Postpositions with Bare/Genitive: için, gibi, kadar

Four of the highest-frequency postpositions in Turkish — için "for", gibi "like/as", kadar "as much as / until", and ile "with" — share one case pattern, and it has a twist that catches almost every learner. With a full noun the complement is bare (no case ending): Ali için, çocuk gibi. But with a personal pronoun the complement must be in the genitive: benim için, senin gibi. That split — bare noun, genitive pronoun — is the whole point of this page, because *ben için is one of the most recognizable mistakes an English speaker makes.

The pattern: bare noun, genitive pronoun

A full noun keeps its plain dictionary form in front of these postpositions:

A personal pronoun, however, switches to the genitive. The full set of genitive pronouns is:

These are exactly the regular genitive pronoun forms — see personal genitive pronouns. The postpositions don't invent a special form; they simply demand the genitive that already exists.

Why genitive? The logic behind the split

This is not arbitrary. Historically these postpositions are nouns themselves (için relates to an old word for "inside/sake", gibi to "likeness"), so benim için is built like a possessive: "my sake / for-my-sake", just as benim evim is "my house". Full nouns in Turkish can stand in a possessive relation without an overt genitive when the head is itself unmarked, which is why Ali için works bare — but pronouns, being light and ambiguous, always spell out the genitive. Seeing benim için as "for-my-sake" makes the genitive feel inevitable rather than memorized.

One honest complication: in casual speech you will hear bare pronouns with gibi and kadar — ben gibi, sen kadar. Many native speakers say these, and some grammarians treat them as an accepted colloquial variant. But the genitive forms (benim gibi, senin kadar) are the only ones safe in writing, in exams, and in careful speech, and için essentially never tolerates a bare pronoun (*ben için is simply wrong, not just casual). The practical advice is unambiguous: always produce the genitive yourself, and just recognize the bare-pronoun version when you hear it.

için — "for"

için marks benefit, purpose, and cause; this page covers the benefactive "for X" reading, and the purpose/cause readings get full treatment on için: purpose, cause, benefit.

gibi — "like, as"

gibi draws a comparison or resemblance — "like X", "as X". Bare noun, genitive pronoun, same as the rest.

That last one is the textbook trap: it is benim gibi, never *ben gibi. (Colloquially you may hear bare pronouns with gibi and kadar, but it is avoided in careful and written Turkish, so learn the genitive.) For finer distinctions between gibi and kadar, see gibi vs. kadar.

kadar — "as much as" and "until"

kadar has two everyday senses. In the comparative "as much as / as … as" sense it takes a bare/genitive complement, like its siblings:

In its temporal/spatial sense "up to / until / as far as", kadar instead takes a dative complement (akşama kadar, okula kadar). That is the one place these four postpositions split apart on case — worth flagging now and detailed on gibi vs. kadar.

ile — "with"

ile "with" follows the same bare/genitive logic (Ali ile, benim ile), but in practice it usually appears as the suffixal clitic -(y)lA: Ali'yle, benimle, seninle. The clitic is the spoken default. Because it has its own behaviour, ile is covered fully on its own page; here just note it belongs to this case class.

Common mistakes

Bare (nominative) pronoun instead of genitive — the classic. *ben için, *sen gibi, *biz kadar are the signature errors.

Adding a genitive to a full noun. Full nouns stay bare; *Ali'nin için over-marks it.

Wrong case on temporal kadar. "Until evening" needs the dative akşama, not a bare or genitive form.

Using the dative pronoun by analogy with göre. These four are genitive, not dative; *bana gibi borrows the wrong class.

Key takeaways

• için, gibi, kadar, ile take a bare noun but a genitive pronoun.
• Genitive pronouns: benim, senin, onun, bizim, sizin, onların — these are the regular forms.
• Think of benim için as "for-my-sake": the genitive is a leftover possessive, not arbitrary.
• A full noun stays bare (Ali için) — don't add a genitive.
• kadar = "until" is the exception: it takes the dative (akşama kadar), while comparative kadar stays genitive (senin kadar).