Kule, radarın uçağı izlediğini onayladı.
The tower confirmed that the radar is tracking the airplane.
Breakdown of Kule, radarın uçağı izlediğini onayladı.
izlemek
to watch
uçak
airplane
onaylamak
to approve
kule
tower
radar
radar
Questions & Answers about Kule, radarın uçağı izlediğini onayladı.
Why is it radarın (with a genitive suffix) instead of just radar?
This is the core of how Turkish builds embedded clauses. When a full sentence like "the radar is tracking the plane" becomes the object of another verb ("confirmed"), it turns into a noun phrase. The logical subject of this inner sentence (radar) takes the genitive case (-ın). You can think of it literally as "The tower confirmed the radar's tracking of the airplane."
Can you break down all the suffixes on izlediğini?
It starts with the verb stem izle- (to track) plus the non-future nominalizer -dik (which softens to -diğ). Next is the 3rd person possessive suffix -i (its), which partners with the genitive subject radarın. Finally, we have the buffer -n- followed by the accusative case -i, because this entire action is the direct object being confirmed by the main verb onayladı.
Both uçağı and izlediğini end in the accusative -i. Doesn't a sentence usually only have one direct object?
A single clause usually has one direct object, but this sentence has an inner clause and an outer main clause! uçağı (the airplane) is the direct object of the inner verb izle- (tracking the airplane). Meanwhile, the entire inner clause ends with izlediğini because the whole thing acts as the direct object of the main verb onayladı (confirmed the tracking). They take the accusative case for different verbs.
The translation says "is tracking", but doesn't -dik usually mean past tense?
The suffix -dik actually covers both past and present (any non-future time) in embedded clauses. Here, it simply indicates that the tracking was an existing fact at the time of the confirmation. While we often translate it as "is tracking" or "was tracking" in English depending on flow, Turkish just uses -dik for a concurrent or completed action, saving -(y)acak for future actions.
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