Czech to Punjabi: follow the possessed noun and rebuild the postposition phrase
The ownership marker follows the target noun’s requirements
Czech can express an ownership relationship through a genitive dependent, as in Naughton’s example jméno autora, the author’s name. Punjabi uses a construction whose linking element can itself change form. Gill and Gleason’s grammar explains that ਦਾ agrees in gender, number and case with the following noun. Recover which expression names the possessor and which names the thing possessed before selecting that marker.
This means that an ownership phrase is not translated by reading the Czech possessor’s ending and choosing a single unchanging Punjabi word for of. The Punjabi form responds to another part of the target construction. A Czech source can keep the same owner while changing from one possessed item to another, and the target linking form may change accordingly. The variation does not announce that a different person has become the owner.
Grammatical gender can differ even for the same substance
Naughton illustrates Czech voda, water, with the genitive vody. Punjabi University’s teaching page lists ਪਾਣੀ, water, among masculine nouns. Its discussion stresses that assigning gender to inanimate things is not a biological classification and that apparent patterns have exceptions. A Czech adjective or dependent form associated with the source noun cannot therefore dictate the gender of the target word for the same substance.
The teaching page also lists ਘਰ, house, and ਮੇਜ਼, table, as masculine. These examples are useful when interpreting a Punjabi noun phrase, but they do not create a rule that every inanimate noun is masculine. The same page gives feminine inanimate vocabulary too. For Czech-to-Punjabi translation, identify the actual target noun and build its surrounding agreement from that choice, rather than treating the source noun’s grammatical class as a permanent property of the object.
A postposition can require an oblique form
Gill and Gleason explain that adding particular postpositions requires the preceding noun phrase’s head to take its oblique form. The grammar distinguishes this from the direct form used without the postposition in the construction under discussion. Czech readers know that a related noun can change form with its sentence role, but the actual target pattern must be formed in Punjabi. A Czech preposition-plus-case combination does not license copying the Czech morphology or assuming the Punjabi dictionary form will always remain unchanged.
These examples are presented in Gurmukhi, matching the Punjabi variant used here. The script change is part of the translation task, while the ownership and case relationships still have to be interpreted independently. A target phrase can look quite different from its Czech source because it puts the relation after the noun and alters forms within that phrase. Compare who owns what, and what role the complete phrase performs, before judging the unfamiliar written shape.
Language references