Bosnian to Maithili: possession can affect the whole clause
A genitive owner need not remain inside the noun phrase
Bosnian ownership and Maithili ownership should not be compared only by looking for a genitive marker. Kumari and Chandra document Maithili constructions in which an owner inside a genitive phrase also contributes to verbal agreement. Their example hun-kər beta refers to an honorifically treated man’s son; the accompanying verb reflects information about the owner as well as the son. A Bosnian sentence about somebody’s child may therefore require grammatical choices beyond translating the family noun.
The study limits this possessor-agreement pattern to second-person and honorific third-person owners. It does not report an unrestricted rule that every owner controls the verb. For this direction, establish who the Bosnian possessive refers to before selecting a Maithili ending. An added respectful meaning for an owner can affect the clause even when the immediate actor is that owner’s relative.
Identify own possession before selecting agreement
Alexander and Elias-Bursać distinguish third-person Bosnian svoj posao, the subject’s own work, from njegov posao referring to another male person’s work. That source distinction resolves the owner’s identity; it does not itself determine the appropriate Maithili honorific level. Keep the two questions separate: whose work is mentioned, and how that person is socially represented in the target.
Kumari and Chandra also find a subject–object asymmetry in possession constructions. A possessed noun inside a subject can contribute to agreement differently from one inside an object. Thus, a Bosnian statement about a relative doing something and a statement about someone acting on that relative are not interchangeable agreement environments in Maithili. The relationship word can stay similar while the whole clause’s morphology changes.
Gender information does not transfer uniformly
Ray’s account illustrates a male and female teacher with the same present-tense verb form. It describes Maithili gender agreement as restricted and sensitive to tense, honorific usage and style, rather than a rule extending mechanically across all sentences. A Bosnian description distinguishing male and female people should preserve that reference without forcing an invented gender ending onto every Maithili present verb.
For family references, this is different from choosing the correct relationship noun. The Bosnian lesson distinguishes maternal daidža from paternal amidža. A target sentence must retain the relevant parent’s side when that connection identifies the person, even if the Maithili verb does not display a corresponding gender contrast. Lexical family information and verbal agreement express different parts of the message.
A plural interpretation needs evidence beyond the verb
Ray’s number discussion records examples where friend and friends occur with the same verb form. For a Bosnian message about several visitors, do not infer a lost participant solely because the Maithili verb resembles a form used with one person. Read the target noun phrase and the wider reference together; the source’s headcount must be preserved without inventing a number distinction absent from that documented construction.
Bosnian measure phrases introduce another possible distraction: Alexander explains their genitive forms for quantities of countable objects or substances. That source genitive is not automatically a possessor. Before applying Maithili ownership analysis, distinguish a quantity of something from something belonging to a person. A sentence about several children and one about someone’s child require different interpretations before the target agreement can be evaluated.
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