Dogri to Inuinnaqtun: distinguish losing something from being lost
The missing item and the person who loses it are different subjects
Sawhney’s Dogri description contrasts a construction in which a pen gets lost with one in which a person loses the pen. The Nunavut Arctic College dictionary distinguishes Inuinnaqtun tammaqtuq, is lost, from tammaijaa, loses it. A translation must retain which event the source describes rather than select a generic lose entry for both.
In an original Dogri report about a missing item, saying that the item is lost does not necessarily identify the person responsible. Saying that a particular person lost it does. Choosing the transitive Inuinnaqtun entry for an agentless source can add responsibility; choosing only the lost-state entry for a source naming the loser can remove it. The distinction is consequential even when the practical result is the same missing pen.
Dogri derivation does not supply an Inuinnaqtun suffix rule
The Dogri study explains an intransitive-forming derivation and illustrates related alternations. The Inuinnaqtun dictionary provides attested lexical forms, not a rule that every Dogri derivational piece has a fixed target suffix. Its distinction between the lost state and losing an object should be used as evidence for these entries, without mechanically modifying other target roots by analogy.
For example, a Dogri instruction warning that a small item may get lost is prospective and does not assign a deliberate action to the item. A separate report blaming someone for losing that item has a personal actor. Reconstruct the participant structure and time of each clause before selecting a target expression. A dictionary gloss supplies a starting form; it is not a fully conjugated replacement for every person, number or time in the source.
Moving something and moving oneself provide another attested contrast
The same dictionary distinguishes nuutaa, moving it to another location, from nuuttuq, moving to another location. These entries show another place where the target needs to separate an action on an object from movement of the participant itself. The number of words in the Dogri phrase does not settle that choice.
An original Dogri household message can ask someone to move a box, then explain that the family will move to a different home. The first event has an object being relocated; the second concerns the relocating family. Using a familiar move form without preserving that difference can make the family into an object moved by an unnamed actor or omit the box from an instruction. Follow what changes location and whether another participant causes that change. The cited dictionary records Inuinnaqtun forms and community variation; it should not be silently replaced with another Inuit variety because an entry appears similar. Preserve the source event through the documented target distinction rather than treating related-looking motion or loss words as interchangeable.
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