Questions & Answers about Baba şimdi temizliyor.
The verb root for "to clean" is temizle-. Why does it change to an i instead of an e in temizliyor?
This is exactly what vowel narrowing is! When a verb ends in a wide vowel like a or e and you add the -yor ending, that final vowel gets squeezed or narrowed into ı, i, u, or ü. Because the vowel before the final e in temizle- is an i, 4-way vowel harmony turns the e into an i, giving us temizliyor.
I've seen the word temiz before as the adjective "clean". Is temizliyor related to that?
There is no word for "the" in this sentence. How do we know it translates to "The father"?
Turkish doesn't have a specific word for "the" (a definite article). You usually figure it out from context. Because baba is the main subject at the beginning of the sentence, it is generally assumed to be a specific person, making "the father" the most natural English translation.
Since the -yor ending already means an action is happening right now, do we have to include şimdi?
You don't strictly need it! Baba temizliyor alone perfectly translates to "The father is cleaning." Adding şimdi just adds emphasis, much like saying "The father is cleaning right now" in English.
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