Dogri to Shona: an assertion may be carried by tone rather than a separate copula
Do not count copula words to decide whether there is a sentence
Sawhney’s Dogri description illustrates predicative adjectives on either side of a copula, with a difference of emphasis. Shona can express some copulative constructions by a tonal change on a nominal prefix, as Lafon explains. A target without a visibly separate counterpart of the Dogri copula is not necessarily missing its assertion.
Lafon gives muti uyu murefu, this tree is tall, and banga idzva, the knife is new. These are assertions in the discussion, not merely labels for a tall tree or a new knife. For a Dogri inventory report, that difference matters: identifying which knife is new and saying that a specified knife is new can answer different questions.
The Dogri source’s copular structure helps establish the intended assertion before translating. Its word order should not be copied as a requirement to insert an extra Shona word after every descriptive noun. The target construction needs its own agreement and tonal interpretation instead.
Lexical tone and copulative tone are not the same instruction
Kumar’s Dogri account describes three lexical tones. That source feature does not predict where a Shona copulative tonal change belongs. Dogri tone can be part of identifying a word, while the Shona constructions discussed by Lafon use tone as part of making a predication.
For an original Dogri statement about a tree’s height, retain the intended property and the fact that it is asserted of that tree. A sound-based imitation of a Dogri word cannot establish either a Shona lexical equivalent or the target copulative pattern. The source and target both using tone does not make their tonal functions interchangeable.
This also explains why a written result can deserve more interpretation than its spaces suggest. The absence of a separate be-like word cannot by itself establish that the output is only a noun phrase. Conversely, a familiar descriptive word cannot prove that the target makes the intended assertion with the required agreement.
A repeated-looking form need not be Dogri-style reduplication
Sawhney discusses Dogri reduplication, including roi-roi with the meaning of having cried a lot. Lafon’s copulative discussion includes nominal sequences whose repeated-looking written forms have an identity assertion, such as a man is a man. The appearance of repetition therefore does not license assigning Dogri’s intensive reading to every Shona repetition.
An original Dogri description emphasizing that someone cried a great deal concerns the extent of an event. A statement asserting someone’s identity or category concerns something else. A Shona result should not be accepted merely because the same apparent word occurs twice and the source also had repetition.
In this direction, distinguish three layers: the Dogri word identified through its lexical form, the Dogri construction that supplies emphasis or assertion, and the Shona construction that expresses that meaning. The same visual clue can serve different jobs across the pair. A separate copula, a repeated form and a tonal change each require interpretation within their actual sentence rather than a one-for-one substitution.
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