How Turkish Builds Subordinate Clauses

This is the single most important shift in mindset for an English speaker moving from beginner to intermediate Turkish. In English, you build complex sentences by chaining finite clauses joined with little words: "I know that he came," "the man who came," "when I arrived." Turkish has almost none of these connecting words. Instead, it takes the subordinate clause, strips its verb of finite endings, and rebuilds it as a single non-finite form — a participle, a verbal noun, or a converb — that sits, verb-final, before the main verb. Subordination in Turkish is morphology, not conjunctions. Once you internalise that, a huge amount of "advanced" grammar becomes a set of predictable suffixes rather than a maze of new words.

The core contrast: words versus suffixes

Look at the same three relationships expressed in both languages. In English the underlined word is a separate conjunction or relative pronoun; in Turkish the same job is done by a suffix on the verb.

Notice that the Turkish column has no equivalent of that, who, or when anywhere. The whole meaning is folded into the verb: gel-diğ-i-ni ("his having-come," as an object), gel-en ("the one-that-comes"), var-dığ-ım-da ("at my arriving"). There is nothing to translate the linker as, because there is no linker. This is why trying to find the Turkish word for "that" or "which" leads English speakers astray — those concepts live inside suffixes, not in the lexicon.

Type 1: nominalised complements ("that"-clauses)

When English uses "that ..." after verbs like know, think, say, want, Turkish turns the embedded clause into a verbal noun — typically with the suffix -DIK (for realised events) or -(y)AcAK (for unrealised/future events) — and then declines it like any noun, with a possessive marking the subject and a case marking its role in the main clause.

In yağacağını, the future participle -(y)AcAK says "will rain," the possessive -ı marks the subject, and the accusative -nı makes the whole clause the object of söylediler. The clause has become a noun. This is the engine behind reported thought and speech; the full treatment is on nominalised complement clauses, and the alternative strategy with the quotative diye is on diye clauses.

Type 2: participles (relative clauses)

English relative clauses ("the man who came," "the book that I read") become participles in Turkish, placed before the noun they modify — there is no relative pronoun and no separate clause. Turkish picks the participle by which role the head noun plays in the embedded clause:

• -(y)An when the head noun is the subject of the relative clause: gelen adam ("the man who comes/came").
• -DIK + possessive when the head noun is the object or otherwise non-subject: okuduğum kitap ("the book that I read").

In the first, çocuk is the one doing the helping, so the subject participle -(y)An (yardım eden) is used. In the second, balık is what was eaten — a non-subject — so -DIK with a possessive marking the eaters (yediğimiz, "that we ate") is used. The participle always comes before its noun, mirroring the head-final order of the whole language; see head-final word order. The full system, including which participle goes where, is laid out in the relative clause overview, with the -(y)An participle and the -DIK participle each having their own page.

Type 3: converbs (adverbial "when/while/by" clauses)

Adverbial relationships — "when," "while," "after," "by doing," "without doing," "as soon as" — become converbs: non-finite verb forms that link to the main verb adverbially. Each shade of meaning has its own suffix, with no conjunction involved.

Here binince ("on getting on") uses the converb -(y)IncA for "when/as soon as," dinleyerek uses -(y)ArAk for "by doing," and durmadan uses -mAdAn for "without doing." English needs a conjunction or a preposition for each; Turkish needs only a suffix. The whole family is surveyed in the converbs overview, and the specifically temporal "when"-options — including the zaman-based alternatives — are compared in time clauses with zaman.

Two properties shared by all three types

Whatever the type, two features hold across the entire non-finite system, and they are where English speakers slip:

First, everything is verb-final and pre-main-verb. The subordinate clause is a single block that lands before the verb it depends on, never after it with a trailing "that ...". The main verb almost always comes last.

Second, the suffixes harmonise and most take possessive agreement to mark whose action it is. In bitireceğini, the -i possessive ("your") encodes the subject of finishing, while the matrix subject ("I") stays on the final verb. The subject of the small clause lives inside the non-finite verb, not as a separate pronoun. This is why a single Turkish word can carry the weight of a five-word English clause.

Common mistakes

Key takeaways

• Turkish has almost no subordinating conjunctions; it turns clauses into non-finite verbs (participles, verbal nouns, converbs).
• Complement "that"-clauses → nominalised verbal nouns (-DIK / -(y)AcAK
  • possessive + case).
• Relative "who/which"-clauses → participles before the noun: -(y)An (subject head) vs -DIK (non-subject head).
• Adverbial "when/while/by"-clauses → converbs (-(y)IncA, -(y)ArAk, -mAdAn, and others).
• Do not look for words to translate that, which, or when — those meanings live inside the suffix, and the whole clause sits verb-final, before the main verb, with possessive agreement marking its subject.