Bosnian to Belarusian: shared case names do not identify every preposition’s meaning
Accusative can identify a destination rather than a direct object
The Bosnian case-marking study distinguishes direction and location with relevant two-way prepositions. Its analysis shows why a phrase indicating where something ends up is different from one locating it in an existing setting. Merely recognizing the preposition does not recover the whole source relation.
Marchant’s Belarusian accusative chapter likewise includes destination uses, such as ў лес, into the forest. A Bosnian goal phrase can therefore have a target accusative construction without being the verb’s direct object. The destination and the participant undergoing the action are separate elements, even when both receive the same case label in a grammatical description.
The target preposition can express several unrelated-looking relations
Marchant illustrates Belarusian на with uses involving placement, direction, frequency, and dimensions. His examples include Два разы на тыдзень, twice a week. The construction expresses a rate of occurrence, not a destination on which something physically lands.
This is useful when translating a Bosnian schedule. Establish whether the source phrase gives a meeting place, a destination, or how often an event occurs. Choosing a Belarusian preposition from a shared spatial gloss could preserve familiar vocabulary while changing the schedule into a location description. The source case and the event’s temporal interpretation need to be considered together.
A duration need not introduce a new affected participant
The Belarusian chapter also illustrates a period of time in accusative without a preceding preposition, as in living with people for a month. The time expression measures how long the situation lasts; it is not a person or object acted on by the verb.
A Bosnian passage can mention both the people accompanying somebody and the period they remain together. Preserve those two relationships separately in Belarusian. A target time phrase with an object-like case ending should not lead the translator to reinterpret the source month as a direct object. Similarly, the people named in a company phrase should not disappear merely because the target construction already contains another accusative expression.
Agreement must be rebuilt for the target possession
The Bosnian study describes agreement within noun phrases in gender, number, and case. Marchant’s Belarusian possessive tables also show inflection, including мой, мая, маё, and мае across the relevant nominative forms. A shared general principle of agreement does not make the two languages’ endings interchangeable.
For an original Bosnian account about a traveler returning to their own belongings after a month away, identify the destination, the time period, and the possessions as distinct phrases. Determine which expressions modify the possessions and construct their Belarusian forms with the target noun. A case-bearing source word can provide a useful relationship clue, but its ending cannot simultaneously select the target preposition, establish the time reading, and generate the entire possessive paradigm. Those decisions must converge on the same recovered Bosnian event while following the construction chosen in Belarusian.
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