Divehi to Dogri: an adjective may need agreement that the source never supplied
A changed target ending need not change the description
Gnanadesikan describes Divehi adjectives as not inflecting for case and usually not inflecting for number. Sawhney’s Dogri account, by contrast, identifies a declinable class of adjectives whose endings vary with the head noun’s gender, number and case. The target can therefore require an inflectional decision even when the source property word remains unchanged.
The Dogri examples include t͡ʃəŋɡ-ɑ with a singular boy and t͡ʃəŋɡ-i with a singular girl. These do not describe two unrelated kinds of goodness: their forms fit the nouns they modify. A Divehi translation should preserve the intended property while allowing Dogri agreement, rather than choosing one invariant target form merely because the source adjective was invariant.
Some source adjectives do distinguish a plural
The Divehi grammar nevertheless lists exceptions to its usual lack of number inflection, including boḍu, big, and plural boḍeti. This qualification matters because a reader cannot safely discard every source adjective difference as irrelevant spelling variation. It may provide evidence that multiple entities are being described.
That evidence still does not determine all Dogri endings. Identify the target noun and whether the selected adjective belongs to the declinable class. Sawhney does not say that every Dogri adjective inflects. A source plural contrast and a target agreement pattern can cooperate in preserving the group without being morphological equivalents.
Source human reference does not supply grammatical gender for objects
Gnanadesikan distinguishes human and nonhuman noun classes in Divehi, without a sex-based grammatical gender system. Dogri nouns, however, have masculine and feminine grammatical gender. Sawhney explicitly gives exceptions to a simple ending-based guess: rain is feminine despite its final vowel, while water is masculine despite a different apparently suggestive ending.
For a Divehi description of weather or water, determine the Dogri noun’s gender rather than transferring a source classification based on humanness. Neither object is a person, but that does not make their target agreement identical. A translation can choose the correct everyday noun and still mishandle the associated adjective if it treats nonhuman as a third target gender category.
A manner expression can introduce another agreement decision
Sawhney also documents Dogri manner expressions ending in -ɑ that inflect for gender and number, illustrating different forms with Ram and Rani. A source instruction to perform an action slowly therefore needs attention to the actual target construction; agreement is not confined to the noun’s immediately adjacent descriptive word.
Keep the layers separate when translating a Divehi instruction containing both an object description and a manner expression. The object’s noun phrase may require one agreement choice, while the person performing the action can matter to the selected Dogri manner form. Source adjective number, target noun gender and target actor-related agreement are different clues. Resolving each in its own construction preserves the message without mechanically adding endings to every target modifier or assuming that an unchanged Divehi form settles the whole sentence. This guide follows the northern and standard Malé Divehi grammar’s scope.
Language references