Breakdown of Polisin şüpheliyi sorguladığını ve tutukladığını gördüm.
polis
police officer
ve
and
görmek
to see
şüpheli
suspect
sorgulamak
to interrogate / to question
tutuklamak
to arrest
Questions & Answers about Polisin şüpheliyi sorguladığını ve tutukladığını gördüm.
Why does polis have the genitive ending -in here?
In Turkish, when you turn a statement into an object clause using -dIk (like "that the police interrogated..."), the phrase acts like a noun combination. The subject of that action ("the police") takes the genitive case (polisin), and the action itself gets a possessive ending. It translates literally to something like "I saw the police's interrogating..."
Let's break down the endings on sorguladığını. What do all those suffixes do?
Here are the pieces: sorgula (interrogate) + -dık (the clause marker, where the 'k' softens to 'ğ') + -ı (3rd person singular possessive, matching "the police") + -n- (buffer letter) + -ı (accusative case). The final accusative case is needed because the entire action is the direct object of the main verb gördüm (I saw).
Why is it şüpheliyi instead of just şüpheli?
Şüpheli means "suspect." It gets the accusative case ending -yi (buffer -y- plus -i) because it is the specific direct object of the actions "interrogating" and "arresting" within the clause. Even though it's inside a longer "that" structure, verbs like sorgulamak and tutuklamak still demand the accusative case for their specific objects.
Both sorguladığını and tutukladığını have the exact same long endings. Is there a shorter way to say this?
Yes! Instead of using ve and putting the full -dığını endings on both verbs, you can connect them using the -Ip suffix on the first verb. You could simply say Polisin şüpheliyi sorgulayıp tutukladığını gördüm. This is extremely common in everyday Turkish and avoids repeating the heavy grammar on every single verb.
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