Breakdown of Havacılık şirketinin yeni uçaklar alacağını duyduk.
yeni
new
almak
to take, to buy
uçak
airplane
şirket
company
duymak
to hear
havacılık
aviation
Questions & Answers about Havacılık şirketinin yeni uçaklar alacağını duyduk.
Why is it şirketinin (with a genitive ending) instead of just the nominative subject şirketi?
This is the core of how Turkish builds "that..." clauses. When a sentence is embedded into another (like "We heard that..."), the embedded verb becomes a noun-like word. The logical subject of this action must take the genitive case (-nin), turning the literal structure into "We heard the aviation company's future-buying of new airplanes."
Can you break down the suffixes at the end of şirketinin?
Sure! It starts with şirket (company). The first -i is the possessive suffix required to form the compound noun havacılık şirketi (aviation company). Then we have the buffer letter -n-, followed by the genitive suffix -in, which marks the company as the subject of the embedded clause.
How do the suffixes on alacağını work together?
First, the future nominalizer -acak attaches to al (buy), softening to -acağ- before a vowel. The first -ı is the 3rd-person singular possessive suffix ("its"), which links back to the genitive subject şirketinin. Then comes the buffer -n-, and the final -ı is the accusative case. The accusative is required because the entire "that" clause is the direct object of the main verb duyduk (we heard).
Why doesn't uçaklar take the accusative case (uçakları) since it's the object being bought?
Because they are buying some new airplanes, not specific ones. In Turkish, the direct object only takes the accusative suffix if it is specific or definite. If they were buying "the" new airplanes that we had previously discussed, it would be yeni uçakları.
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