Questions & Answers about Bugün senin yorgun olduğunu biliyorum.
Can you break down the sentence grammatically, word by word?
- Bugün – “today”; an adverb of time.
- senin – “your / of you”; the pronoun sen (“you”) in the genitive case.
- yorgun olduğunu – literally “your being tired / the fact that you are tired”; this whole chunk is the object of the verb bilmek.
- biliyorum – “I know”; from bil- (to know) + -iyor (present/progressive) + -um (1st person singular).
So syntactically, “senin yorgun olduğunu” is a noun‑like clause (“the fact that you are tired”) and biliyorum is the main verb, “I know (it) today.”
Why is it senin and not just sen?
In Turkish, when you turn a clause into a noun with -DIK (like olduğunu, geldiğini, etc.) and use it as an object or subject, the subject of that clause appears in the genitive case.
The pattern is:
[GENITIVE subject] + [verb + -DIK + possessive]
Examples:
- Ali’nin geldiğini biliyorum. – “I know that Ali came / is coming.”
- Onun hasta olduğunu duydum. – “I heard that he/she is sick.”
So here:
- senin = “of you / your” → genitive subject of the embedded clause.
- (senin) yorgun olduğunu = “your being tired”.
Using sen instead of senin in this structure (Sen yorgun olduğunu biliyorum) is ungrammatical. However, you can simply omit the pronoun altogether if it’s clear from context:
- Bugün yorgun olduğunu biliyorum. – “I know (that) you are tired today.” (to the person you’re talking to)