Divehi to Tigrinya: a final verb does not make every relationship word follow its noun
Shared clause order is only part of the structure
Divehi and Tigrinya can both place the main verb after its arguments, but that similarity does not settle the arrangement inside every phrase. Divehi expresses many relationships with case endings and postpositional expressions. Gebregziabher’s Tigrinya dissertation, by contrast, emphasizes that Tigrinya prepositions precede their complements despite the language’s predominantly verb-final order. Preserving the source noun-then-relation sequence would therefore misassemble an otherwise plausible target clause.
The Tigrinya word mɨs introduces accompaniment, while kab expresses a source relationship. Their place before the associated phrase matters. If a Divehi message places a relationship expression after a noun, keeping that order in Tigrinya is not a way of preserving emphasis; it can violate the target construction. Identify the relation first, then build its phrase separately from the decision to leave the main verb at the end.
With can mean a companion or a means
Divehi’s ablative/instrumental ending can indicate a source or a means, but not accompaniment in the sense of being with someone. Its sociative contributes accompaniment or a related association. An English intermediary that renders both as with can erase this distinction before the target is generated. A translation about travelling with a companion should not become one about a tool used to travel, and a means expression should not introduce another traveller.
Tigrinya’s attested mɨs-anna means with us. It supplies a target example of accompaniment without implying an instrument. The relevant choice cannot be made from the source ending’s English gloss alone. Establish whether the phrase contributes an accompanying participant, an origin, or a means of accomplishing the action; then select the corresponding Tigrinya relationship rather than reusing one preposition for every occurrence of English with.
A human source can lose the source body-part wording
Divehi places a further restriction on ordinary locative and ablative/instrumental marking with human nouns. It can express from father through a genitive phrase involving side or hand instead of directly attaching the usual source ending to father. Those intermediate nouns make the source construction grammatical. They do not necessarily claim that something physically emerges from a hand or from a particular side of a body.
The Tigrinya translation should preserve the actual source relationship, not automatically reproduce those support nouns. Conversely, when a body part is literally relevant, removing it would erase information. This is a construction-level interpretation problem: determine whether the Divehi phrase is idiomatic human-source marking or a literal bodily description. The target’s preposition then has to be built with its own complement requirements. Gebregziabher also distinguishes full directional prepositions from reduced variants when definite determiners follow, so choosing the general meaning from is only the beginning of forming the phrase correctly. A correct final verb cannot compensate for an incorrectly assembled origin or companion phrase.
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