Bosnian to Fijian: a plural group can require a more precise participant count
More than one is not always the final number decision
Columbia’s Bosnian teaching text describes Selma and her friends through plural reference and group activities. The source identifies a collection, but a plural noun phrase need not state its exact size. A Fijian translator may need information elsewhere in the passage before selecting the target personal form.
Mary Dalrymple’s number overview presents the Boumaa Fijian subject-pronoun system with singular, dual, paucal, and plural distinctions. Its third-person examples include erau for two and eratou for a small group. These are variety-specific documented forms, not evidence that every source Bosnian plural should receive one undifferentiated target they.
An explicitly named pair differs from an open-ended friendship group
The Bosnian lesson’s narratives sometimes name participants individually and elsewhere refer more broadly to friends. Those descriptions provide different evidence about group membership. Two named participants acting together can establish a pair, while a person and their friends need not tell the reader how many friends there are.
For an original Bosnian account where two sisters enter a room and their friends later join them, retain the change in membership before selecting Fijian reference. Continuing to use a dual after additional people join would describe the wrong group. Starting with a larger-group form could likewise erase the initially specified pair. The source narrative supplies that difference through its sequence of introductions.
The listener’s inclusion is separate from the group’s size
The Boumaa paradigm also distinguishes inclusive and exclusive first-person forms. Dalrymple lists etaru and ’eirau in the dual entries of those two series. The first-person choice therefore involves whose participation is represented, alongside how many people the expression identifies.
A Bosnian speaker describing an activity performed with the person listening represents a different pair from the same speaker describing an activity with an absent friend. Both can involve exactly two people. Selecting a dual form is consequently only part of the transfer: the target must also retain whether the addressee belongs to the source group. Do not infer listener inclusion merely because the source addresses that person warmly or invites a response.
Agreement on a description does not supply an unstated headcount
The Columbia lesson explains that Bosnian colors agree with the noun in gender, number, and case. This provides grammatical evidence about the description’s noun phrase, but it does not convert an ordinary plural into an exact count of two or a precise small group.
If a Bosnian narrative describes several participants through a plural adjective, recover its actual antecedent from the people already introduced. The adjective’s plural agreement can confirm that a single individual is not intended, yet still leave a choice among target number categories unresolved. Conversely, a Fijian form that coherently describes two people does not prove that the Bosnian source limited the group to two. Retain the source’s established membership and distinguish explicit counts from a broad plural description. The Boumaa system makes that distinction visible where a source plural expression alone may leave it open.
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