owe · Turkish · borçlu olmak

Debtor, Creditor, Amount, moral theme · Turkish marking · working claim, revisable

The head in the opened entries is not a lexical transitive verb. Türk Dil Kurumu, Güncel Türkçe Sözlük, labels borçlu sıfat in sense 1: Borcu olan, borç almış olan; verecekli, medyun, alacaklı karşıtı. That sense prints no example, no person, and no sum. Sense 2 is labeled zarf, Borcu kalmış olarak, and also prints no example. Senses 3 and 4 add mecaz and do not add a new word-class label. The idiom under the same entry is (birine veya bir şeye) borçlu bulunmak (veya olmak), glossed borçlu duruma düşmek. The slot label is dative birine or bir şeye. English owe is a verb.

Göksel & Kerslake 2005, §7.2.2.2, describe the productive suffix -lI. It derives nouns and adjectives where the entity possesses, is characterized by, or is provided with what the stem names. The paragraph precedes the page headed 61. The book does not print borçlu. The working segmentation is borç plus -lU. TDK gives the headword no source language. The noun borç is labeled Soğdca.

The Debtor is the subject, and a main-clause subject has no case suffix. Göksel & Kerslake §12.1.2, on the page after the header 115: the subject of a simple sentence or main clause is always non-case-marked. §12.2.1 (45), same page: (Ben) yorgun-um. The pronoun may be absent. The person marker is obligatory for a first or second person. §8.4 group 2 puts -(y)Im on a nominal predicate: okuldayım. That group sits before the page headed 84. TDK sense 3 prints Hayatımı ona borçluyum doğrusu, Abdülhak Şinasi Hisar. No ben is in the clause. borçluyum is the adjective plus the first-person marker. §12.1.1.2, beginning on the page headed 110: a present linking sentence that is not aspectually or modally marked has no overt copula, and the person marker attaches to the subject complement. The idiom’s olmak is the dictionary head. It is not the form in the Hisar line.

The printed dative beside borçlu is not a money creditor. Hisar: ona, with the accusative theme hayatımı. Sense 3 is Manevi bir yükümlülük altında bulunan. The idiom’s first example, Haldun Taner: Dehasını, geçirdiği sara nöbetlerinin şokuna borçlu bulunuyordu. dehasını is accusative. şokuna is dative. The predicate is bulunuyordu, not the person marker of borçluyum. The second example, Necip Fazıl Kısakürek: söylemeye borçlu olduğumdan. That dative is the infinitive söylemeye. It is an obligation to say. It is not a creditor. borçlu kalmak sense 2, glossed minnettar kalmak, prints ben sana borçlu kalamam, Abdullah Ziya Kozanoğlu. ben is the subject. sana is dative. There is no theme and no sum. The predicate is kalmak, not the copular person marker. medyun olmak has the slot (birine) and the gloss kendini borçlu hissetmek. medyun is labeled sıfat, eskimiş, and cross-refers to borçlu. The idiom prints no example.

Where this frame diverges from English owe. English owe is one verb. The money Creditor is a bare object, owes me $5, or to, owes £3 000 to her father. The Amount is one object. The noun success is printed with to only: I owe my success to my teachers. Oxford’s cause sense prints a double object for other themes: I owe him everything and I owed the surgeon my life. Turkish prints the moral theme in the accusative and the person or the cause in the dative, on the adjective borçlu. Hisar’s hayatımı is the life theme. It is not a bare object, and ona is not a bare object. The money sum is unprinted on sense 1. Ahmet'e yüz lira borçluyum is constructed on the idiom’s dative slot and on the shape of borçluyum. It is not filed. Başarımı anneme borçluyum is constructed on Hisar’s line. başarı is unprinted. It is not filed.

The accusative on the moral theme is printed. The money theme is not. That is the working split, and only one side of it is in the entries. Hisar hayat-ım-ı and Taner deha-sı-n-ı are accusative. Göksel & Kerslake §14.3.3.2 say the sole function of the accusative is to mark the direct object of a transitive verb, and that some direct objects stay non-case-marked. The page headed 158 falls inside the dative examples of §14.3.3.3, so the accusative section is immediately before that header. TDK does not label borçlu a verb. Whether hayatımı is that direct-object accusative, beside an adjective, is a working claim. A bare money noun phrase beside the adjective is unprinted, so it is not the other half of a filed contrast. §8.3.3, between the pages headed 78 and 84, puts -DIr on nominal predicates: yırtıcı bir kuştur, güzelsindir, vardır. borçludur is unprinted. An amount as a -DIr predicate is unprinted.

karşı is a different cloth. Sense 4, Bir şeyi birinin yardımıyla elde etmiş olan, prints Öğrettiklerinden dolayı öğretmenime karşı borçlu birisiyim, with no author on the entry. öğretmenime is dative. karşı follows it. There is no accusative theme. The person marker is on birisiyim. öğrettiklerinden dolayı is ablative plus dolayı. The noun borç sense 2, mecaz, is Birine karşı bir şeyi yerine getirme yükümlülüğü. birine karşı and accusative bir şeyi are the definition. The sense prints no example. Göksel & Kerslake §17.2.2 (iv) give karşı an attitude reading, Tarık Bey'e karşı büyük saygım var, dative plus karşı plus a possessive noun plus var. The noun there is saygı, not borç.

The possessive existential is a grammar pattern, not a TDK headword. A search for borcu olmak and for borcu var returns no entry. §12.1.1.2, before the page headed 115: a possessive existential is a genitive-possessive construction, or a possessive-marked noun phrase, plus var or yok. The examples are Ayten'in iki arkadaşı var and Benim bir kitabım var. The book says the possessed constituent cannot be definite or specific. It prints no borç. A dative creditor inside that frame is unprinted. (Benim) Ahmet'e borcum var and Ahmet'in bana borcu var are constructed. They are not filed. borçlanmak is a verb, marked (-e, nsz.). Sense 1 is Karşılığını sonra vermek şartıyla birinden ödünç para veya bir şey almak. The mark is dative or no object. The gloss uses ablative birinden. Necati Cumalı prints borçlanarak and neither a person nor a sum. That verb is borrowing. It is not the state.