Repeated Nouns

Level 3

The pattern Noun + Noun (in the nominative case) creates an adverb that describes doing something to every single unit in a sequence, often translated as 'X by X' or 'from X to X'.

How It Works

In Turkish, repeating a noun in its plain form is a productive way to express a distributive process or succession.

Key Characteristics:

  • Identity Requirement: To form this specific distributive pattern, the two nouns must be identical (e.g., ev ev). This distinguishes it from other doubled word pairs like ev bark.
  • Exhaustiveness and Succession: For location nouns, it implies visiting every single unit (e.g., ev ev dolaşmak - visiting every house). For quantity nouns, it emphasizes succession or high volume (e.g., bardak bardak çay içmek - drinking glass after glass of tea).
  • Morphology: Both nouns must be in their base form. No case endings like the accusative or locative are added to the nouns themselves.
  • Orthography: The words are always written separately. According to TDK rules, no punctuation (neither a hyphen nor a comma) should be placed between the two words.
  • Usage: It is most commonly used with concrete nouns representing locations (ev, köy, sokak) or units (kapı, bardak).

This pattern is very common in both formal reports and daily conversation when describing searches, distributions, or systematic actions.

Examples (4)

  1. Polisler kayıp çocuğu bulmak için mahalleyi ev ev aradılar.

    The police searched the neighborhood house by house to find the missing child.

    Word by Word: Police missing child to-find for neighborhood house house searched.

    Using 'ev ev' emphasizes that the police did not skip a single house during their search.

  2. Seçimden önce bütün adaylar kapı kapı dolaşıp oy istediler.

    Before the election, all candidates went door to door asking for votes.

    Word by Word: Election-from before all candidates door door wandering vote they-wanted.

    'Kapı kapı' describes the systematic, sequential nature of the candidates' visits.

  3. Gezginler Anadolu'yu köy köy gezip hikayeler topladılar.

    The travelers visited Anatolia village by village and collected stories.

    Word by Word: Travelers Anatolia village village visiting stories they-collected.

    This implies a thorough journey through many villages in a sequence.

  4. Sokak sokak gezdik ama anahtarımı bulamadık.

    We wandered street by street but couldn't find my key.

    Word by Word: Street street we-wandered but my-key we-could-not-find.

    'Sokak sokak' shows the effort and thoroughness of the search across the area.

Common Mistakes

  • Using a hyphen between the repeated nouns.

    Kapı-kapı dolaştık.
    Kapı kapı dolaştık.

    In modern Turkish orthography, reduplicated nouns (ikilemeler) are written as two separate words without a hyphen.

  • Adding plural suffixes to the nouns.

    Evler evler aradık.
    Ev ev aradık.

    Pluralizing the nouns (evler evler) changes the meaning to 'heaps of' or 'lots of' rather than the distributive 'one by one' meaning.

  • Confusing it with the 'from... to...' (Ablative-Dative) construction.

    Evden eve aradık.
    Ev ev aradık.

    'Evden eve' (from house to house) is typically used for movement or transport (like moving services). For a distributive search or visit, the plain repeated form 'ev ev' is more natural.

How It Connects

Tap a pattern to see what it builds on and what it leads to.

Repeated NounsLevel 3

Learn This First

To understand 'ev ev', you simply need to know basic nouns in their plain form. It follows the general Turkish logic of reduplication where repeating a word adds a sense of distribution ('one by one' or 'from one to another').