Questions & Answers about Sabahki kazaya çok üzüldüm.
What does the -ki do in sabahki? Can't I just say sabah?
The suffix -ki turns the time word sabah (morning) into an adjective describing the accident. It means "the one in the morning" or "this morning's". If you just said sabah kazaya çok üzüldüm, it would mean "In the morning, I was very sad about the accident," which changes when you felt sad rather than describing which accident it was.
Why doesn't -ki follow vowel harmony after sabah? I expected sabahkı.
The -ki suffix is a special exception to Turkish vowel harmony rules. It almost always stays -ki regardless of the vowels in the word before it. So even though sabah has back vowels, the suffix remains -ki. The only common exceptions are time words with 'ü' or 'u' like dünkü (yesterday's) or bugünkü (today's).
Why is there an -a at the end of kazaya? Doesn't "about" usually translate differently?
In Turkish, the verb üzülmek (to be sad or sorry) requires the dative case. This means you must add -e or -a to the thing causing the emotion. You are grammatically saying "I was saddened to the accident." Because kaza (accident) ends in a vowel, we insert the buffer letter -y- before adding the -a.
For üzüldüm, why is the past tense suffix here instead of the usual ?