Czech to Setswana: separate the owner from the noun-class agreement
A possessive phrase answers two different questions
Czech grammar distinguishes features of a possessor from agreement with the possessed noun. Setswana likewise requires these two relationships to be kept apart, but its noun-class system does not correspond to Czech masculine, feminine, and neuter genders.
The Peace Corps grammar illustrates dikgomo tsa me, my cows: the linking form agrees with the cows, while the final expression identifies the speaker as owner. A Czech reader who treats every changing part as information about the owner can therefore misread a target phrase. Determine what is possessed before interpreting its agreement, then identify whose possession or association is being expressed.
Changing the object does not necessarily change its owner
The same reference gives different noun-class patterns for such items as a chair and chairs, a village and villages, and a name and names. Its possessive constructions use a linking expression selected in relation to the possessed noun.
For an original Czech inventory, imagine the speaker describing their chair and then their name. The owner remains the speaker, but the target possessed nouns belong to different classes. A changed linker does not establish that ownership has shifted to a colleague. Conversely, changing only the owner in a phrase should not cause the possessed item to become plural or change its lexical identity. Trace these changes independently rather than treating the entire possessive phrase as one fixed translation of Czech my.
A person’s name and an ordinary noun behave differently
The Peace Corps reference notes the use of ga in a possessive construction with a proper-name owner. It separately explains that bo- before a personal name can denote that named person together with associates, rather than necessarily several people bearing the identical name.
An original Czech message about a named host’s possessions should therefore not be interpreted as introducing a group merely because the target contains a possessive marker unfamiliar to the reader. Equally, if a target name is accompanied by the group-forming prefix discussed in the reference, it may concern the host and companions. Czech singular agreement around the written name does not by itself justify ignoring the intended group relationship. Read the marker’s construction before deciding whether a person, a group, or a possession is being described.
Subject agreement is not another statement of ownership
The grammar distinguishes subject markers from possessive linking forms even where their spellings overlap in some noun classes. Its examples include a sentence describing cows as beautiful, where noun-class agreement belongs to the predication.
A Czech description may place several similarly inflected words around one noun. In Setswana, apparently similar short forms can instead have distinct jobs in the clause and the noun phrase. A sentence saying the speaker’s chairs are attractive combines ownership with a description; it does not say that attractiveness belongs to a separate owner. First identify the possessive group, then the predicate describing it. This prevents a target agreement marker from being mistaken for an additional possessive pronoun and keeps the source distinction between whose chairs they are and what those chairs are like.
Language references