Bodo to Serbian Latin: an owner phrase needs the case of the possession
Genitive in the source does not make the whole target phrase genitive
Narzary’s Bodo pronoun paradigm marks possession with -ni. The label genitive identifies the owner relationship within the source expression. It does not establish the grammatical role played by the entire possessed phrase in the surrounding sentence.
The Serbian SOLT lesson explains that possessive expressions decline like adjectives and take their case from their function. Its book example contains svoju knjigu in an object position. Thus, if a Bodo owner expression modifies an object, selecting a Serbian genitive merely because the Bodo possessor is genitive would confuse two levels of structure: ownership inside the phrase and the phrase’s role in the event.
Identify who owns the object before choosing svoj
The same Serbian lesson contrasts ordinary possession with svoj referring to the clause’s subject. The source relation matters more than the shared English gloss my, his, or their. A Bodo owner phrase can refer to the actor’s own item or to somebody else’s item; these are different readings even when the possession has the same name.
An original situation makes the distinction concrete: a Bodo narrator describes a student reading a book belonging to the student’s sister. The object is still a book and the reader is still the student, but a target own-possessor expression would assign ownership incorrectly. Establish the possessor before fitting the adjective’s case and agreement to the noun phrase.
An invariant source owner does not remove target noun agreement
Narzary’s Bodo personal pronouns do not distinguish a male from a female referent. Serbian, by contrast, requires the possessive adjective in the SOLT account to match the modified word’s gender and number. This agreement concerns the possession, rather than simply reproducing the owner’s sex.
A woman can own objects whose Serbian nouns have different grammatical genders. Similarly, a single owner can possess one item or several. The Bodo owner pronoun can remain the same while the Serbian adjective changes because its modified noun changes. Keep the owner identified separately from the possessed noun’s target features; otherwise, a correct choice of person can still produce an incoherent phrase.
A question can reveal gender outside the pronoun
The SOLT lesson offers the past-participle alternatives bio and bila in a question about the last time somebody attended a wedding. These illustrate a target choice that a gender-neutral Bodo second-person pronoun cannot resolve by itself. The relevant participant is the person asked about, not necessarily the person asking.
If a Bodo dialogue first identifies the addressee through a kinship term, that information can guide the Serbian wording of the later question. If it does not, the translator should not select gender by guessing from the topic of weddings. Ownership, noun agreement, and reference to the addressee are separate decisions even within a short exchange. Render the final Serbian in Latin letters consistently, but make those grammatical decisions from the Bodo relationships before treating script conversion as the final presentation step.
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