Bangla to Georgian: the same person can receive different case marking with different verbs
A Bangla person ending is only part of the participant information
The University of Texas describes Bangla verbs as combining root, aspect, tense, and person, with a conjugated form capable of making a clause without an overt subject. In translating such a clause, identifying the person is necessary but does not by itself select the Georgian verbal construction.
Nicholas Olson’s study of Georgian dative experiencer verbs describes polypersonal agreement: a verb can carry information about more than one participant. Its account also emphasizes that Georgian case patterns vary with verb class and tense. A translator cannot safely take the form of the Bangla subject as a permanent instruction for how the corresponding Georgian noun must be marked.
Feeling something is not always constructed like performing an action
Olson discusses Georgian constructions in which an experiencer receives dative marking and the theme receives nominative marking. These include certain verbs of physical or mental experience and possession. The labels describe the relationship selected by the Georgian verb; dative marking does not automatically mean that the person is merely a recipient being acted upon.
This distinction matters when several Bangla clauses describe one person first doing something and then experiencing a feeling. The referent stays constant, but the Georgian grammatical treatment can change with the predicate. Preserving that person does not mean preserving one case ending across both clauses. Equally, the study’s description is not a rule that every Georgian feeling word has the same construction.
Respectful you can have plural-shaped Georgian grammar
Dimock, Bhattacharji, and Chatterjee distinguish Bangla আপনি from ordinary তুমি and intimate তুই. The Peace Corps Georgian course separately identifies შენ for familiar singular address and თქვენ for plural or formal address. A Georgian plural-shaped address form can therefore refer to just one respected Bangla listener.
The course contrasts familiar როგორ ხარ? with formal or plural როგორ ხართ?, both asking how someone is. The final consonant contributes to the target distinction. Translating a respectful Bangla greeting with the familiar Georgian pattern would lose a relationship signaled in the source; interpreting every formal Georgian ending as proof of several listeners would introduce the opposite error.
Names are introduced with a construction of their own
The Peace Corps meeting lesson gives მქვია for my name is and contrasts რა გქვია? with formal or plural რა გქვიათ? for asking a name. These expressions show why a Bangla possessive question about someone’s name need not produce a Georgian noun phrase assembled word by word from your and name.
The Bangla course gives ordinary তোমার and respectful আপনার as possessive forms. In a Georgian name question, the respectful relationship is instead visible in the selected verbal expression. This is a concrete instance of the wider participant issue: maintaining the owner or listener’s identity does not require maintaining the source’s possessive structure. The target can express that same relationship through a verb, while still distinguishing familiarity from respectful address.
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