Turkish reciprocal pronouns

The Turkish reciprocal pronoun is the stem birbir- 'each other', which is obligatorily inflected for person with the plural possessive suffixes: birbirimiz in the first person, birbiriniz in the second, and birbiri or birbirleri in the third, where birbirleri is the neutral form for interacting groups and birbiri is colloquial. The forms take case suffixes, with n before the suffix in the third person, as in the accusative birbirlerini ([GK05]). Every form is plural, so a singular noun phrase is no antecedent of a reciprocal.

As a direct object birbirleri stands before the verb and must be bound by a c-commanding antecedent in its own clause, which is what [BAD26] exploit: looks to a candidate at the reciprocal reflect retrieval and not integration at the verb. The inflected forms of kendi- 'self' have emphatic, reflexive, simple pronominal and resumptive uses ([GK05]) and are not entered here.

Main definitions

• Turkish.Anaphors.reciprocals — the person forms of birbir-, with the accusative birbirlerini

Main results

• Turkish.Anaphors.number_reciprocals — every form is plural
• Turkish.Anaphors.not_candidateAntecedent_of_singular — a singular nominal is no candidate antecedent of a reciprocal

References

• A. Göksel and C. Kerslake, Turkish: A Comprehensive Grammar (2005)
• Ö. Bakay, F. Akkuş and B. Dillon, Hierarchical relations guide memory retrieval in sentence comprehension: Evidence from a local anaphor in Turkish (2026)

def Turkish.Anaphors.birbirimiz : ReciprocalPronoun

The first person reciprocal birbirimiz.

Equations

• Turkish.Anaphors.birbirimiz = { form := "birbirimiz", person := some Person.first, number := some Number.plural }

def Turkish.Anaphors.birbiriniz : ReciprocalPronoun

The second person reciprocal birbiriniz.

Equations

• Turkish.Anaphors.birbiriniz = { form := "birbiriniz", person := some Person.second, number := some Number.plural }

def Turkish.Anaphors.birbirleri : ReciprocalPronoun

The third person reciprocal birbirleri, the neutral form for interacting groups.

Equations

• Turkish.Anaphors.birbirleri = { form := "birbirleri", person := some Person.third, number := some Number.plural }

def Turkish.Anaphors.birbiri : ReciprocalPronoun

The third person reciprocal birbiri, interchangeable with birbirleri of two persons and colloquial of groups.

Equations

• Turkish.Anaphors.birbiri = { form := "birbiri", person := some Person.third, number := some Number.plural }

def Turkish.Anaphors.birbirlerini : ReciprocalPronoun

The accusative of birbirleri, the direct object form of the [BAD26] stimuli.

Equations

• One or more equations did not get rendered due to their size.

def Turkish.Anaphors.reciprocals : Finset ReciprocalPronoun

The entered forms of the reciprocal are the four person forms and the accusative of birbirleri.

Equations

• Turkish.Anaphors.reciprocals = {Turkish.Anaphors.birbirimiz, Turkish.Anaphors.birbiriniz, Turkish.Anaphors.birbirleri, Turkish.Anaphors.birbiri, Turkish.Anaphors.birbirlerini}

theorem Turkish.Anaphors.number_reciprocals (r : ReciprocalPronoun) : r ∈ reciprocals → r.number = some Number.plural

Every form of the reciprocal is plural.

theorem Turkish.Anaphors.not_candidateAntecedent_of_singular {r : ReciprocalPronoun} (hr : r ∈ reciprocals) {w : Morphology.Word} (hw : w.features Morphology.Feature.number = some Number.singular) : ¬r.CandidateAntecedent w

A singular nominal is no candidate antecedent of a reciprocal.