Turkish/imek

In Turkish/Nominal Sentences, it was claimed that there was no Turkish equivelant for the verbs to be and to have. This is only partially true. The verb imek, which is only arguably a verb, functions similar to the verb to be in Western languages.

imek may be appended to noun phrases, or verbs with a tense or mood declension to convey its meaning. The details of this construction shall be discussed in this article.

Declension of imek
imek is never literally used in a Turkish sentence, one of its 4 forms is used instead. These 4 forms are:


 * idi
 * imiş
 * ise
 * iken

All of these forms have complex meanings and use cases, and will thus be covered in their respective articles.

imek as a suffix
However, imek is rarely used as an independent word. Most of the time, the words idi, imiş, ise and iken turn respectively into the suffixes -(y)dı, -(y)mış, -(y)sa and -(y)ken. All forms except -(y)ken obey vowel harmony. Suffix versions of imek are unstressed. An exception is ise, which is used often as a separate word when it is used as the conjunction on the other hand instead of its usual meaning.


 * Ayşe işleri bitirmek için çok çalışıyor, Kerem ise yatıp dinleniyordu.

Which phrases can imek be used with?
In principle, any phrase that can function as the predicate of the sentence can take imek.

Noun phrases
imek may append to any noun or noun construction in nominative.

Verbs
Bare verbs cannot combine with imek directly, only declined verbs can. Most tenses and the necessative mood combine freely with imek. However, the past tenses and the conditional mood combine only with some forms of imek. The exact cases where this is allowed is discussed in their respective articles.

Declining for person
All forms of imek except iken are declined for person. The declensions are as follows: When imek is used in a third person plural question sentence, mı/mi intervenes between lar/ler and imek, as in yapıyorlar mıymış.

The full verb olmak
While imek has only 4 declensions, more tenses are often required. In order to use a noun phrase or declined verb in any other tense, the fully-fledged verb olmak may be used. This construction is to be covered in greater detail in Turkish/Free Auxiliaries.