Sentential Anaphora: bu, şu, bunun üzerine

You already know bu, şu, and o as pointers to things — "this book," "that one over there." But in connected discourse they do something English speakers rarely notice they're missing: they take an entire preceding clause as their antecedent. When a Turkish speaker says Bu beni çok üzdü, the bu is not pointing at any noun — it means "this whole situation I just described upset me." And şu can point forward, announcing what you're about to say. English handles all of this with "this," "that," and "which," but it does it loosely; Turkish has a tidy division of labour worth learning explicitly. (For tracking noun referents — which "he," the former vs. the latter — see reference tracking with o, bu, kendisi.)

A demonstrative can take a whole clause as its antecedent

In English you can say "He resigned. This surprised everyone" — where "this" refers not to a noun but to the event of resigning. Turkish does the same, and far more freely. bu ("this") is the default pronoun for picking up the proposition or event just stated — "the thing that just happened," "the fact I just reported." It becomes the subject or object of the next clause and inflects normally.

Here bu has no nominal antecedent at all — it stands for the entire previous sentence. This is the single most useful move on the page: when you want to react to what was just said, you don't repeat it, you sum it up as bu.

The oblique n: bunu, bunun, buna, bundan

The moment you put a case ending on bu, şu, or o, an -n- appears between the demonstrative and the suffix. This buffer is not optional and not the usual buffer -y-: demonstratives (and the third-person possessive) take a special -n-. So:

A learner who writes buyu or buu for "this (object)" has dropped the n. The form is bunu. This matters enormously for the connectives below, which are all built on the genitive bunun ("of this").

bunun üzerine: "whereupon, at which point"

Now the connective that earns this page. bunun üzerine is literally "upon this" (bunun "of this" + üzerine "onto/upon"), and it functions as a narrative connector meaning "whereupon," "at which point," "in response to this." It links a triggering event to the reaction it caused — X happened; *upon this, Y happened* — and it is a hallmark of well-organized written and spoken narrative.

The whole first clause is the antecedent of bunun; üzerine casts the second clause as the consequence. A close cousin is buna rağmen ("despite this," from bu + dative + rağmen) and bundan dolayı / bu yüzden ("because of this, therefore"). All three take a clause as antecedent — this is propositional anaphora doing connective work. (See also additive and consequential connectives.)

bu vs. o for clause reference: near in discourse vs. settled

Both bu and o can take a clause as antecedent, and the choice mirrors their basic spatial meaning, projected onto discourse distance. bu picks up something just said, fresh, near in the text — the immediately preceding proposition. o reaches back to something already established, further back, taken as known — "that (matter we've been discussing)."

So bu is your reaction to the latest utterance; o is your reference back to a settled, shared topic. Using o for a just-said proposition can sound oddly distancing, as though you're treating fresh news as old business; using bu for a long-running topic can sound as if you're newly introducing what everyone already knows. (The full three-way contrast, including şu, is laid out at choosing bu vs. şu vs. o.)

şu points forward: cataphoric "the following"

Here is the move that has no clean English single-word equivalent. şu — normally "that (near you, indicated)" — is the demonstrative Turkish uses to point forward, to something you are about to say or show. This is cataphora: the pronoun precedes its referent. Şunu söyleyeyim is "Let me say this (the following)" — the this announces a forthcoming statement, not a prior one.

The tell is the colon-like pause: şu(nu) sets up an expectation, and what follows fills it. Compare bu, which looks backward to what's already been said. So a clean rule of thumb emerges: bu = the thing just said (backward); şu = the thing about to be said (forward). A speaker who opens Şunu unutma ("Don't forget this") is cueing you to listen for what comes next.

bu kadar, bununla birlikte, bu arada: frozen propositional phrases

Several everyday connectives are frozen clause-anaphora. bununla birlikte ("along with this → however, nevertheless") concedes against the preceding proposition; bu arada ("in the meantime / by the way") brackets the running discourse; bu durumda ("in that case, given this") draws a conditional consequence from what was said.

Each of these takes the entire prior stretch of talk as the antecedent of bu — they are propositional anaphora hardened into discourse markers.

Common mistakes

The core error is limiting demonstratives to nouns and dropping the oblique n.

The recurring trap is thinking a demonstrative needs a noun to point at. It doesn't: a Turkish demonstrative can shoulder an entire clause. Once you let bu carry whole propositions backward and şu point whole statements forward — and you keep the oblique n (bunu, bunun) — your discourse stops being a string of separate sentences and starts holding together.

Key takeaways

• Turkish demonstratives can take a whole clause/proposition as antecedent, not just a noun: Bu beni üzdü = "this (situation) upset me."
• bu points backward to what was just said (fresh, near in discourse); o reaches back to an established, settled topic.
• şu points forward (cataphoric): Şunu söyleyeyim: / Durum şu: announce what's coming.
• Case forms take the oblique -n-: bunu, buna, bundan, bunun (never buyu).
• Clause-anaphoric connectives are built on these: bunun üzerine ("whereupon"), buna rağmen ("despite this"), bu yüzden / bundan dolayı ("therefore"), bununla birlikte ("nevertheless"), bu durumda ("in that case").