Starting, Continuing, Finishing an Action

To say I started to read, I kept reading, I stopped reading, I finished reading, Turkish does something English does not: it turns the second verb into a noun and hangs it off a phase verb in a particular case. There is no infinitive "to read" floating free as in English; instead you nominalize read with -mA and then decline it. The catch that trips up every learner is that each phase verb demands a fixed case on that noun — başlamak wants the dative, bırakmak wants the accusative — and the case is not predictable from the meaning. This page lays out begin, continue, stop and finish with the exactly correct case on each, so you stop guessing.

The mechanism in one line: take the verb, make the verbal noun with -mA (the -mA verbal noun), then add the case the phase verb requires, then the phase verb. oku- ("read") → okuma ("reading") → okumaya (dative) → okumaya başladım ("I started reading").

Begin: -mAyA başlamak (dative)

başlamak ("to begin/start") takes its complement in the dative — the -(y)A case, the case of "toward". The logic is intuitive once you see it: you move toward an activity when you begin it. So the verbal noun okuma becomes okumaya ("to/toward reading"), and the buffer y appears because -mA ends in a vowel and the dative -A begins with one: okuma-y-a → okumaya.

Note başlamak itself also takes a plain dative noun for "start something" (işe başlamak "to start work", okula başlamak "to start school") — same case, same logic. The verbal-noun construction is just that pattern with a nominalized verb in the dative slot.

Continue: -mAyA devam etmek (dative)

devam etmek ("to continue") also governs the dative — devam literally means "continuation", and you continue toward the ongoing activity. So okuma → okumaya devam ettim ("I continued reading"). The buffer y is again required: okuma-y-a.

Like başlamak, devam etmek takes a plain dative noun too: işe devam etmek ("to carry on with work"), yola devam etmek ("to continue on one's way"). The verbal-noun version simply puts a nominalized verb in that dative slot.

Stop / quit: -mAyI bırakmak (accusative)

Here is the switch. bırakmak ("to leave/drop/quit") takes the accusative — the -(y)I case of the definite direct object. You treat the activity as a thing you drop, so it is the object you let go of, not a goal you move toward. içme ("drinking/smoking") → içmeyi bıraktım ("I quit smoking"). The buffer y plus the accusative -I: içme-y-i → içmeyi.

There is also a non-volitional "stop" — when an action simply ceases rather than being deliberately quit. For that, Turkish often reaches for durmak ("to stop, come to a halt") or kesmek ("to cut [off]"): Yağmur durdu ("the rain stopped"), Konuşmayı kes! ("cut out the talking!", accusative again). But for "give up / quit doing", -mAyI bırakmak is the workhorse, and its case is accusative.

Finish: -mAyI bitirmek (accusative)

bitirmek ("to finish") likewise governs the accusative, because the completed activity is the object you bring to an end. okuma → okumayı bitirdim ("I finished reading"). Same buffer-plus-accusative: okuma-y-ı → okumayı.

For the contrast with başlamak and the lexical detail of these two verbs, see başlamak and bitirmek. The pattern to lock in is the case clash at the heart of this page:

The aspectual converb auxiliaries: nuance beyond the phase verbs

The four verbs above name a phase explicitly. Turkish also has a tighter, more idiomatic way to colour continuation and a few other aspects: the converb-plus-auxiliary compounds, where the second verb fuses onto the first. The relevant one here is -(y)Adur ("keep on doing"), built on durmak: yaz- ("write") → yazadur ("keep writing"). Unlike -mAyA devam etmek, this is a single fused word and carries a "carry on in the meantime, while something else happens" flavour.

These aspectual auxiliaries — -(y)Iver (suddenness), -(y)Adur (continuation), -(y)Agel (long-standing continuity), -(y)Akal (frozen state) — are a separate, more literary system covered in full on aspectual helpers. The key division: use the phase verbs (başlamak, bırakmak…) for plain, everyday "begin/stop/finish"; reach for the converb auxiliaries when you want the extra aspectual nuance. For the bigger picture of how Turkish slices an action into phases and aspects, see aspect overview.

Common mistakes

bırakmak treats the activity as the object you drop, so it takes the accusative: içme-y-i bıraktım. The dative belongs to başlamak and devam etmek.

başlamak moves you toward the activity, so the complement is dative: okuma-y-a başladım.

The nominalized verb must carry the case the phase verb requires; bare yapma with no case is ungrammatical here. You need yapma-y-ı.

The verbal noun -mA takes the dative as -mAyA (buffer y + -A): yürüme-y-e. There is no ğ here; that ğ belongs to the -mAk infinitive's dative (yürümeğe is an old spelling), not to the -mA noun.

Key takeaways

• To say begin/continue/stop/finish an action, nominalize the verb with -mA, add the required case, then add the phase verb.
• The case is lexically fixed per phase verb and not predictable from meaning: dative -mAyA for başlamak ("begin") and devam etmek ("continue"); accusative -mAyI for bırakmak ("stop/quit") and bitirmek ("finish").
• Memorise them as fixed pairs: -mAyA başlamak vs -mAyI bırakmak.
• The verbal noun -mA always takes a buffer y before a case vowel: okuma-y-a, içme-y-i.
• For aspectual nuance beyond plain phasing, use the fused converb auxiliaries like -(y)Adur ("keep on") — neutral -mAyA devam etmek and idiomatic -(y)Adur are not interchangeable in register.