Breakdown of Çocuklar ağaçlara tırmanmayı seviyor.
çocuk
child
ağaç
tree
sevmek
to love, to like
tırmanmak
to climb
Questions & Answers about Çocuklar ağaçlara tırmanmayı seviyor.
Why does 'climbing' end in -mayı here?
The verb sevmek (to like/love) requires its object to take the accusative case. First, we turn the verb tırmanmak (to climb) into a noun using the verbal noun suffix -ma (giving us tırmanma, 'climbing'). Then, we add the accusative suffix -ı. Because two vowels cannot sit next to each other, we insert the buffer letter -y-, resulting in tırmanmayı.
Why is it ağaçlara instead of ağaçları? In English we say 'climbing trees', not 'climbing to trees'.
Every Turkish verb has its own rules about which case it needs. The verb tırmanmak (to climb) always takes the dative case (-e/-a), which shows direction. In Turkish, you conceptually climb onto or to something. That is why we say ağaçlara (to the trees).
The subject Çocuklar is plural. Why doesn't the verb have the plural suffix (seviyorlar)?
In Turkish, if the plural subject is explicitly stated in the sentence and refers to humans (like çocuklar), the verb can just stay in the singular form (seviyor). You could say seviyorlar, but dropping the extra plural suffix avoids repetition and sounds very natural.
If they were climbing just one tree, would the spelling of the root word change?