Breakdown of Dinozorlar buzul çağından önce yaşamıştı.
yaşamak
to live / to experience / to undergo
önce
before / first / firstly
dinozor
dinosaur
buzul
glacier
Questions & Answers about Dinozorlar buzul çağından önce yaşamıştı.
How do we get the "had lived" meaning in the verb yaşamıştı?
It uses two past tense markers together to form the Past Perfect tense. To the root yaşa- (to live), we first add -mış to show a completed state, and then attach the past copula -tı to push that state further back in time. Together, -mıştı means "had lived".
Since the subject Dinozorlar is plural, why isn't the verb plural (yaşamıştılar)?
In Turkish, when a plural subject is not human (such as animals, plants, or objects), the verb usually remains in the third-person singular form. Because dinosaurs are animals, yaşamıştı is the grammatically correct choice here.
Why does önce (before) change the word before it to çağından?
The word önce acts as a postposition that always requires the noun before it to be in the ablative case (-dan / -den, meaning "from"). Turkish literally expresses "before the ice age" as "from the ice age before".
What is the exact breakdown of all the suffixes in çağından?
It breaks down like this: çağ (age) + -ı (a possessive suffix linking it to buzul to form the compound noun "ice age") + -n- (a buffer letter always used after a compound noun's possessive ending) + -dan (the ablative case required by önce).