Dogri to Upper Sorbian: two owners and two belongings are different kinds of two
A Dogri plural can leave the exact group size to context
Sawhney’s Dogri morphology paper describes singular and plural noun categories and lists first-person plural əss separately from the singular forms. A reference to the writer’s group does not necessarily say whether that group consists of two people or more. The number can come from an earlier description of the participants.
Anstatt, Clasmeier and Wölke’s Upper Sorbian grammar describes singular, plural and dual, with the dual marking two referents. Its personal-pronoun paradigm distinguishes first-person dual mój from plural my. A Dogri group reference therefore may require a more specific target number choice.
For a message written by a couple, the group containing the writer consists of two people. A message on behalf of an entire larger family involves another group size. Do not infer a larger group merely from Dogri plural morphology, and do not infer a pair simply because two names appeared somewhere earlier in the text. Establish which participants the particular group reference includes.
The number of owners is not the number of objects
The Upper Sorbian grammar gives naju for ownership associated with two people and naš-type forms for plural owners. It separately shows singular, plural and dual forms for possessed noun phrases. A pair can own one item or several; those are not contradictory number choices.
Dogri’s cited genitive paradigm includes sɑɽɑ for first-person plural ownership and describes agreement-sensitive possessive expressions. In translating such a phrase, distinguish the group whose property is involved from the number of things possessed. A single source possessive expression can carry several grammatical relationships that the target must organize differently.
If two travellers refer to their room, there are two owners or associated people but one room. If the same travellers refer to their bags, the number of bags is another fact. Selecting a dual ownership expression should not silently turn one shared room into two rooms, while selecting a plural noun for bags should not expand the pair into a larger travelling party.
This distinction is especially useful when a Dogri paragraph shifts between shared accommodation and individual belongings. The people can remain the same while the possessed noun changes number. The translation needs to preserve that continuity without forcing every connected expression into one identical-looking pattern.
A familiar-looking form needs its function established
The Upper Sorbian grammar also gives mój as a masculine singular possessive meaning my, alongside its use as a first-person dual personal pronoun in the separate paradigm. The same spelling can therefore have different grammatical functions. It should not receive one fixed interpretation whenever it appears.
For a Dogri reader comparing the source with its translation, identify whether the Upper Sorbian form is naming the speaker-containing pair or modifying a possessed noun. A word referring to two speakers is not a new way of saying that one object belongs to one speaker. The surrounding phrase establishes which role is present.
These contrasts explain why a target translation may introduce a visible dual distinction absent from the isolated Dogri plural form. It should do so because the source context identifies two participants. Keep owner count, item count and pronoun function separate; that preserves the intended group and property relationship without inventing an additional person or belonging.
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