14 Comments
I am confused about the use of plurals. It has been discussed elsewhere that nouns can be singular or plura (without the ler/lar ending). Ben kitap okurim can be I read a book, or I read books. Why then can yumurtayi in this sentence not be the eggs?
That's only true when they are not specific/definite objects.
"the" makes things definite, that's why we might use accusative case for it depending on the verb, and there is accusative for both singular and plural objects.Read this.
In English, each of these nouns could be either a singular count noun or a mass noun. What are the possibilities in Turkish?
Turkish doesn't really have those concepts :) There are no (un)countable nouns or mass nouns. You can say "sular" even in some contexts :)
Thanks, that's very sensible. I take it that ‘sular’ is the plural of ‘su’? (Even in English, you can say ‘waters’ as a noun in some contexts, such referring to glasses of water or bodies of water, but then we think of the singular as having a slightly different sense from the usual one.)
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Meyvey- i vs. Yumurtay-ı !! When will I use the ending -i and in which case -ı ??
If the accusative case is used to show definiteness, is it possible to use it in subjects? Is there any kind of marker for definiteness in subjects?
Subject never never never use the accusative. It is only for direct objects. There is no way to show definiteness in subjects other than context sometimes. :)
"and" connecting two items does not need a comma. Commas are used in lists. The Oxford comma is used before "and" in a list of items, but it is not required. Here you have one verb for two objects and you would not split the verb from one of its objects. "I eat the fruit and the egg. You would also not split the subject "I" from the verb. "I eat the fruit and I eat the egg." is a valid sentence, but not a translation of this Turkish sentence.
Whenever a phrase only has one subject the pronoun can be omitted but when there are 2 subjects in a sentence the pronoun cannot ex: ''I eat food, he does not eat food'' would that be "Ben yemek yerim, o yemek yer değil" or "Ben yemek yerim, yemek yer değil" or "yemek yerim, o yemek yer değil" I hope this makes sense. Thank you!
The first, you must state both subjects.
Also, your grammar was wrong. It should read, "Ben yemek yerim, o yeme yemez" :)
