Kazakh Syntax Topics

These are things that I was surprised to find attested (and common!) in Kazakh, or things that are linguistically odd in some way.

3rd Person in unquoted quoted speech

In these examples, a separate sentence is subordinated with a quotative, but it only half-way behaves like a quoted line—the pronoun used in the subordinated sentence acts like in a relative clause, but the verb agreement with it acts like it's being quoted. The question is "how can a pronoun disagree with its verb agreement morphology?"

• Кім екенін мен білмейді деп ойлай ма?
• who ~being-ACC I know-NEG-PresPART-3rd ~as think-PresPART Q?
• Does she think I don't know who it is?

• Мүмкін сен біледі деп ойладым.
• maybe you know-3rd QUOT think-PAST-1SG
• I thought "maybe (s)he'll know". / I thought you'd know.

Possession not mandatory for inalienable(?) things

• "біздің қораның" instead of "біздің қорамыздың" ("our barn")

Possessed things as adjectives

• "шашы ұзын қыз" - "long haired girl"
• compare:
  • қызыл түсті зат - red coloured thing
  • түсі қызыл зат - its-colour red thing

бар possession problem

• ит бар адам
• dog COP man
• the man who has a/the dog

Nom/Gen variation with certain verb forms

• "Мен(ің) тамақ ішкім келеді" - I want to eat.
• "Ол мен(ің) нені көргенімді білмейді" - S/he doesn't know what I saw.

Movement in yes/no questions

• Сен көрдің бе? / Көрдің бе сен?
• (Сен) не көрдің? / *Не көрдің *(*бе) сен?
• Телефон соқтың ба сен маған кеше?

Kyrgyz's many problems

• "Мени келет деп ойлойт" - "S/he thinks that I will come"
• "Сага берем деген кыз" - "The girl you said you would give me"