Dogri to Estonian: past perfect agreement does not select a total object
Dogri feminine agreement says something different from Estonian object case
Sawhney’s Dogri eating example pairs a masculine named eater with an ergative marker and a feminine perfect verb associated with the feminine food noun. Estonian distinguishes partial and total objects according to the predicate and clause, not the Dogri noun’s gender. The Institute of the Estonian Language lists several simultaneous conditions for a total object, including an affirmative clause, a resultative event, a bounded object and a verb that permits the construction.
Thus a recognizable Dogri perfect form is not a universal instruction to use an Estonian total object. First determine what the source actually says about the meal. Reporting that somebody ate food does not always specify a bounded portion or say that an entire serving was consumed. The target must not add that information merely because the source verb carries agreement and a past-event interpretation.
Amount and completion are separate parts of the decision
The Estonian guidance contrasts buying a bounded loaf or agreed quantity of bread with buying an unspecified amount. It also contrasts a planned completed renovation with renovation viewed as an activity whose result is unspecified. These examples explain why identifying an object noun alone is insufficient. The translated Dogri event needs both the intended quantity and its relation to an endpoint.
In an original Dogri shopping instruction, asking someone to buy bread can leave the quantity open. A request for one complete loaf is more specific. Similarly, a meal report can concern eating some food or finishing the serving. Those are different messages even when the same food term occurs. Read any quantity expression and completion wording before deciding how the Estonian object should be marked. Gender agreement in Dogri does not supply the missing quantity.
Negation and the chosen Estonian verb can block the expected form
EKI explains that ordinary negative clauses use a partial object and that some verbs require it even in affirmative clauses. The source additionally notes a special contrastive-negation exception, so its rule should not be simplified into a claim about every imaginable negative construction. A translator must consider the actual Estonian predicate, not just the meaning of a Dogri tense label.
For example, a Dogri denial that somebody finished a meal must preserve the denied completion without mechanically keeping the object form selected for an affirmative counterpart. Conversely, a statement about loving a particular food is not automatically a bounded accomplishment simply because that food is clearly identified. The predicate’s construction still matters. Dogri marks participant and agreement relationships through its own noun, postposition and verb system; Estonian object case can encode a different set of distinctions. Retain the event, amount and denial from the source, then evaluate them through the Estonian verb’s requirements. This prevents a polished target sentence from promising a result or quantity that the original never specified.
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