Dogri to Russian: some possessives change with the object and others keep the owner visible
The owner and the owned noun supply different information
Dogri possession already requires attention to the possessed noun. Sawhney lists masculine and feminine variants for third-person singular possessive forms and illustrates a first-person possessive modifying house. Russian also has agreement within possessive phrases, but its first- and third-person forms behave differently. Treating every Russian possessive like one Dogri declinable pattern creates errors precisely where the identity of the owner matters.
The telc Russian handbook contrasts мой дом and моя книга: my house and my book. Here the first-person owner remains the speaker while the possessive changes with the noun. The difference must not be read as identifying a male versus female speaker. This is useful when translating a Dogri speaker’s description of several possessions: different Russian possessive shapes can still refer to the same person.
Third-person possession does not reproduce that same alternation
In the handbook’s paradigm, его, её and их remain unchanged as the following noun varies in gender, number and case. These forms distinguish his, her and their, rather than reproducing the first-person agreement pattern. A change from a masculine to a feminine possessed noun does not itself justify changing его into её.
That distinction is especially important when the Dogri source contains a possessive ending linked to the thing owned. It may tempt a translator to carry the ending’s masculine or feminine value into the Russian owner expression. Instead, identify whose property is meant independently. If the Dogri context establishes a female owner, preserve that information even when the Russian possessed noun is masculine; if it leaves the owner’s sex unresolved, the grammatical gender of the item cannot settle it.
Case and animacy add another layer for first-person possession
The Russian handbook gives a separate accusative pattern for animate masculine nouns. Its first-person possessive therefore has a different form with a brother as object than with an inanimate house as object. This is not a change from my to someone else’s. It belongs to the Russian noun phrase’s grammatical role and animacy pattern.
Sawhney distinguishes Dogri nominative and oblique noun forms and describes postpositions following oblique complements. That source analysis helps recover the relationship, but it does not select a Russian ending by itself. A person owned or associated with the speaker, an inanimate possession and a destination containing a possessive phrase can demand different Russian constructions even when the Dogri possessive stem identifies the same owner.
Movement and location can change the surrounding phrase
The telc handbook contrasts в город with в городе: towards a city versus being in a city. The preposition remains recognizable while the noun’s case changes. For a Dogri location expression, a translation must therefore distinguish movement to a place from location at it before fitting any possessive into that phrase. Simply replacing a source postposition with a Russian preposition leaves part of the grammatical decision unfinished.
Together these contrasts give a concrete way to read a Dogri possession statement: establish the owner from reference, identify the possessed noun and its Russian class, then determine the phrase’s role in the event. Keep those decisions separate. The source’s agreement may describe the possession, whereas the Russian third-person form identifies the possessor, and Russian case expresses how the whole phrase relates to the action.
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