Converb Suffixes in Sinop Province Dialects

The dialects of Sinop province belong to the Western group of Turkish dialects and are themselves divided into four dialect regions. Sinop, which preserves archaic and distinctive dialect features, has many linguistic features waiting to be brought to light. This study focuses on one of these features: converb suffixes. Converb suffixes are among the most frequently used suffixes due to the richness, liveliness, and ease they add to expression. Throughout the historical course of Turkish, converb suffixes have been used in many forms and functions, depending on change and development. Dialects provide abundant material on this topic. Converb suffixes are suffixes that enable verbs or verb phrases to be used as adverbs in a sentence. Alongside the simple forms of these suffixes (-A,-I,-(I)p,ken, etc.), they were later combined with certain suffixes (-AlI,-ArAk,-AlIdAn,- IcAk,-DIkcA,-DUkDAn,-DIgInDAn,-IncAyA,-mAklA,-mAksIzIn, etc.) or formed compound structures with suffixes and postpositions (-AlIdAn beri,- IncAyA dek,-DUkcAn keyri, etc.). In this study, converb suffixes collected from Sinop dialects were examined, revealing their newly identified meanings, functions, and forms. It was noted that the suffixes examined generally consist of archaic suffixes that are not present in standard Turkish.