Fijian to Dogri: the pronoun does not supply every agreement choice
Fijian separates grammatical role without specifying male or female
Joseph Hong’s Fijian pronoun table gives e for a singular third-person subject and koya for a singular third-person object. Both can refer to male, female, or inanimate participants. The difference between the forms consequently identifies a grammatical role rather than a masculine-versus-feminine distinction. In a Dogri translation, a change from the person acting to the person affected must not be interpreted as a change of gender.
The Fijian table also distinguishes dual, limited-group, and broader plural reference. These categories concern how many participants are represented, with the further qualification that the category called trial can denote a few rather than exactly three. A report involving a small group therefore gives a different kind of information from identification of a participant as male or female. The target may require both decisions even where the Fijian source marks only one of them explicitly.
Dogri gender information can occur in the predicate
Jamwal, Gupta, and Sen’s research on Dogri finite-verb generation describes paradigms whose suffixes and accompanying predicate material vary with the subject’s gender and number. For this comparison, the important point is not the paper’s computational algorithm but the grammatical dependencies it models. A Fijian singular reference without gender does not provide enough information to select every Dogri agreement form in the paradigms described.
This is especially relevant when a Fijian account first identifies a participant by a name or relationship and later uses a short pronoun. The later gender-neutral form does not cancel information already established by that identification. Conversely, where the account never establishes the relevant identity, a particular Dogri form cannot be justified merely by treating Fijian e as an inherently male reference. These observations concern the finite constructions investigated, not a rule that every Dogri verb in every construction agrees with the actor in the same way.
Do not confuse recipient marking with the person performing an action
Ved Kumari Ghai’s Dogri overview gives the pronominal forms migi and tugi with meanings to me and to you. Such forms identify a directed relationship rather than automatically identifying the subject. Her discussion also notes gender-sensitive auxiliary forms, showing that the relevant information need not reside in a standalone personal pronoun. Reading only the most obvious pronoun can therefore miss part of the target’s grammatical structure.
For a Fijian account in which someone speaks or hands something to another person, keep the person performing the action distinct from its recipient. A Dogri to-you form does not turn that recipient into the actor, just as the Fijian subject–object distinction does not establish gender. Resolve the event roles first, then retain any identity information needed by the target predicate. This preserves the particular interaction without mechanically assigning each short Fijian form one fixed Dogri word.
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