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Cats are non-personal beings. In that case you have to say 'Kediler balık yer.' But i must warn you that people often say 'Kediler balık yerler.' even though it is wrong gramatically. Many people don't even know such a rule.
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In Turkish, does 'kediler' exclusively mean 'the cats', as in a specific set of cats? Or can it be interpreted generally, like the English phrase 'cats eat fish'?
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In Turkish, like in English, is the plural for fish the same as the singular? Or would it be "balıkler" ("fishes") and/or "balıklerı" for accusative "the "fishes""? :-)
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no, in Turkish plural of everything her ler/lar at the end. For plural that would be "Kediler balıkları yer"
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I think this question still looks unanswered, so asking again: "Kediler" just implies the plural sense and not accusative, hence it should only mean "Cats" and not "The cats". If it were "Kedileri" then we could say "The cats". Please correct if I am wrong anywhere.
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The definite accusative ending can only be used if the word (or phrase) is a direct object in the first place. Since "kediler" is the subject of the sentence you cannot use the definite accusative here. Turkish doesn't have articles or equivalent suffixes with the same function (the definite accusative is both definite and a direct object, thus it is not the same), so you need to infer from context whether "kediler" refers to specific cats or cats in general. At least that's how I understand it so far.
