Bodo to Upper Sorbian: a reflexive-looking form does not always mean oneself
The Bodo source can identify a genuinely reflected action
Narzary describes Bodo reflexive constructions in which the subject and object refer to the same entity. The article’s mirror examples distinguish seeing oneself from seeing another person. That is a participant relationship, not merely the presence of a word broadly glossed self.
The Upper Sorbian UD grammar distinguishes reflexive so and sej by grammatical case, and records several functions for reflexive clitics. A Bodo reflected action must therefore receive the target construction appropriate to its actual predicate and object relationship. A single universal replacement for the source reflexive would ignore those target functions.
A target reflexive clitic can belong to the verb itself
The Upper Sorbian documentation gives hodźić so, to fit, as an inherently reflexive verb. Its clitic is part of the lexical construction; the example is not an instruction to imagine a person fitting themselves as a separate affected object.
This matters when a Bodo source describes suitability or another state whose chosen Upper Sorbian predicate contains such material. The target may legitimately display so even without a source action returning to its actor. Conversely, that target clitic does not prove that an ordinary Bodo pronoun should be reinterpreted as oneself. Interpret the event independently of the target construction’s appearance.
A group acting on itself differs from people acting on one another
Narzary distinguishes singular and plural reflexive reference in Bodo, including a form for themselves. Recovering a plural participant is necessary, but it does not make a reflected action automatically reciprocal. Several people can each look at themselves without looking at one another.
The Upper Sorbian documentation also distinguishes reflexive and reciprocal object functions. A Bodo description of self-directed actions must consequently preserve who affects whom. Do not infer a reciprocal exchange merely because there are several people, and do not turn an actual exchange between them into separate self-directed events. The target predicate and its clitic must fit the recovered relationship.
The exact count can introduce another target requirement
Narzary describes Bodo number as singular versus plural without a grammatical dual. Upper Sorbian, by contrast, distinguishes singular, dual, and plural across several word classes. A Bodo plural account may therefore need an exact count recovered from its wider wording before the target agreement can be selected.
If two people are involved in a source mirror scene, their number and their reflected relationship are separate facts. Dual agreement does not mean that they look at each other, while a reflexive clitic does not establish that there are two of them. In this direction, preserve participant membership, exact number where known, and the difference between a reflected action and a lexically reflexive predicate. Matching the source and target on a general label such as self cannot make those distinctions for the translator.
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