Divehi to Samoan: possession categories cannot be transferred from the hand construction
Similar labels can conceal different grammatical choices
A Divehi statement about having something can use a genitive possessor with an existential verb, or an idiomatic locative expression involving the hand. Gnanadesikan associates the former with such relationships as family members, houses and personal characteristics, and the latter with alienable possessions including money and movable items. These observations help interpret the source, but they do not supply a ready-made rule for choosing Samoan possessive marking.
Samoan distinguishes possessive relationships through a and o genitives. Hopperdietzel and Alexiadou discuss o with inalienable relationships, including characteristic properties and part–whole relations, and a with alienable or initiated possession and transitory relationships. The terminology resembles the Divehi description, yet the grammatical distinctions are expressed in different constructions. A translation should identify the particular relationship before selecting a target marker, rather than treating a source phrase containing a hand as an automatic instruction to use a.
An idiomatic hand need not remain a body part
The Divehi expression atugai literally refers to being in the hand, but in a possessive sentence it need not place the item in someone’s physical grip. The grammar gives a money example that does not require the cash even to be with its owner at that moment. If the Samoan sentence describes an actual hand and its contents, it may introduce a physical location instead of preserving the source assertion of possession.
This becomes especially important when a financial message contrasts available resources with property or family relationships. The difference between the two Divehi possessive patterns can help the reader understand those relations, but it does not license moving the hand metaphor into every target noun phrase. Translate the fact that someone has resources when that is the source meaning; retain bodily location only when the passage actually asserts it. A metaphorical possession construction and an anatomical noun are not interchangeable translation units.
Neither ownership nor body-part vocabulary settles every Samoan form
The Samoan study explicitly notes exceptions to a simple alienable–inalienable classification. Its discussion of beard illustrates that body-part vocabulary does not obey an exceptionless rule assigning all such nouns to one possessive pattern. Some nouns can also occur with different genitive marking depending on the relationship involved. A source noun’s broad category is consequently evidence to investigate, not a complete target grammar.
There is a second reason to resist mechanical copying of genitives. Divehi uses genitive constructions beyond ordinary ownership, including spatial and descriptive relationships. Samoan likewise uses genitive marking in event nominalizations, where it interacts with participant interpretation. A phrase about someone’s action is not necessarily a claim that they own an object or a recording. When the source has a possessive-looking relation, establish whether it describes a belonging, an intrinsic characteristic, a location or participation in an event. That interpretation determines which Samoan construction needs investigation; matching the general label possession cannot do the work by itself.
Language references