-mIş as Perfect and Resultative | Turkish Grammar

The evidential -mIş page introduced the suffix as a marker of indirect knowledge — hearsay, inference, surprise. But -mIş has a second life that is just as important: it is also Turkish's perfect and resultative marker. It describes a state that results from a completed action: Pişmiş "It's cooked (and now done)," Yorulmuşsun "You've worn yourself out (and now look tired)." This page is about that resultative side — and about the elegant fact that the evidential and resultative meanings are not two separate suffixes but two faces of the same -mIş, with person and context deciding which face you see.

-mIş conjugation, resultative reading

The form is identical to the evidential — -mış / -miş / -muş / -müş with Type-1 endings. What changes is the meaning lens you read it through.

Person	yorul- (get tired)	piş- (cook)	kır- (break, intr. kırıl-)
ben (I)	yorulmuşum	—	kırılmışım
sen (you, sg.)	yorulmuşsun	—	kırılmışsın
o (he/she/it)	yorulmuş	pişmiş	kırılmış
biz (we)	yorulmuşuz	—	kırılmışız
siz (you, pl.)	yorulmuşsunuz	—	kırılmışsınız
onlar (they)	yorulmuşlar	pişmişler	kırılmışlar

(The dashes mark slots like "I cooked" that are pragmatically odd for an inanimate-result verb like pişmek "to be cooked" — you don't normally say "I am cooked.")

Yemek pişmiş, sofrayı kuralım.

The food's done — let's set the table.

Çok yorulmuşsun, gözlerin kapanıyor, git yat.

You've worn yourself out — your eyes are closing, go to bed.

The present result of a past action

The resultative -mIş keeps your attention on the present state that a past event left behind. Yorulmuşsun literally packages "you got tired (past) → therefore you are tired-looking now." That is why it so often pairs with present evidence you can point to: drooping eyes, a finished dish, a broken cup. English uses the present perfect for this same job — "the food has cooked," "you have gotten tired" — which is why -mIş and the English perfect overlap so neatly here.

Elma çürümüş, kokusu mutfağı sarmış.

The apple has gone rotten — its smell has filled the kitchen.

Bardak kırılmış, yere cam parçaları dökülmüş.

The glass has broken — there are pieces of glass on the floor.

Saçların uzamış, kuaföre gitme vakti gelmiş.

Your hair's gotten long — it's time to go to the hairdresser.

Notice how each of these is really a double statement: a completed event (the apple rotted, the glass broke) and the resulting state you now observe (the smell, the shards). That two-in-one packaging is the resultative core of -mIş.

💡

The resultative and evidential readings of -mIş are the same suffix seen from two angles. Resultative looks forward from a past event to its present result; evidential looks at how you know the event happened (you weren't there, you infer it). They constantly overlap — you infer the past event precisely from its present result — which is why one suffix does both jobs.

First-person -mIş: "I realize I have…"

Here is where the two readings collide most interestingly. You normally witness your own actions, so first-person -mIş ought to be impossible — yet gelmişim, uyumuşum, yapmışım are perfectly common. The reason is that first-person -mIş carries a special charge: "I realize/discover that I have…", usually with a note of surprise, sleepiness, drunkenness, or sudden awareness. It is the form for actions of yours that, for a moment, you weren't fully tracking.

Anlaşılan uyuyakalmışım, alarmı duymamışım bile.

Apparently I dozed off — I didn't even hear the alarm.

Yanlış otobüse binmişim, bambaşka bir mahalledeyim.

I've gotten on the wrong bus — I'm in a completely different neighborhood.

Cüzdanımı evde unutmuşum, hesabı sen öder misin?

I've left my wallet at home (I just realized) — could you pay the bill?

Compare unuttum "I forgot (and I knew it / I'm flatly reporting it)" with unutmuşum "I've apparently forgotten (I just discovered the gap)." Both are true past events of yours, but unutmuşum dramatizes the moment of realization. This is the resultative and the evidential fused: the present result (no wallet in your pocket) is what tips you off to the past event (you left it home).

Demek bütün gece çalışmışım, dışarısı aydınlanmış.

So I've worked all night, it turns out — it's gotten light outside.

