Dogri to Central Kurdish: identify definiteness, ownership and the person referred to
A longer noun may mark definiteness rather than Dogri gender
Dogri nouns distinguish masculine and feminine gender and change for number and case. Central Kurdish, or Sorani, does not retain the same gender and overt noun-case system. The University of Arizona’s research-based description instead highlights definite, indefinite and absolute noun states. It contrasts sew-aka, the apple, with sew-akan, the apples. These suffixes identify definiteness and number, not masculine and feminine versions of an apple.
A Dogri source may establish a particular object through earlier mention or a demonstrative. Preserve that established reference when selecting the Central Kurdish noun phrase rather than copying a Dogri ending into a target suffix. Conversely, a newly introduced or unspecified item need not receive a definite ending merely because the source noun is visibly inflected. The two languages package different information into their noun forms, so similar-looking changes of length can perform different grammatical work.
The source pronoun’s form is only one clue
Sawhney’s Dogri account distinguishes proximate e from distal o in the third-person nominative paradigm. It also notes that these nominative forms do not themselves show number agreement with their head nouns. The surrounding Dogri passage therefore matters when identifying whether a short reference concerns one person, several people or an object. The length of the pronoun alone cannot provide that analysis.
Dogri oblique and genitive forms add further distinctions: its pronouns change with case, and genitive expressions function adjectivally. A source change can reflect the same participant taking a different grammatical role, rather than a new referent. In a Dogri narrative introducing a visitor, that visitor’s belongings and then a group joining the visitor, keep those reference chains separate. Central Kurdish need not duplicate the source case forms, but it must still preserve the difference between the visitor, the belongings and the larger group.
Ownership can be expressed inside the Central Kurdish word
Thackston describes ordinary Central Kurdish possessives as unstressed enclitics added to nouns. His examples with kuř, son, include kuřim, my son, and kuřmân, our son. A Dogri possessive construction can therefore become a compact target word without losing its owner. The attached person information is part of the expression, not an optional pronoun that disappeared in translation.
An alternative construction places an emphatic possessor after the possessed expression, linked through izâfa. Thackston illustrates ktâwaká i min for my book. This target ordering differs from a Dogri genitive-marked owner placed before its head. Do not restore the source order merely to make the translation look familiar. Equally, changing my to our in a Dogri message can require changing an attached target element rather than replacing a separate word. These are Central Kurdish constructions; a Northern Kurdish pronoun or case table cannot be applied as a substitute simply because both targets are called Kurdish.
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