Catalan to Fijian: an ordinary plural can hide both group size and listener membership
Two participants can require a more specific target choice
Catalan plural pronouns can refer to two participants or a larger group without changing into a dedicated dual form. The Boumaa Fijian paradigm presented by Mary Dalrymple distinguishes singular, dual, paucal and plural subject pronouns. Translating a Catalan plural may therefore require a more precise group analysis.
Dalrymple lists erau for third-person dual and eratou for a small third-person group. A source referring to two people differs from a source referring to several people, even if Catalan uses the same ordinary plural pronoun for both.
In a Catalan account of a meeting between two named participants, the names can provide the count even when a later sentence uses only a plural verb. The target should preserve the pair rather than treat every source plural as an unspecified large group.
If the source introduces another participant later, reassess the reference. A plural pronoun may continue to refer to the original pair or expand to include the newcomer. The lexical mention of another person does not automatically change every subsequent group pronoun’s membership.
We can include or exclude the person reading the message
The cited Boumaa paradigm distinguishes first-person inclusive dual etaru from exclusive dual ’eirau. Both involve two participants, but the inclusive form includes the addressee while the exclusive form does not. Counting two people alone cannot choose between them.
A Catalan source can say that we will meet without independently indicating through the pronoun whether the recipient belongs to that we. A preceding invitation or reference to a named companion may establish the intended membership.
If the source describes the writer and recipient travelling together, an exclusive target can wrongly leave the recipient outside the plan. If it describes the writer travelling with somebody else, an inclusive choice can wrongly turn the recipient into a traveller. The departure activity can remain correctly translated while the practical invitation changes.
This distinction is separate from courtesy. Catalan vós and vostè concern the address relationship and have their own agreement patterns. A courteous source form referring to one recipient does not independently establish whether that recipient belongs to a later first-person group.
Possession can identify a group without counting its members
The IEC explains that Catalan possessives agree in number with the possessed noun. Els nostres fills, our children, therefore supplies plural information about children; the possessive does not independently specify how many people form the owner group.
When translating a Catalan message about something shared by the writer’s group, distinguish the number of possessions from the number of owners. A singular item can belong to two people, while several items can belong to a larger group. Neither count can be inferred mechanically from the other.
The Boumaa subject-pronoun forms cited here are not a complete possessive paradigm, so they should not simply be inserted into every target owner expression. Their value for this direction is to expose reference questions that Catalan can leave implicit. Establish which people act, how many belong to that group and whether the recipient is among them before interpreting the Fijian sentence. These observations are scoped to the cited Boumaa analysis rather than asserted identically for every Fijian variety.
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