Catalan to Belarusian: possessive agreement gains a case dimension
Both languages vary possessives, but Belarusian varies them further
Catalan possessives change with the gender and number of the noun they accompany. Belarusian possessives also agree with the noun, but their paradigms additionally distinguish case. A familiar agreement principle therefore does not mean that one target possessive form can be reused wherever the same Catalan owner is mentioned.
The IEC’s la meva barca illustrates feminine singular source agreement. Christian Cardell Marchant gives Belarusian мой, мая and маё among first-person possessive forms. Those target forms identify the same first-person owner while agreeing with different noun genders.
For a Catalan phrase describing the writer’s item, the Belarusian noun’s gender determines its target agreement. The source noun’s gender is evidence about Catalan structure, not an instruction to choose a feminine or masculine target ending independently of the Belarusian lexical noun.
The phrase’s role then adds another requirement. Marchant’s paradigm distinguishes feminine nominative мая from accusative маю. A change between these target forms need not mean that the owner changed; it can mean that the same possessed item occupies a different grammatical role.
Plural possessions are not the same as plural owners
Catalan llur is particularly informative in a formal source because it identifies a plural owner. The IEC contrasts llur llibre with llurs llibres: the owner is plural in both, while the number of items differs. A translation must retain these two independent counts.
Marchant describes Belarusian іхны as a third-person plural-owner possessive that declines like an adjective, alongside other ways of expressing third-person possession. Its target ending can change with the possessed noun without making the owners singular.
If a Catalan source mentions two people and their shared document, neither the source singular llibre nor a target singular agreement form reduces the owner group to one person. Conversely, plural books need not belong to several people. The antecedent and the noun phrase’s agreement answer different questions.
The IEC notes that llur is especially associated with northern usage and very formal registers. Its presence should not be interpreted as a different ownership relationship merely because a reader is more familiar with seu. Register affects form choice, while the plural-owner interpretation remains consequential.
Reflexive ownership requires locating the source antecedent
Marchant includes Belarusian свой, roughly one’s own, in its possessive system. A Catalan third-person possessive does not automatically establish whether the item belongs to the clause’s subject or another participant. Before choosing a reflexive target expression, identify the intended source owner.
Consider a source account in which one person discusses another person’s work. A target possessive pointing back to the subject can falsely attribute the work to the speaker of the reported action. Both alternatives may agree with the target noun, so agreement alone cannot expose the changed ownership.
The IEC also describes Catalan possessives used after the noun, including indefinite expressions such as un amic meu. Moving from a prenominal to a postnominal source possessive does not itself change who the friend is related to. Belarusian should preserve that relationship while selecting its own noun phrase and case forms. The useful comparison is between owner, item and grammatical role, not merely between visually similar possessive endings.
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