. Just like pro-drop leads to dropping of other things also.

At the same time some other cavemen behind impassable seas and mountains decided they will carry some more  -  with the cost of getting a bit tired. And abundance became their strategy.

You mean ..., well never mind.

Fine, si++. Now I will spend the whole day wondering what you might have thought that I ment.

This qoute from wikipedia needs to be corrected.

geldiğini = your/him/her/its coming

Hiç kimse geldiğini görmedi -no one saw you/ (him,her,its ) coming.

You can know which is to be deduced from the context.  The other ones are easily recognizable:

Its full conjugation is given below: 

geldiğimi - me coming

geldiğini - your coming

geldiğini - him,her,its coming

geldiğimizi - our coming

geldiğinizi - your coming (plural)

geldiklerini - their coming

As for "gördü" .. there is nothing dropped there.. As you mentioned in your post above, 3rd person sing. (and often 3rd person plural for things, animals) has no personal ending..

gördüm

gördün

gördü

gördük

gördünüz

gördüler

As a result, you can´t drop a thing that doesn´t exist.

Firstly,I am not saying my English is good.

Secondly, I am not saying Turkish is not a pro-drop language.

Thirdly, I am saying your example (quoted from wikipedia) is wrong.

Here is the example in wikipedia:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pro-drop_language

In the example there is both subject (m in gördüm) and object pronoun (-n- in geldiğini). 

But you changed the example dropping 1st person sing. -m and it became 3rd person sing. (without personal ending) Why? 

I am asking again, why?

Because something in the example in wikipedia seemed to be wrong?

Did you think dropping -m and making the verb 3rd person sing. would make it correct?

But you missed this -n- in geldiğini.. 

Just because Turkish 3rd per.sing. is free from personal ending, doesn´t mean Turkish is a "pro-drop" language.

The following part is quoted from the same page: 

English is considered a non-pro-drop language. Nonetheless, subject pronouns are almost always dropped in commands (e.g., Come here); and in informal speech, pronouns and other words, especially copulas and auxiliaries, may sometimes be dropped, especially from the beginnings of sentences:

• [Have] you ever been there? or [Have you] ever been there?
• [I´m] going to the store. [Do] [you] want to come [with me]?
• Seen on signs: [I am/We are] out to lunch; [I/we will be] back at 1:00 P.M.
• What do you think [of it]? – I like [it]! (only in some dialects)

Relative pronouns are often dropped from restrictive clauses:

• The person [whom] I saw was older.

It seems English which is considered a non-pro-drop language does that thing better an more often than Turkish!

Only the 4th example (they say "only in some dialects" ) is the same as in Turkish.

(onun hakkında) Ne düşünüyorsun? - (onu) beğendim (what do you think? - I like)

If I were you I would use this example..

I am saying again the example you gave is wrong as there is nothing dropped from it. 

...

It must be you who "...doesn´t sound as if you have understood what pro-drop means."

Come on scalpel. This is called in Turkish:

Bir bardak suda fırtına çıkarmak/koparmak.

It´s strange that you come with your (false) conclusions just because I removed a personal suffix on wikipedia example.

That´s all what you have to say? I was waiting for your evidence that "geldiğini gördü" was a right example to prove that Turkish is a pro-drop language.. It seems you have no evidence.. Next time avoid using wikipedia as it is not a credible source.. use your own examples.. And you know what? I am sick of you accusing people of not having good grammar knowledge when you are a loser.. Ok sir.. You are the best..are you happy now? 

I was not trying to prove that Turkish is a pro-drop language. It is one without any  proof by me.The wikipedia page provides an example of it. I changed the personal suffix in that example to the 3rd singular person because I was talking about the 3rd singular person.

Who should be sick of who? You are the one who jumped into discussion by accusing me not knowing the subject. Well if I say something incorrectly, I can step back and accept any correction. But it´s not the case this time.

I am sorry guys but I had to involve this silly argument. First ; It´s not nice for learners to witness this sort of arguments that turns into " I know better than you, "You are useless" " "You are nothing " " My English is better than you " , " My turkish grammar knowledge is far better than you " . I too involved this sort of silly arguments..I tried not to , but sometimes when you are provoked than you feel like to involve .  I never claimed that I have deep knowledge in Turkish grammar but we all know something and we learn from eachother.

The moral of story is that lets be polite to eachother and stop using accusing language and never forget that our aim is to teach and spread our nobel language to foreign speakers.

By the way ; We can not say that Turkish is totaly pro-drop language. As in some cases it works  as non-pro-drop language.

Greetings tunci,

Welcome to this silly discussion. Can you elaborate on your statement of yours that Turkish being non pro-drop language sometimes. That sounds interesting. How can it be a little bit of pro-drop and little bit of not pro-drop?