💡

First-person -mIş is the standard way to relay what you said or did while asleep, drunk, distracted, or otherwise not in control: Sarhoşken neler söylemişim "the things I apparently said while drunk." Because you can't vouch for actions you weren't tracking, the evidential -mIş is genuinely the honest choice — switching to -DI there would falsely claim you witnessed your own behavior.

The bridge to -mIş + olmak

Because -mIş is inherently resultative, it is the natural base for Turkish's explicit perfect periphrasis, -mIş + olmak "to have (done)." When you want the perfect meaning without the evidential overtones — a neutral "by then it will have happened" or "I have (definitely) done it" — you stack the auxiliary olmak onto the -mIş participle. The participle supplies "completed action," and olmak (in whatever tense and mood you need) carries the assertion.

Sen gelene kadar her şeyi hazırlamış olurum.

By the time you arrive, I'll have prepared everything.

Bu kitabı okuyunca konuyu tamamen öğrenmiş olacaksın.

Once you read this book, you'll have learned the topic completely.

This periphrasis lets you put a perfect inside a future, a conditional, or a necessitative — places where a bare -mIş can't go while keeping a clean resultative sense. The construction has its own dedicated page: -mIş + olmak.

When NOT to use resultative -mIş

The honest caveat: a present result does not automatically license -mIş. If you witnessed the action and are simply reporting it as a fact, witnessed -DI is more natural — even though a result persists. You break a glass yourself and announce it: Bardağı kırdım "I broke the glass" (-DI, you did it and saw it), not kırılmış (which would frame it as something you just found broken). The resultative -mIş wins specifically when you are registering a result you didn't actively track, or describing someone/something else's resulting state.

Pardon, bardağı düşürdüm, hemen toplarım.

Sorry, I dropped the glass — I'll clean it up right away.

There you say düşürdüm (-DI) because you witnessed your own clumsiness in the act. The full decision logic is on the -DI vs -mIş page.

Common mistakes

❌ Bardağı kırılmış.

If you just broke it yourself and saw it happen, this wrongly frames your own witnessed act as a discovery. Use -DI: kırdım.

✅ Bardağı kırdım.

I broke the glass.

❌ Çok yoruldun, git dinlen.

If you're commenting on visible tiredness you infer, this is too flatly asserted for a state you read off someone's face. The resultative -mIş fits: yorulmuşsun.

✅ Çok yorulmuşsun, git dinlen.

You've worn yourself out — go and rest.

❌ Yemek pişti mi diye baktım, pişti. (narrating your own checking)

The second clause is fine as -DI if you watched it finish, but as a discovered result 'it's done' is pişmiş.

✅ Yemek pişmiş mi diye baktım, pişmiş.

I checked whether the food was done — it's done.

❌ Uyuyakaldım ama hiç fark etmedim.

If the point is that you only later realized, the witnessed -DI clashes with 'didn't notice'; first-person -mIş is sharper: uyuyakalmışım.

✅ Uyuyakalmışım, hiç fark etmemişim.

I dozed off — I didn't even notice.

❌ Elma çürüdü, kokuyor. (describing a result you're discovering now)

If you're noticing the rot now from the smell, the resultative -mIş is more natural: çürümüş.

✅ Elma çürümüş, kokuyor.

The apple has gone rotten — it smells.

The thread through all of these: -mIş wins when you are describing a result you are noticing, and -DI wins when you are flatly reporting an action you tracked. A persisting result alone is not enough to force -mIş.

Key takeaways

-mIş is not only evidential; it is also Turkish's perfect/resultative, naming the present state left by a past event: Pişmiş, Yorulmuşsun, Çürümüş.
The resultative and evidential readings are the same suffix: you infer the past action from its present result, so one form does both jobs.
First-person -mIş ("gelmişim, uyumuşum, unutmuşum") means "I realize I have…" — surprise or fresh awareness about your own action.
For a clean, evidential-free perfect inside other tenses, use the periphrastic -mIş + olmak.
A persisting result does not by itself require -mIş; if you witnessed the action, -DI is often more natural. Settle borderline cases with the -DI vs -mIş guide.

Now practice Turkish

Reading grammar gets you part of the way. The exercises are where it sticks — free, no signup needed.

Start learning Turkish→