Breakdown of Kütleyi inceleyerek çökeltiden ibaret olduğunu anladılar.
olmak
to be
anlamak
to understand
incelemek
to examine
ibaret
composed of / consisting of
Questions & Answers about Kütleyi inceleyerek çökeltiden ibaret olduğunu anladılar.
How do we use the main grammar point, çökeltiden ibaret, in this sentence?
The word ibaret means "consisting of" or "made up entirely of." It is a postposition that always pairs with a noun in the ablative case (-den/-dan). Here, çökelti (sediment) takes -den, forming çökeltiden ibaret (consisting of sediment).
Why do we need the verb olmak here, and why is it in the form olduğunu?
İbaret is not a verb itself, so it needs a helper verb like olmak (to be) to act as a predicate. Because this phrase is part of a "that" clause (they understood that...), olmak takes the -dık nominalizer. Olduğu means "its being," and the final -nu adds the accusative case because the entire clause is the direct object of anladılar (they understood).
How do we know the sentence means "they understood that it consists of sediment" if there is no separate word for "it"?
The "it" is built into olduğunu. The first -u suffix on olduğu (right before the buffer -n- and the accusative -u) is the 3rd person singular possessive suffix. It literally translates to "its being consisting of sediment," logically referring back to kütleyi (the mass) from the first part of the sentence.