Pasifler

Pasifler is a Turkish plural noun meaning “the passives.” In Turkish grammar, pasifler refer to the set of verb forms that mark the patient of a transitive verb as the focus of the clause. The language expresses voice primarily through suffixal changes on the verb stem, with the most common passive suffixes being -ıl, -il, -ul, or -ül, which follow vowel harmony rules. These passive forms can be combined with various tense, aspect, and mood endings to produce a range of meanings such as present, past, or progressive passes.

In linguistic descriptions, pasifler are treated as an essential component of Turkish voice systems, distinct from active constructions and from causative or other derivational forms. The passive generally promotes the patient to the subject position, while the agent may be omitted or introduced with a phrase such as tarafindan in Turkish to indicate who performs the action.

Usage and variation: Turkish passives allow negation, questions, and different aspectual readings, and they interact with sentence polarity and mood in systematic ways. The morphology of pasifler is organized around suffixal patterns rather than separate independent words, which contributes to Turkish’s agglutinative syntax.

Beyond linguistics, pasifler may appear as a term in educational materials, grammars, or dictionaries to denote the passive constructions collectively. In other contexts, the word may appear as a proper noun or label in literature or media, but such uses are uncommon and not standardized.