Breakdown of O, kendi kendine avunmak için güçlü bir dürtü hissetti.
bir
a / an
o
that / he / she / it
güçlü
strong
hissetmek
to feel
için
for
kendi kendine
by itself / by oneself (also: kendi kendime, kendi kendimize)
dürtü
urge, impulse
avunmak
to console oneself
Questions & Answers about O, kendi kendine avunmak için güçlü bir dürtü hissetti.
Why doesn't the phrase kendi kendine have any personal possessive suffixes like kendi kendisi?
This is a fixed adverbial expression. To say 'by oneself' or 'on one's own' as an adverb modifying an action, Turkish uses the bare root kendi followed by kendine (root + dative case). It doesn't take possessive suffixes like kendisi here because it acts as a general adverb rather than a specific noun object.
Since avunmak already means 'to comfort oneself,' isn't adding kendi kendine redundant?
Why is the dictionary infinitive avunmak used directly before için here?
Because the person doing the comforting and the person feeling the impulse are the exact same subject: O (He). When the subject of the main clause and the için clause match, you simply use the standard infinitive (-mak / -mek). If the subjects were different, you would need a verbal noun with a possessive ending, like avunması için.
Why does hissetti have a double 's' in the middle?
This is a compound verb made from the noun his (feeling) and the helper verb etmek. Because his is an Arabic loanword, its final consonant doubles when it merges directly with a verb or a suffix starting with a vowel. You will see this same doubling in words like hak (hakkı) and sır (sırrı).
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