Breakdown of Diş ağrısına rağmen pasta yiyor.
yemek
to eat
pasta
cake
diş
tooth
rağmen
despite / in spite of
ağrı
pain / ache
Questions & Answers about Diş ağrısına rağmen pasta yiyor.
Why does ağrısına have an -n- before the dative -a required by rağmen?
Rağmen requires the dative case (-e or -a). The word for "toothache" is a noun compound: diş ağrısı, which ends in the 3rd person possessive suffix -sı. In Turkish, whenever you add a case ending to a 3rd person possessive suffix, you must use the buffer consonant -n- instead of -y-. This gives us ağrısına.
Can I just say diş ağrıya rağmen without the -sı in the middle?
No, because "toothache" is a noun compound in Turkish. To link diş (tooth) and ağrı (ache/pain) into a single concept, the second noun must take the possessive suffix -(s)ı, forming diş ağrısı. You have to form the compound first before you can attach the dative case for rağmen.
Why isn't pasta written as pastayı with an accusative ending?
Because the cake is indefinite here. If she were eating a specific cake ("the cake"), it would take the accusative case and become pastayı yiyor. Since she is just eating "cake" in a general, unspecified sense, it stays in its plain dictionary form.
Why is the verb yiyor and not yeyor?
This is a brief reminder of vowel narrowing. The root of the verb "to eat" is ye-. When you add the present continuous suffix -iyor, any verb root ending in a wide vowel (-e or -a) narrows to a narrow vowel (-i, -ı, -u, or -ü). Here, the -e narrows to -i, changing ye- to yi-.
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