Catalan to Sesotho: rebuild agreement around noun classes
A Catalan feminine noun does not select a Sesotho noun class
Catalan nouns organise agreement through masculine and feminine gender together with number. Sesotho uses a more extensive noun-class system. Both languages have agreement, but the categories do not line up one for one. Choosing a Catalan feminine article tells the translator little about which Sesotho agreement series a translated noun requires.
Demuth’s grammatical sketch gives motho and batho for person and people, and sefate and difate for tree and trees. These pairs demonstrate changes in noun prefixes rather than the Catalan pattern of adding a plural ending. The target noun and its agreement forms need to be selected together.
The Catalan IEC illustrates regular feminine plurals with casa and cases, and taula and taules. These source changes preserve the same lexical item while marking number. In Sesotho, a corresponding change of number can switch the noun into its paired class, with consequences elsewhere in the phrase or sentence.
Adjective agreement must follow the target noun, not the source ending
The CPNL guide states that Catalan adjectives agree in gender and number with the noun they modify. A Catalan adjective can therefore contain visible agreement information that belongs to the source noun. Translating the noun while leaving that source agreement as the model for the target adjective is insufficient.
Demuth describes Sesotho noun-class agreement across adjectives, demonstratives, possessives and verbal markers. A phrase can contain several words whose forms depend on the same noun. An error in identifying the target class may consequently spread beyond the first translated word.
For a Catalan description of objects, establish which adjective modifies which noun before rebuilding the Sesotho phrase. A plural adjective describing several tables should remain associated with those tables rather than a nearby singular person. The target agreement chain preserves that association through its own categories, not through Catalan feminine-plural endings.
The class controlling a verb can differ from the class controlling a description
Demuth’s example about children liking fresh milk distinguishes agreement associated with the children from agreement associated with the milk. The subject marker belongs to the children’s class, while the descriptive material follows the milk’s class. One clause can therefore contain more than one agreement chain.
This is relevant to Catalan because its verb also carries person and number agreement, as the IEC explains, while adjectives follow their nominal controller. A translator should not treat all matching-looking endings in the source as belonging to one participant. Identify the actor or experiencer and the described item independently.
In a Catalan sentence describing people and the things they use, the Sesotho subject marker must track the people, while an adjective inside the object phrase tracks the object noun. Preserving the source meaning requires both links. The grammatical sketch uses modified Lesotho spelling and marked tones; its linguistic examples should not be mistaken for a claim that every public-facing Sesotho text follows that scholarly notation.
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