Questions & Answers about Domates salatası ve tavuk yiyoruz.
Why is it salatası instead of just salata?
This is an indefinite noun compound, which is how we link two nouns to describe a category, like "tomato salad" or "bus stop". The first word (domates) stays in its bare form, but the second word (salata) takes a possessive suffix to connect them.
Where does the 's' in salatası come from?
The possessive suffix we need to add to the second word is -ı. Because salata already ends in a vowel, we cannot just add another vowel. For this specific possessive suffix, Turkish uses s as a buffer letter, making it -sı.
Why doesn't tavuk have an accusative (direct object) suffix?
Because we are eating chicken in general, not a specific, known piece of chicken (like "the chicken"). General or unspecified direct objects stay in their bare form and usually sit right in front of the verb.
The verb root for "to eat" is ye-. Why does it become yiyoruz instead of yeyiyoruz?
This is due to vowel narrowing. When you add the present continuous suffix -yor to a verb root that ends in a wide vowel like -e or -a, that vowel shrinks down to a narrow vowel (ı, i, u, or ü). So, ye- becomes yi-, giving us yiyoruz.
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