Breakdown of Her fidanın köküne tam birer tohum gömdük.
her
every
tam
exactly / fully / completely
tohum
seed
bir
one
kök
root
fidan
sapling
gömmek
to bury
Questions & Answers about Her fidanın köküne tam birer tohum gömdük.
Why does this sentence use birer instead of just bir?
The suffix -er in birer makes it a distributive numeral, meaning "one each". If we just said tam bir tohum, it would mean we buried exactly one seed in total across all the saplings. Birer clarifies that exactly one seed went into each sapling's root.
Can you break down the suffixes in fidanın köküne?
This is a genitive-possessive construction meaning "the sapling's root". Fidan gets the genitive suffix -ın (of the sapling), and kök (root) gets the possessive suffix -ü (its root). Finally, the dative case -e is added because the action of burying is directed into the root, with the buffer consonant -n- linking the two vowels (kök-ü-n-e).
Since we are burying seeds in multiple saplings, why is tohum singular here?
In Turkish, nouns must remain in their singular form when they are preceded by numbers or distributive numerals like birer. So, it is always birer tohum (one seed each), never birer tohumlar.
I thought tam meant "full" or "complete". Why is it translated as "exactly" here?
While tam does mean "full" in some contexts, it is very frequently used as an adverb meaning "exactly" or "precisely". Here, tam birer tohum emphasizes that they planted "exactly one seed each"—no more and no less.
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