Divehi to Bulgarian: a short pronoun beside the verb may identify the owner
Translate possession before deciding what a nearby pronoun does
Fritz describes Divehi possessive expressions built from genitives of personal pronouns. Her standard-language paradigm includes aharenge for my. A source noun phrase can therefore explicitly identify a first-person owner even when the event itself has another actor.
The Bulgarian UD case reference illustrates Той ми взе шапката, meaning that he took my hat. The short ми appears beside the verb while contributing possessive meaning. Its position should not force a recipient reading as though the sentence necessarily meant taking a hat for the speaker.
For an original Divehi report that another person took the speaker’s hat, preserve the speaker as owner and the other person as taker. A target clause describing someone taking a hat to the speaker would introduce a different transfer relationship. The same people and object could appear while the event’s direction changes.
The Bulgarian reference also gives Той взе шапката ми with the possessive after the noun. The ownership is the same in the two examples. A word-order difference in the target is therefore not automatically a change from first-person ownership to an indirect object.
This is useful when the source possesses a clear genitive relationship but the target packages it through a short clitic. Read that clitic within its actual construction. Its proximity to the verb does not cancel the ownership established by the source or independently prove that a new recipient has been introduced.
Source dialect and owner identity still need to remain distinct
Fritz distinguishes the standard Divehi genitive pattern from southern varieties in which a personal pronoun’s oblique form more often supplies possession. The relationship can be similar while the source morphology differs. A bare-looking southern owner expression should not simply be deleted because it lacks the expected standard ending.
For an original southern Divehi account of an axe belonging to the speaker, identify that ownership from the documented source construction. The Bulgarian target need not reproduce the source case form, but it must retain whose axe is being discussed. Morphological unfamiliarity is not evidence that the possessor is absent.
The Bulgarian reference additionally distinguishes nominative, accusative and dative personal pronouns. Similar short forms can participate in different grammatical relationships. The correct reading follows from the event and construction, rather than from translating every case label into one fixed preposition.
Imagine a source exchange distinguishing my hat from a hat given to me. The first supplies ownership; the second supplies a transfer destination. A target version that uses one ambiguous compressed expression for both may obscure a distinction the Divehi text explicitly makes.
The source-to-target decision is consequently about assigning roles: who owns the item, who acts upon it and whether anyone receives it. Bulgarian can express ownership with a short form near the verb, while Divehi can express it through a pronominal case form. Preserve the relationship while allowing its position and grammatical realization to change.
Language references