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Amerika dizginlenemeden
dünyanın selameti yok

This is a headline from Birgün, p. 13, March 4 (Sunday), 2007. Various translations are possible, such as: While having sympathy for the headline, I note it here mainly for a grammatical feature that I have not seen documented:

The noun dizgin means “rein”; this forms the verb dizginle- “rein in”, whose passive form is dizginlen- “be reined in”.

A verb can take a (harmonizing) suffix -meden “without —ing”; hence dizginlenmeden “without being reined in.”

The Turkish Grammar of Geoffrey Lewis (2nd ed., Oxford, 2000) notes (at XI, 12, p. 182) that this suffix -meden is not a combination of the verbal-noun suffix -me and the ablative ending -den. A footnote suggests that the -me in -meden is originally the negative suffix.

Lewis does not record the possibility of using the impotential suffix -eme in place of -me to form the compound suffix -emeden “without being able to —”. (Nor have I found the possibility noted in Turkish books of Turkish grammar.) But this possibility seems to have been actualized in the headline above.

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Last change: March 6, 2007