Indefinite Pronouns & Quantifiers in Turkish

Turkish indefinite pronouns and quantifiers (belgisiz zamirler) denote unspecified persons, things, or quantities. The most frequent include: herkes (everyone/everybody), kimse (no one / anyone), birisi / biri (someone/somebody), bir şey (something), hepsi (all of them / everything), hiçbir şey (nothing), hiçbiri (none of them), bazıları / kimi (some of them), and başkası (someone else).

A vital syntactic requirement concerns polarity: negative words like kimse (nobody) and hiçbir şey (nothing) always require a negative verb (kimse gelmedi = nobody came; hiçbir şey görmedim = I saw nothing). Using a positive verb with kimse changes the meaning to 'anyone' in questions or conditionals (Kimse var mı? = Is anyone there?). In contrast, herkes (everyone) strictly pairs with a positive verb (Herkes geldi = Everyone arrived).

Indefinite pronouns decline regularly with standard case endings: herkese (to everyone), kimseyi (nobody, acc.), hepsinden (from all of them). Learners often create double negatives incorrectly or misuse herkes with negative verbs instead of kimse (saying Herkes gelmedi when intending 'Nobody came').