Dogri to Lingala: noun classes are more than masculine and feminine
The Lingala noun selects a different agreement system
Sawhney describes Dogri nouns and a class of adjectives with masculine/feminine agreement. Bokamba’s study of Lingala instead compares noun-class systems and agreement across several varieties. In Literary or Mankandza Lingala, the class of a noun can determine corresponding prefixes on modifiers and verbs. A translator cannot choose those prefixes by treating every Dogri masculine noun as one Lingala class and every feminine noun as another.
The study contrasts a large teacher, a large truck and a large boat using different class patterns. The meaning large can remain the same while its agreement shape changes with the target head noun. For a Dogri description of transport arriving, preserve the vehicle and its size, then select the Lingala construction belonging to that noun rather than carrying over a source gender label.
A plural group can require several coordinated changes
Bokamba’s Literary/Mankandza examples pair singular and plural teachers, trucks and boats with corresponding changes in the noun, modifier and verbal agreement. These are linked expressions of the same noun phrase’s features, not separate additions of plural meaning. A Dogri plural adjective ending does not provide a single suffix that replaces the entire pattern.
In an original arrival notice, distinguishing one large bus from several large buses matters for the actual transport available. A target sentence with a plural noun but a mismatched modifier or verb can fail to express the intended pattern in the variety being used. Conversely, repeated class-related material in a well-formed target is not needless repetition simply because Dogri packages agreement differently. Read the forms as grammatical links to one referent.
Variation changes what counts as a mismatch
The same paper explicitly documents differences in Spoken and Kinshasa Lingala, including levelling or variation in agreement outside human classes. Literary/Mankandza agreement should therefore not be imposed as the only legitimate structure for every Lingala speaker. An invariant modifier in one documented variety is not automatically evidence that the source’s number or property has vanished.
This is relevant when a Dogri message is intended for ordinary conversation rather than a formal written register. The target still needs to say which people or objects arrived and what describes them, but the agreement pattern may differ from a literary example. Avoid combining a noun phrase from one variety with unrelated corrections drawn from another just to make every prefix resemble a textbook table.
Human reference must still remain clear
Bokamba notes comparatively consistent human-class subject agreement across the varieties he contrasts. A Dogri account switching from one teacher to several teachers must consequently preserve participant number, even where other noun classes show greater variation. Neither the existence of dialect differences nor the loss of Dogri-style gender agreement justifies making the group indistinct. Follow the actual people and objects while allowing the chosen Lingala variety to express their grammatical links in its own way.
Language references