Tanık neden tekrar sorgulandığını bilmiyordu.

to know

Breakdown of Tanık neden tekrar sorgulandığını bilmiyordu.

• tekrar: again
• neden: why
• tanık: a witness (person who directly observed an event)

Questions & Answers about Tanık neden tekrar sorgulandığını bilmiyordu.

Why is tanık just a bare noun? Why not bir tanık or something like the witness?

Turkish often uses a bare noun where English would use a/an or the.

Here, tanık is the subject of the sentence, so it appears in the basic nominative form, with no case ending:

• tanık = witness

Whether it means a witness or the witness depends on context. In a real situation, this sentence would often be understood as the witness because the person is already known in the conversation.

So:

• tanık = witness / the witness / a witness, depending on context
• no extra ending is needed because it is the subject

Why is neden not at the very beginning of the whole sentence?

Because neden tekrar sorgulandığını is an embedded question inside a larger sentence.

The sentence structure is roughly:

• Tanık = the witness
• neden tekrar sorgulandığını = why he/she was being questioned again
• bilmiyordu = did not know

So the witness did not know why...

In Turkish, embedded clauses usually come before the main verb, and the main verb often stays at the end. That is why neden is at the beginning of the embedded clause, not necessarily at the beginning of the entire sentence.