Bodo to Basque: case endings identify different relationships in the two languages
A marked Bodo object does not become a Basque agent
Krishna Boro’s study of Bodo object marking relates overt marking to several properties, including specificity, human reference and discourse prominence. Some object classes require marking while others permit variation. Basque instead distinguishes an ergative-marked participant from an absolutive one in its structural case system. Do not interpret the mere presence of a Bodo ending as a reason to put the corresponding Basque noun into the ergative.
The UPV/EHU grammar identifies Basque ergative -k and an unmarked absolutive. For a Bodo clause describing someone affecting another person, first establish who acts and who is affected. A prominently marked Bodo person can still be the object. Assigning Basque case by the visual prominence of the source noun, rather than its role in the event, risks exchanging the two participants.
Boro’s account also cautions against reducing every marked Bodo object to one English-style definite reading: several referential and discourse factors contribute to its prominence. In translation, retain an established individual as that individual, but do not invent a contrast such as this person rather than someone else solely because an ending is present. Basque case selection and the expression of discourse contrast are related interpretive tasks, not identical conversions.
Possessor prefixes are not Basque verbal agreement
Bharadwaj’s Kokrajhar Bodo fieldwork gives aŋ-ni a.pʰa for my father and bi-ni bi.pʰa for his or her father within examples about arriving. The prefix attached to the kinship noun identifies the possessor. Basque auxiliary morphology can instead register several clause participants. A source person marker inside the family noun must not be mistaken for proof that the same person performed the action.
This matters if someone reports that their father arrived: the father is the arriving participant, while the speaker is the possessor in the family relationship. A Basque translation must organize the clause around the arrival and preserve whose father is meant. Copying the first-person value from the Bodo kinship prefix onto a Basque arriving subject would change the event into the speaker’s own arrival.
Negative arrival changes Basque auxiliary placement
Laka’s Basque grammar contrasts emakumea etorri da, the woman has arrived, with emakumea ez da etorri, the woman has not arrived. In this main-clause construction, negation comes with a different auxiliary position. A Bodo arrival report rendered negatively in Basque can therefore require more than adding one negative word to the affirmative target. The changed order is a feature of the target construction, not a reversal of who arrived.
The Bodo fieldwork examples also distinguish neutral nɰŋ from formal nɰŋtʰaŋ while retaining the same second-person prefix on father. Respect and possession consequently need separate interpretation even before the Basque sentence is assembled. If the source respectfully addresses someone about their father’s nonarrival, the target must retain that family relationship and negative event; a formal source pronoun supplies neither a new subject nor an instruction to preserve the affirmative Basque auxiliary order.
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