Word
Dünyayı gezme arzusu onun en büyük hayaliydi.
Meaning
The desire to travel the world was her biggest dream.
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
Breakdown of Dünyayı gezme arzusu onun en büyük hayaliydi.
o
that / he / she / it
büyük
big
en
most
gezmek
to visit
Questions & Answers about Dünyayı gezme arzusu onun en büyük hayaliydi.
Why do we use gezme instead of the full infinitive gezmek here?
This is the core of our current lesson! When linking an unfulfilled or abstract action to an abstract noun like arzu (desire), Turkish builds a standard noun compound. We use the short verbal noun ending in -mA (gezme) as the first part, and add the possessive compound marker -su to the abstract noun (arzusu). We cannot use gezmek because full infinitives do not form noun compounds in this way.
Why is dünyayı in the accusative case if it comes right before a noun compound?
Even though gezme functions as a noun to build the compound gezme arzusu, it still acts like a verb internally within its own clause. Because the action of traveling the world requires a specific direct object, dünya takes the accusative suffix -(y)ı, becoming dünyayı.
Does the word onun (her) refer to her desire (arzusu) or her dream (hayaliydi)?
It refers to her dream. The sentence breaks cleanly into two parts: Dünyayı gezme arzusu (The desire to travel the world) is the entire subject, and onun en büyük hayaliydi (was her biggest dream) is the predicate. If it meant 'her desire to travel the world', onun would sit at the very beginning of the sentence.
What are the exact suffixes attached to hayaliydi, and why does it use an instead of an ?