Dogri to Spanish: possession includes relationships beyond ownership
A genitive phrase need not mean legal ownership
Dogri genitive expressions link a preceding possessor or dependent to a head noun, with agreement on the genitive marker. Spanish possessive expressions likewise cover more than literal possession. The RAE and ASALE distinguish ownership from kinship, social relationships, inclusion and temporary use. A translator must identify the actual relationship before selecting wording that might suggest somebody owns the person or thing described.
For example, the original English scenarios my colleague and my bus describe very different links. A colleague is socially associated with the speaker; a bus may simply be the service the speaker plans to take. A Dogri possessive expression in either setting should not become a Spanish statement that the speaker owns a colleague or owns a vehicle. The relationship supplied by the noun and situation is part of the meaning.
Dogri head agreement does not change the relationship’s person
Sawhney explains that Dogri genitive marking agrees with the head in gender, number and case. Its changing form does not necessarily identify a different person at the dependent end of the relationship. In a Dogri description of one speaker’s relatives and belongings, agreement can vary while the same speaker remains the reference point.
The Spanish translation should therefore keep a stable account of who is being related to each head noun. A change from a masculine object to a feminine relative in Dogri does not by itself switch from the speaker to somebody else. At the same time, the translator should not flatten all relationships into ownership simply because a genitive or possessive appears. The same speaker can be a friend’s associate, an item’s owner and a vehicle’s intended passenger in adjacent phrases.
An action noun can refer to its doer or its affected object
The Spanish grammar specifically distinguishes possessives linked to an action noun’s subject from those linked to its object: a decision can be associated with the person making it, while construction can be associated with the building constructed. That distinction matters when a Dogri genitive phrase contains a noun derived from an action. The dependency cannot be translated accurately by assuming that every dependent names an owner.
Consider a Dogri message about the committee’s decision and the bridge’s construction. The committee can be the deciding body; the bridge is what is constructed, not what performs the construction. Spanish wording should keep those relations distinct even if both allow a possessive expression. If the source adds who built the bridge, that introduces another participant rather than a second owner of the construction. Recover the event behind the action noun, identify what role the genitive dependent plays, and then choose the Spanish expression. This preserves the information hidden inside a compact Dogri noun phrase instead of expanding it into the wrong kind of relationship.
Language references