Fijian to Lower Sorbian: dual reference extends beyond a matching pronoun
Distinguish two participants from a respectful form
Joseph Hong’s Fijian survey describes dual pronouns for two participants, alongside limited-group and broader plural forms. It also documents respectful uses of non-singular forms for individual people. A Fijian form that resembles a numerical group reference therefore needs interpretation before it becomes a Lower Sorbian dual or plural. Otherwise, a message to one respected person can accidentally become a message to several people.
Hong distinguishes the rich pronoun-number system from the noun system and explains that the category traditionally called trial can denote a few rather than precisely three. These two qualifications matter together. A small-group pronoun is not an instruction to add an exact numeral, and the grammatical number of a pronoun need not be copied indiscriminately onto every noun in the translated passage. Establish which expression refers to people and which refers to an item under discussion.
Lower Sorbian respectful address can also obscure headcount
Gerald Stone’s Lower Sorbian pronoun discussion notes that wy, the second-person plural form, can respectfully address one person or two. The presence of a target plural-looking address is consequently not proof that the Fijian reference has been mistranslated. The relevant question is whether the actual addressee or addressees and the intended respectful treatment remain recoverable. A pair addressed respectfully may not display the same surface pattern as an ordinary numerical dual.
Stone also distinguishes literary practice from colloquial agreement in honorific expressions involving a past participle. Literary Lower Sorbian often follows a pattern separating singular reference in the participle from a plural honorific auxiliary, although he notes the rule is not codified there as in Upper Sorbian. Colloquial usage can retain plural participial agreement for one respected addressee. These are scoped observations about styles and varieties, not interchangeable alternatives to mix randomly within one sentence. The source’s two-person reference does not settle every target agreement choice.
A dual distinction can appear inside a Lower Sorbian noun phrase
Andreas Pankau’s study of colloquial Lower Sorbian analyzes a determiner series including tej for dual reference and te for plural reference. Its singular forms additionally distinguish grammatical genders. In the construction investigated, number information is thus not confined to a separate personal pronoun. A Fijian passage referring to a pair can require target distinctions within the noun phrase even where the source’s most conspicuous numerical marking appears elsewhere.
Pankau argues that these determiners function as definite articles in the colloquial system he studies; this should not be silently recast as a universal prescription for every literary Lower Sorbian text. For Fijian translation, its practical value is to demonstrate why preserving a pair requires attention to the complete target phrase. Choosing one dual pronoun is not enough if another part of the phrase then presents a broader plural group. Keep genuine numerical reference separate from respectful address throughout that reconstruction.
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