Dogri to Slovenian: distinguish a pair of people from a larger group
Two participants can require dual agreement across the sentence
Dogri’s noun system distinguishes singular and plural, as Kumar’s grammatical account notes. Standard Slovenian adds a productive dual for two participants. Marušič and Žaucer describe dual marking on nouns, adjectives, verbs and pronouns. A Dogri plural statement about exactly two people can therefore require more than changing one Slovenian pronoun: the agreement pattern across the sentence may also change.
Their paradigms contrast masculine or mixed first-person midva, we two, with plural mi. A Dogri message saying that the writer and one other person will attend should retain that pair rather than become an unspecified larger group. However, the authors stress variation across Slovenian dialects and differences between standard forms and everyday varieties. Their account does not justify labelling every colloquial form without a distinct dual ending as universally ungrammatical.
Pairs of body parts add a different complication. The study gives noge for someone’s ordinary pair of legs in an unmarked expression, while explicit both can trigger the dual. A Dogri reference to two people is therefore not the same grammatical problem as a reference to one person’s legs. Recover what is being counted before selecting the target number construction; the numeral two is not a universal instruction to replace every plural form.
Liking an object differs from enjoying an activity
Greenberg’s grammar gives Slika mi je všeč for liking a picture. The person appears in a dative expression, while the picture controls the copula’s agreement. A Dogri message whose topic is the person’s preference can therefore become a Slovenian construction whose agreement follows the thing appreciated. The position or case of the person alone does not mean that they receive the picture.
Greenberg separately describes rad with a finite verb for habitually liking an activity. A Dogri source about enjoying painting is not interchangeable with one appreciating a particular picture. Identify whether the complement describes an object or an activity before choosing the target construction. The distinction changes the predicate, not merely an ending on the translated word for picture.
Dogri source agreement can help establish the relevant phrase: Sawhney distinguishes declinable adjectives responding to gender, number and case from invariant adjectives, and genitive da agrees with its head. For a message about two people appreciating several pictures, keep both counts separate. Slovenian must express the two experiencers through an appropriate personal form while agreement in the všeč construction follows the appreciated objects. A correctly chosen dual form for the people cannot by itself determine the number of those pictures.
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