Dogri to European Portuguese: an object pronoun can move without changing its recipient
Do not equate a Dogri oblique pronoun with a fixed Portuguese slot
Dogri identifies grammatical relationships through distinct pronoun forms and postpositions. Sawhney lists first-person singular miɡi separately from the nominative alternatives and describes postpositions following their complements. European Portuguese offers another organization: short object pronouns can attach to a verb or precede it, depending on the construction. The source pronoun’s location does not decide the target location.
This matters in a message addressed to a service provider. A Dogri expression referring to the speaker as the affected person must remain first person in Portuguese even when it appears in a different place. Moving a Portuguese clitic is not automatically a change of emphasis comparable to moving a full Dogri recipient. Its position can be required by the target grammar.
A negative statement changes the placement conditions
Ciberdúvidas describes enclisis, the pronoun following the verb, as the ordinary European Portuguese pattern, while identifying negative expressions as triggers for a preceding clitic. Its attested example “O João não me telefonou” means João did not telephone me. The me belongs before the verb in this negative construction.
For a Dogri source that denies an action towards the speaker, preserve two separate facts: the denial and the identity of the affected person. Adding the Portuguese negative word while leaving a mechanically chosen postverbal pronoun position can fail even though both meanings have been recognized. The negative construction must be assembled as a whole.
The same consultation lists me and te in both direct- and indirect-object columns, whereas third-person direct objects include o and a and the indirect-object form includes lhe. Thus identical-looking short forms in one person do not establish a universal mapping between Dogri case distinctions and Portuguese pronoun shapes. Work from the target verb’s construction rather than a single source-to-target replacement list.
Some formal future forms contain the pronoun inside the verb
A different Ciberdúvidas consultation illustrates comprar-lhe-ei and comprá-lo-ei. These future constructions contain an intervening pronoun. The first uses an indirect-object form; the second a direct-object form. Their different spelling reflects different combinations, not two typographic styles for the same grammatical object.
The consultation explains that the final r disappears before third-person direct-object o, a, os and as, with corresponding lo-type forms. It does not disappear simply because any pronoun is inserted. A Dogri recipient phrase therefore cannot be turned into a Portuguese direct-object construction solely to reproduce the appearance of a familiar hyphenated example.
This internal placement is called mesoclisis. The European Portuguese usage discussion distinguishes its continuing role in formal writing and speech from its limited productivity in informal conversation. It also notes that negation and other placement triggers affect whether it applies. A translation should not insert it into every future reference merely to make the result look more Portuguese.
Preserve the relationship before judging the word order
Sawhney’s Dogri giving examples distinguish the agent, the recipient and the transferred object even when their order varies. That distinction remains the useful starting point here. In European Portuguese, deciding which participant the clitic represents comes before deciding whether it follows, precedes or occurs inside a verb form. A polished placement cannot rescue a pronoun that represents the wrong person or grammatical relationship.
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