Dogri to Northern Kurdish: interpret case through the whole construction
A changed pronoun need not identify a new person
Dogri distinguishes nominative, oblique and genitive pronoun forms. Sawhney lists first-person nominative forms alongside migi as an oblique and mera as a genitive. Northern Kurdish likewise has different pronoun forms, but their distribution must be established independently. Thackston illustrates min as the possessor in kitêba min, my book, and as a participant in other constructions. A Dogri ending and a Kurdish form cannot be equated simply because both are labelled oblique.
Dogri’s genitive da agrees with the possessed head, while Northern Kurdish kitêba min places the owner after a linked noun. A Dogri change of genitive ending need not mean a new owner, and a Kurdish change in noun-linking material need not do so either. When the passage lists one person’s book and other belongings, recover the constant owner first; the two languages distribute that relationship across different parts of their phrases.
Past events change how Northern Kurdish marks participants
Thackston’s Min tu dîtî means I saw you. In that past transitive construction, min identifies the person who saw, while tu identifies the person seen. His Tu min dibînî? instead asks whether you see me. Reading min as always an object, or tu as always an actor, would reverse the first event. The verb’s construction helps determine the participant roles.
Dogri also has marked participant forms: Kumar’s tagset labels asẽ as a first-person plural oblique ergative example. That familiarity does not prove identical conditions in the two languages. Establish the Dogri event first, then apply the Northern Kurdish tense and transitivity pattern. Thackston describes past transitive agreement with the patient and also records regional variation. A target pronoun that differs from its present-tense counterpart may therefore preserve the same actor rather than indicate a mistranslation.
Comparison is not another agreement ending
Dogri has declinable adjectives whose endings respond to gender, number and case, as well as indeclinable adjectives. Northern Kurdish comparative morphology adds another distinction to consider. Its Universal Dependencies documentation contrasts zêde, a lot, with zêdetir, more, and zêdetirîn, most. These forms change the degree of comparison; they are not masculine and feminine versions of one description.
A Dogri description can therefore require two separate decisions: what is being compared, and which grammatical expression carries that comparison in Northern Kurdish. Do not interpret every longer target adjective as an agreement form comparable to a Dogri gender ending. Equally, a source modifier’s feminine ending does not itself request a comparative. In a message comparing quantities or describing the greatest amount, preserve the intended scale and degree while letting the target language supply its own morphology. This guide concerns Northern Kurdish specifically; Central Kurdish uses a different grammatical system.
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