Turkish -dikten sonra: the After-Doing Converb
How the Turkish converb -dikten sonra says "after doing something" — the four-way harmony on the -DIK participle, the always-hardened ablative -tan/-ten, the d-to-t hardening in gittikten and çıktıktan, why gördükten keeps its k, and how -meden önce gives the mirror "before doing".
Ekle ·
This converb marks one action as finished before the main clause happens — it means "after doing something" and takes no personal ending of its own.
What the converb means
Turkish has no single word doing the job of English "after" here. It stacks three familiar pieces onto the verb — the participle, the ablative ending, and the postposition sonra "afterward" — so yemek "to eat" turns into yedikten sonra "after eating" and gelmek "to come" into eve geldikten sonra "after coming home".
The action it names is already complete when the main clause takes place. İşi bitirdikten sonra eve gittik is "after finishing the work, we went home": the finishing comes first, the going second, and the two events read in that order.
Four-way vowel harmony
The participle at the core of the ending carries a high vowel, so it harmonises four ways with the last vowel of the stem. A back stem takes -dık or -duk; a front stem takes -dik or -dük. Whichever one lands, the ablative then fuses onto it.
| Last vowel of the stem | Participle | With the ablative |
|---|---|---|
| a · ı | -dık | -dıktan |
| e · i | -dik | -dikten |
| o · u | -duk | -duktan |
| ö · ü | -dük | -dükten |
The ablative in this frame is always -tan or -ten, its hardened shape. The participle ends in the voiceless k, and a voiceless sound turns the ablative d into a t, so the whole ending reads -dıktan and -dikten with a firm t at the seam.
Where the consonants meet
A stem that ends in one of the voiceless consonants p ç t k f h s ş hardens the participle's opening d to a t. gitmek "to go" gives gittikten and çıkmak "to go out" gives çıktıktan. Writing gitdikten, with the d left soft, is the slip to avoid.
The participle's own k stays a k. That k would soften only before a vowel, and the ablative -ten opens with a consonant — so görmek "to see" gives gördükten, with the k intact. The shape gördüğten borrows the softened consonant of gördüğüm "the one I saw", where a vowel really does follow, and it has no place here.
Five worked forms
Read each of these as "after ...". The participle plus the ablative delivers the meaning, and sonra follows as its own word to round it off.
| Turkish | Parts | English |
|---|---|---|
| yedikten | ye + dik + ten | after eating |
| geldikten | gel + dik + ten | after coming |
| okuduktan | oku + duk + tan | after reading |
| gördükten | gör + dük + ten | after seeing |
| gittikten | git + tik + ten | after going |
After doing versus before doing
The opposite relation — "before doing" — is a different converb followed by önce "before", not this one. yemeden önce is "before eating" and gitmeden önce is "before going". The postposition is the giveaway: sonra looks back to an action already done, önce looks ahead to one not yet begun.
- yedikten sonra — "after eating". The eating is finished, then the main clause.
- yemeden önce — "before eating". The main clause first, then the eating.
Ordering two actions in time
The everyday job of the converb is to line two events up: one finishes, the next follows. işi bitirdikten sonra "after finishing the work" sets the earlier event, and the main clause reports what came next — İşi bitirdikten sonra eve gittik, "after finishing the work, we went home".
| Turkish | Parts | English |
|---|---|---|
| yedikten | ye + dik + ten | after eating |
| bitirdikten | bitir + dik + ten | after finishing |
Who performs the action
The converb carries no personal ending, so on its own it never states who acts. That is read from the main clause, and is normally its subject: in eve geldikten sonra "after coming home", whoever the sentence says came home is the one the main verb describes as well. The single form geldikten covers "after I came", "after we came" and "after they came" alike.
| Turkish | Parts | English |
|---|---|---|
| geldikten | gel + dik + ten | after coming |
| çıktıktan | çık + tık + tan | after going out |
Frequently asked questions
- What does a form like yedikten sonra mean?
- It means "after eating". The construction stacks the participle and the ablative onto the verb, then follows it with sonra "afterward", naming an action that is complete before the main clause happens. gelmek "to come" gives eve geldikten sonra "after coming home". The ending takes no personal marker, so who acts is read from the main clause.
- Why is it gittikten and not gitdikten?
- Because gitmek ends in the voiceless t, and a voiceless consonant hardens the participle's d to t. Any stem ending in one of p ç t k f h s ş behaves the same way, so çıkmak "to go out" gives çıktıktan. The soft-d spelling gitdikten is never written.
- Why is it gördükten and not gördüğten?
- Because the participle's k softens to a ğ only before a vowel, and the ablative -ten opens with a consonant. So the k stays put: gördükten. The form gördüğten borrows the ğ from gördüğüm "the one I saw", where a vowel does follow the ğ, and it is wrong in this frame.
- How do I say 'before doing' instead of 'after doing'?
- Swap the converb and the postposition. "After" is yedikten sonra "after eating"; "before" is yemeden önce "before eating", with önce "before" where sonra stood. gitmeden önce is "before going".