Bulgarian to Hausa: the small words that carry an event and its participants
A Bulgarian verb ending becomes a Hausa preverbal form
Bulgarian Пиха чай means “They drank tea.” The ending of пиха helps identify the subject even without те. Hausa Sun sha shayi expresses the same basic event, but sun precedes the verb and carries the subject and completive information. It is not an optional equivalent of an emphatic Bulgarian pronoun. Removing it because Bulgarian omitted те removes part of the Hausa clause structure.
Compare the question “What did they drink?” Hausa Me suka sha? uses suka rather than sun. The changed subject form belongs to a construction questioning a preceding element. Bulgarian Какво пиха? does not require an equivalent change of the personal ending. Consequently, a Hausa translation can need a different small word even when Bulgarian keeps exactly the same verb form. The question word and the event cannot be translated as unrelated pieces.
A completed viewpoint is not a calendar date
Bulgarian distinguishes tense and verbal aspect through several interacting forms. Hausa completive and continuative constructions divide up event meanings differently. A completive with an action verb often reports a past event, but the same construction with a state can have a present interpretation. Mapping every Bulgarian past form to a Hausa “past tense” label therefore obscures the actual choice.
In the tea example, the continuative has Suna shan shayi, “They are drinking tea.” Both the preverbal form and the following verbal expression differ from the completed-event example. A Bulgarian present such as пият can describe what is happening or a recurring practice. The surrounding time expression determines which reading needs to be made explicit in Hausa; the Bulgarian present ending alone does not settle that distinction.
The person addressed may need a new gender distinction
Bulgarian ти and ordinary second-person finite verb endings do not distinguish a male from a female addressee. Hausa does distinguish them in several pronoun series. UCLA illustrates the object form ki in Zan taimake ki, “I will help you,” addressed to a female. The Bulgarian Ще ти помогна does not reveal that information by itself. Here a suitable Hausa form depends on who receives the help, not on the speaker’s gender.
An independent Hausa pronoun is also different from a tense-marking subject form. In nominal identification, the grammar uses independent forms, while finite verbal constructions select from their own subject series. Treating every occurrence of Bulgarian “I” or “you” as one invariant Hausa word would confuse these two functions.
Possession has two separate participants
Bulgarian мой, моя, мое, and мои vary with the thing possessed. Hausa independent possessives likewise distinguish the gender of the possession: nawa and tawa both mean “mine,” but refer to masculine and feminine possessions respectively. Neither form says that its owner is male or female. The parallel is useful, but Bulgarian noun gender cannot supply Hausa noun gender automatically.
Bulgarian has a neuter category that Hausa lacks. A Bulgarian neuter noun therefore needs its Hausa lexical equivalent before possessive agreement can be determined. This is a different decision from choosing a gendered second-person pronoun: one concerns the possessed object’s grammatical class, the other the person being addressed.
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