Dogri to Hausa: tense information can move into the subject form
Do not look only for a changed verb root
Dogri verbs carry tense, aspect and agreement information, as Sawhney’s morphology description illustrates. Hausa organizes much of its corresponding marking in subject-pronoun sets rather than in a changed lexical verb. UCLA’s grammar contrasts sun shiga, suna shiga and za su shiga in basic entering examples. The lexical action remains recognizable while the surrounding subject and marking distinguish the event’s interpretation.
A Hausa translation of a Dogri past event is therefore not necessarily missing time information merely because the action word looks unchanged. Inspect the subject form and any associated particle. Conversely, retaining the right lexical verb while choosing the wrong subject series can change an event from completed to ongoing or prospective. The information must survive, but it need not occupy the same word as in Dogri.
A Dogri time reference must remain part of the interpretation
The Hausa account explains that a reference time supplied by context can shift the interpretation of an aspectual form. It illustrates the same completed-event construction with yesterday and tomorrow contexts, producing readings equivalent to had entered and will have entered. Calling every Hausa completive simply past would therefore misread a target clause framed by a future time expression.
Consider an original Dogri plan stating that a group will already have arrived by the following afternoon. The target must preserve completion relative to that future point, not turn the arrival into an earlier event before the speaker’s present. A Dogri past account describing arrival before another earlier activity needs a different reference point. The Hausa construction must be evaluated with that point, rather than assigned a fixed calendar time from the subject form alone.
Repeating a subject marker does not add a new actor
UCLA illustrates Hausa subject marking with each verb in sequences such as children entering and then sitting down. An overt noun naming the children does not remove the accompanying subject forms. In a Dogri narration where the same participants perform successive actions, repeated Hausa subject marking can therefore maintain one continuing group rather than introduce several sets of people.
For an original arrival account, distinguish the group entering, sitting and beginning a conversation from an exchange in which one person enters and another sits. The target subject forms must preserve the continuity or switch intended by the source. Do not strip repeated forms merely because the Dogri text mentions the group only once, and do not interpret every repeated marker as a renewed introduction. The combination of participant reference, aspectual series and contextual time carries the target event structure. Reading only the lexical verb would miss much of what the Hausa translation needs to express.
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