SYNTAX in TURKISH ;

* Turkish has own character in many ways.

* Turkish is one of the language that has  SOV [Subject Object Verb [ Özne Nesne Yüklem] order. ---> Köpek   kediyi    kovaladı.

                          Subject  Object      Verb

This SOV order makes Turkish close to Altaic languages.

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* Another closeness between Turkish and Altaic languages is in Turkish The adjectives always come before nouns.

Kırık masa ---> Broken table

Büyük ev -----> Big house

* The nouns that follows numeral adjectives are in singular form.

Beş bardak  ---> Five glasses

Dokuz portakal ---> Nine oranges

Yedi kitap   ----> Seven books

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* Another characteristic of Turkish is extraordinary flexibility in syntax with many different stresses.

"Kadın pastayı çocuğa yedirdi" ---> The woman made the child  eat the cake.

This sentence can be formed in many ways with giving different emphasis.

"Kadın pastayı çocuğa yedirdi."

"Kadın çocuğa pastayı  yedirdi."

"Kadın yedirdi çocuğapastayı."

"Yedirdi kadın çocuğa pastayı."

"Pastayı çocuğa kadın yedirdi."

"Pastayı kadın çocuğa yedirdi."

"Pastayı yedirdi kadın çocuğa."

"Yedirdi  kadın çocuğa pastayı."

 ETC...............

Note that the stress is on bold words.

* In Turkish syntax the copulative verb is suffixed [-İm, -sin, -Dİr, -İz, -sİnİz, -DİrlEr ] whereas in indo european languages it is in a seperate verb form [ Fr = etre, Eng = to be, German=  sein]

Ben öğrenciyim.

I am a student.

SHIFTING  TENSES  IN  TURKISH 

1. In some statements , the original "tense" can refer a different tense [time].

For instance ; It can be observed that among people sometimes "the simple past tense [di]"  is used to refer "present progressive tense , present continues tense".

For instance, Person "A" yells at Person "B" who is in a distance ;

  A -   Quick ! Come  here ! I´ve got something to show you .

  and "B" begins to heading to "A" saying ;

  B-  "Ok. I came" instead of "Ok. I am coming"

A- Gel buraya çabuk !! Sana bir şey göstereceğim.

B - Tamam geldim. [vardım] ---> Ok. I came  or   Ok. I arrived.

"B" is performing the action [coming] "Now"  BUT he is using past tense "geldim" instead of "geliyorum.

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Likewise, Say, "A" is fixing "B"s television, "A" is starting to being impatient and ask;

 A -Ne zaman bitecek ?[ when it is gonna finish ? , when the fixing television will finish ?]

 B- Bitti bitti. [ Ok. OK..it has finished] Although the fixing  hasnt finished yet, "B" is saying "bitti" in order to ease him [in order to reassure him that he is gonna finish it soon]. He should normall say ; Ok.I´ll finish it soon [it´s gonna finish soon] By saying that he means " Don´t worry. it´s gonna finish very soon"

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Another example ; Say  a group of friend are talking and one of them [A] needs to leave them. He wants to go urgently. He says ;

- Ben kaçtım" ---> I´ve gone [I am off],  instead of  saying "I am going ".

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Sometimes when we thank to people we use past tense and say "Teşekkür ettim" instead of " Teşekkür ederim´

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2. Another time shifting is seen when we use "the present progressive tense" but referring "the future tense".

PPT -----> FT

the reason we do such statements is that we want to make it more definite.

For instance ;

Yarın sana geleceğim----> I will come to you tomorrow.

Yarın sana geliyorum  ----> I am coming to you tomorrow. [This way, my coming to you is more definite , by using continues tense I ,as if, already started coming to you [present tense] and there is no way going back from it]

Yarın sana gel-iyor - um

the task is gonna take place tomorrow

but the action has already started imaginarily. [geliyorum] therefore this way , My coming to you is more definite as I already [imaginarily] started to coming to you.

These prove that our nose is always pointing to the future.

There are similar secondary uses of tenses in other languages, too. They are like small lies. When we have a deadline for a certain job we tend to pretend we are almost ready even if we didn´t do anything yet.

The latter case, using present continuous for future, is not easy for a learner. You need to be aware of some nuances. scalpel wrote about it here. "Future significance", he said.

                        http://www.turkishclass.com/forumTitle_52911, post 6.

In fact, as human beings, we tend to live either in the past or in the future. Living the moment is most difficult task that most of us fail to do so, as daily worries become  obstacles for us to focus on the moment. This effects the language and as a result of that we mixes the "tenses" instead of using the right tenses for the right times. This is just my opinon.

A good summary about Turkish copula: here

It´s about  the word order. Our suffixes of tof-day´s were not suffixes in Old Turkish but overtime they became ones.

If the English order was like the Turkish one we could have expected "am" to become a suffix over time as well.

I a student am -> I a student´am

I free am -> I free´m

Instead they can only turn into some contractions with pronouns:

I´m

You´re

He´s/She´s/It´s

We´re

They´re

Sometimes , for learners ,it is not easy to distinguish "the aorist tense" from " the present progressive tense"

For instance ;

when we say ; Sabahları erken kalkıyorum. [I am getting up early in the mornings] it means more like  "I ,nowadays getting up early" , Recently I got this habit of getting up early. whereas ;

when we say ; Sabahları erken kalkarım. [ I [do]  get up early in the mornings ]

I had this habit all the time. There is no time limit. I get up early always [all along].

Son iki aydır sabahları erken kalkıyorum ---> For the last two months I am getting up early  in the morning. [ in other words , I gained this habit [getting up early for the last two months] just two months ago. Before that it was not my habit.

Son iki aydır sabahları erken kalkarım. ---> we can NOT say this way as we cant limit the starting point of habit with aorist tense as the habit was already gained since the begining.

On some level agglutinativity is all about word order. One of the features often connected to this type of languages is use of postpositions. It sounds random but it is not. What are postpositions (which are half lexical half grammatical elements) doing there after nouns? Of course waiting for their chance to get attached to the end of the word and to become suffixes with the full rights of grammatical elements.

What do words dream of? Of becoming suffixes.

I think the aspectual system of Turkish is very developed and very often when we talk about tenses we should talk about aspects actually. This should be taken into account better by those who plan big guidelines of how Turkish should be taught.

Both -(A/I)r and -(I)yor always denote imperfective aspect but in a different way. Examples like

represent habitual use of -(I)yor which is sometimes difficult for a learner to grasp. Good to see your examples side by side, tunci. It looks clear here.

I don´t remember what aspect is/means is taught when we learn Turkish grammar at school. Probably they  think it is something more confusing to teach than helpful.