Learn Hardcore Turkish: Atlara temiz saman sermek onların rahat uyumasını sağlar. - Spreading clean hay for the horses ensures they sleep comfortably.

Atlara is the dative plural of at (horse): at + -lar (plural) + -a (dative case), meaning “to/for the horses.” It marks the beneficiary of the action sermek.

Why is temiz saman not inflected with a case ending?

temiz saman (clean straw) is the direct object of sermek but is nonspecific/indefinite. In Turkish, nonspecific objects often appear without the accusative -ı. If you wanted “the clean straw,” you would say temiz samanı, but here it’s a general action (spreading straw), so no marking is needed.

Why is sermek in its infinitive form rather than a finite verb?

Using sermek (to spread) as a nominalized infinitive lets the whole phrase Atlara temiz saman sermek function as the subject of sağlar. In Turkish, infinitives ending in -mek/-mak can act like nouns (verbal nouns).

Can you break down each component of onların rahat uyumasını?

Certainly. This is a nominalized verb phrase serving as the object of sağlar:

onların = their (genitive pronoun)
rahat = comfortable
uyuma = “sleeping” (stem uyu
- nominalizer -ma/-me)
-sı = third-person singular possessive suffix (required before case endings)
-nı = accusative case suffix (buffer n
- ı)

Why is there a buffer -n- in uyumasını before the -ı?

In Turkish, when you add a vowel-initial case ending (like -ı/-i/-u/-ü) to a stem ending in a vowel-plus-possessive-suffix (-sı here), you insert the buffer consonant n to ease pronunciation:
uyuma + sı + n + ı → uyumasını.

What does sağlar mean, and why is it in the third person singular?

sağlar comes from sağlamak (“to provide, ensure”). It’s in the present simple, third person singular, because its subject is the infinitive phrase Atlara temiz saman sermek, which is treated as a single activity and thus takes a singular verb form.

Is the word order fixed, or could I say Onların rahat uyumasını atlara temiz saman sermek sağlar?

Turkish word order is relatively flexible, but the neutral pattern is Subject–Object–Verb (SOV). Your alternative is grammatically possible for emphasis, but it sounds marked. The unmarked order here is:

Atlara temiz saman sermek (Subject)
onların rahat uyumasını (Object)
sağlar (Verb)

How would I adapt this sentence to say “Spreading clean straw for the cows allows them to sleep comfortably”?

Replace Atlara with İneklere (dative of inek, “cow”). The rest remains the same:
İneklere temiz saman sermek onların rahat uyumasını sağlar.