Geçmemi

Geçmemi is a Turkish morphosyntactic form rather than a standalone dictionary entry. In Turkish grammar discussions, geçmemi is treated as a nominalized clause derived from the verb geçmek (to pass, to go by, to be over). The form represents an event—specifically the idea of not passing or failing to pass—viewed as a unit that can function within a larger sentence. Because Turkish relies heavily on nominalization to build complex clauses, geçmemi can appear in contexts where the event of not passing is the object or complement of another verb or a governing phrase. The interpretation of geçmemi is highly context dependent: it can express a notion such as “the fact that I do not pass” or “my not passing,” depending on how it is embedded in the sentence and which other elements it interacts with.

Geçmemi is comparatively rare in everyday speech and writing, and is more commonly discussed in linguistic analyses, grammar descriptions, and language-learning materials as an example of Turkish nominalization and the ways negation and perspective (first person) can be encoded in a noun-like form. Its existence illustrates Turkish’s flexibility in turning verbal stems into noun phrases that can participate in a range of syntactic functions, including as objects of verbs, complements, or elements within subordinate clauses. For learners, greater focus is typically placed on more common nominalizations such as geçmeyi, while geçmemi serves as a specialized illustration of Turkish morphosyntax.

See also: Turkish grammar, nominalization, gerund, Turkish suffixes.