Dogri to Kashmiri: similar case marking does not mean identical sentence order
The main verb need not remain at the end
Dogri is predominantly verb-final, with flexibility in arranging other constituents, as Kumar’s grammatical description notes. Kashmiri commonly places the finite verb second in a main clause. A Dogri reader should therefore expect more than a change of vocabulary: a translated Kashmiri statement can move its finite verb forward while preserving the source participants and event. Second position concerns a constituent, not simply the second written word.
Koul and Wali’s Modern Kashmiri Grammar makes a further distinction between clause types. It describes finite complement clauses with the main-clause verb-second pattern, but relative clauses with final verbs. Its relative marker yus, who or which, changes for grammatical features including gender, number and case. A Dogri description identifying a person through a relative clause may thus contain two different verb placements in Kashmiri. Do not regularise the whole target sentence to one familiar order.
A postposition can require more than a general oblique form
Dogri postpositions follow oblique complements. Kashmiri also uses postpositions, but Koul’s Studies in Kashmiri Linguistics separates those governing a dative form from those governing an ablative form. It includes manz, in, among the former group and describes another group with source-related meanings. The shared postpositional arrangement does not provide a one-to-one match between the languages’ case endings.
Koul also notes that some Kashmiri case forms coincide on the noun even though different postpositions distinguish the construction. In a Dogri account of someone staying inside a place and later leaving it, the target relationship must preserve location versus source. Reusing a noun form because the place name is unchanged does not establish that the complete phrase is correct. Conversely, an unchanged target noun spelling can still occur in grammatically different relationships when the surrounding expression changes. Read the noun and postposition together.
Agreement clues belong to the expression being described
Dogri declinable adjectives can reveal gender, number and case agreement with their head. Kashmiri yus also has an inflected relative paradigm, but its forms belong to the identifying clause rather than simply copying the Dogri adjective’s ending. When a Dogri noun phrase identifies someone through both a description and a relative clause, establish which information belongs to each structure before arranging the Kashmiri main verb and relative-clause verb.
Dogri’s genitive da agrees with its head, while its third-person nominative pronouns distinguish proximate and distal reference without themselves exhibiting number agreement in the described paradigm. Together these facts show why source interpretation cannot depend on one isolated form. In a passage introducing two people and then referring to one person’s belongings, distinguish the owner, the possessed item and the subsequent reference. Kashmiri’s target case and verb arrangement can change where those clues appear, but should preserve the established relationships.
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