Catalan to Norwegian: possessive agreement can hide a different owner distinction
The ending can describe the possession rather than its owner
Catalan possessives and Norwegian possessives share an important feature: some forms agree with the noun for the thing possessed. That resemblance is useful, but incomplete. The languages divide their possessive paradigms differently, and Catalan gender does not select the Norwegian gender of a translated noun.
NTNU illustrates Norwegian huset mitt, my house, with a neuter possessive. A Catalan source describing the writer’s home must therefore be rebuilt around the target noun’s gender. Carrying a source feminine ending across as a Norwegian feminine form would confuse grammatical agreement with the real-world object being described.
The Catalan IEC gives la meva barca as an example of a possessive with an article. Here meva agrees with the noun for the boat. The source tells the translator that the owner is the speaker, but its feminine agreement is not a separate statement that the speaker is female. Norwegian first-person possession likewise does not require deciding the speaker’s sex.
A third-person possessive may require recovering an owner
The resemblance weakens in the third person. Catalan seu and its agreement forms do not distinguish a male owner from a female owner. The IEC explains la seva taula through an equivalent phrase naming Gemma as owner: the relationship is recoverable from context rather than from the feminine possessive ending alone.
NTNU contrasts Norwegian hans and hennes, while noting that these possessives do not change with the possessed noun’s gender or number. If Catalan seva refers to a man’s possession, selecting a Norwegian female-owner expression because seva looks feminine would assign the possession to someone else.
The practical question is therefore different for first-person and third-person source phrases. With first-person possession, establish the target noun’s agreement class. With a third-person reference, also identify which person owns the item. A Catalan paragraph mentioning several people may leave that relation to discourse; Norwegian wording should reflect the intended owner without manufacturing evidence from Catalan agreement.
Position and noun form must change together
NTNU presents both faren min and min far for my father. In the first arrangement the noun is definite; in the second it is indefinite. Moving the possessive is therefore not simply moving one word while leaving the noun untouched. A Catalan article before a possessive cannot be transferred independently of the Norwegian arrangement.
This differs from treating the source as an ordered list of article, possessive and noun. Catalan commonly places an article before a prenominal possessive, whereas these Norwegian alternatives distribute definiteness through the noun construction. The target can preserve the same family relationship with a visibly different structure.
A further distinction is whether the third-person owner is the clause’s subject. NTNU uses sin and its agreement forms for that relationship, contrasting them with a different person’s possession. Catalan seva alone does not encode this opposition. A reference to someone contacting their own dentist and a reference to contacting another woman’s dentist therefore require different Norwegian analyses, even when the Catalan possessive has the same visible form.
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