 Greetings Si++,

When I have done some search on Internet, I came across couple of cases that I agree with ;

1. In Jaheoon Choi´s research [University of Arizona], he gave an example ;

    Biz dilbilimciler akıllıyızdır.

    We linguists are smart.

In here both English and Turkish bans pro-drop  here.  

in other words in this case we cant drop "Biz" , if we drop it then the sentence changes into the " Linguists are smart "

what do you think ?

Another case ;

In the example of  Prof.Dr.Balkız Öztürk [Harvard Üniversity] ; In the reply of the question ;

-Kimin evi eski ? --> Whose house is old ?

- Bizim evimiz.

we cant drop "bizim" in the reply sentence for that sort of question .

what do you think ?

That sounds like you start to talk of something. keep on talking. Would you keep repeating "biz dilbilimciler" or give up and start to drop?

Biz dilbilimciler akıllıyızdır. Biz dilbilimciler çok okuruz. Biz dilbilimciler çok çalışırız. Biz dilbilimciler aynı zamanda üretiriz. ...

Bizim evimiz. [] alalı çok oldu. [] haliyle eskidi tabii. Gene de [] sahip olduğumuza memnunuz.

Insert your pronoun between []

No, I wouldnt keep repeating "Biz" when to start multi-sentence speech. But As a single sentence it is more like " statement of One´s personal view ".  Such as ;

Siz öğretmenler çok fedakarsınız. ---> You - teachers- are very self-sacrificing [people].

  We dont have to make multi-sentenced speech just to sake of dropping the pronoun.

 Likewise, we dont have to make an extensive explanation when to reply to that question. But , yes , we can drop the pronouns if we add the explanatory sentences after the first one.

And that´s what a pro-drop language is all about.

 we have freedom on dropping the pronouns in Turkish . Therefore Turkish  gives us flexiblity on dropping the pronouns. In this respect it works both ways. What I mean is that it is not a must. To me when to say  it is a "pro-drop language " it is a rule that is strictly forbidden or strictly allowed. One way or another. I know there are always exceptions but here may be we should alter the name into " Pro-droppable language " instead of " Pro-drop language". You know what I mean ? For example ;

[Bizim] çay içmemiz onları rahatsız etti.

 Our drinking tea disturbed them.

Language is not strict borders, language is continuums. This concerns classification of languages also. I am no specialist of dropping or not dropping but it seems clear to me that many languages drop but some drop more than others. The most probable sentence element to be dropped is the subject. This happens in many languages. The next to go is the object. In Turkish, the object also often has to go. Look at recipes. I paid attention to this and even asked about it recently: http://www.turkishclass.com/forumTitle_52102. They say in Japanese even other elements can take their things and go.

It is a continuum, not a strict classification. Just like in auxiliaries which we also discussed some weeks ago: it is not that some languages have auxiliaries and some don´t. There are many alternatives in between.

I wish instead of paying attention to the bubbling of this discussion everyone would read scalpel´s post nr 18 because it is well thought of and a good basis for discussion. The main idea in it is not to criticize anyone or anything but to really look at this issue in detail. At least I want to see it this way.

But the reason why pro-drop first appeared in this discussion was si++’s assumption that dropping 3^rd person pronouns significantly lessens the chance of it to carry in the sentence elements like masculine and feminine marking. It sounds reasonable to me and as far as I understand no one has objected this idea.

TC is an important part of my life and it depresses me to see nice threads changing into disputes here. We are here not to prove our superiority but to co-operate. It´s not about us, it´s about this fine language which we are all interested in.

 You are right Abla, Yes, Language is not strict borders, it is alive, developing, many times flexible, open to reforms. may be I was wrong when I said it has to be prohibited strictly when it is to say as a rule. But what I was trying to say is because that issue works both ways [pro and non-pro] , it is not fair to classify Turkish as just "pro-drop Lang.".

Sorry to hear that it feels like depressing when things turn into like this. It is my fault that I jumped into the thread by inviting guys into the good manner discussion. I preached unnecesarily. Sorry. I shouldnt have involved discussion in the first place.. You can carry on your thread , i will not involve anymore.

No sorries for me. You acted like you always act, tunci: emphatic and responsible. But if we were all like you it would be so dull here. It doesn´t harm if there is some action now and then. As for my part, kusura bakmayın.

...I mean bakmayınız.

 Kusur yok, no fault. Kimsenin kusuru yok, btw , lets get over this subject.

The thing is that personally I learned many things since last year when I became member of this website. I thought I knew everything in Turkish but I was wrong, as a philologist of eastern languages, I noticed that languages can be so complicated that even Native speakers have no idea whatsoever.

şafak