Danish to Upper Sorbian: possessive agreement must not change the owner
Danish distinguishes the possessor from the possessed noun’s agreement
Sproget.dk explains that Danish hans and hendes do not inflect, while possessive forms such as min, mit, and mine agree with the following noun. A Danish-to-Upper-Sorbian translation must consequently establish which information identifies the owner and which information belongs to the possessed item.
The Upper Sorbian documentation explicitly distinguishes possessor features from agreement with the possessed noun in its treatment of possessives. Its examples include mój for my and nanowy for father’s. A changed target ending can concern the item being possessed without changing who owns it.
For an original Danish account of a parent’s belongings, the same parent can own objects belonging to different target grammatical genders. The Upper Sorbian possessive may adapt to those nouns. Interpreting every such change as a new father or mother would alter the source’s reference.
A subject-linked Danish possessive needs the relationship preserved
The Danish guidance explains sin as referring to the sentence’s subject and distinguishes it from a personal genitive that can be understood as referring to another owner. Upper Sorbian documentation separately identifies reflexive swój among its possessive forms.
For an original Danish scene, compare a visitor taking their own bag with a visitor taking another person’s bag. The two events differ in ownership even though the actor and action may be the same. The target must preserve the subject–possessor relationship rather than select a form only because it resembles a general translation of his or her.
This also prevents a misleading reconstruction of the target: a possessive form agreeing with a bag-related noun does not independently reveal the owner’s natural sex. Recover the possessor from the source clause and interpret the target’s agreement as agreement with the relevant noun where that is its grammatical function.
A later sentence may refer to the bag without repeating the visitor. Retain the ownership established by the source instead of treating a changed grammatical role of the bag as evidence that ownership has transferred.
Two possessed objects and two possessors are different counts
Upper Sorbian distinguishes singular, dual, and plural across nouns and agreeing words, whereas the Danish overview describes singular and plural nominal number. The target can therefore require a separate real-pair interpretation that ordinary Danish plural marking alone does not supply.
For an original Danish message, compare one visitor’s two bags with two visitors sharing one bag. Both contain a pair somewhere in the situation, but the pair belongs to different participants. A correct Upper Sorbian translation must not let dual-related agreement on the possessed items imply two owners.
If the Danish passage identifies three bags later, the count of items changes without necessarily changing the number of visitors. Conversely, introducing another visitor does not automatically make every object plural. Interpret the noun phrase’s two levels independently.
The practical reading follows owner identity, subject-linked possession, and the possessed item’s number through the sentence. Upper Sorbian can express those relationships through several interacting forms, but their visible changes should preserve the same ownership and actual counts established in Danish.
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