Filipino to Central Kurdish: an agent attached to a noun need not own it
Filipino ng-pronouns already require a role decision
NIU illustrates Filipino nila as an owner in Aso nila iyon, identifying their dog, and as an actor in Binili nila ang kotse, reporting that they bought the car. The pronoun family does not mean possession in every construction. This distinction is especially useful before translating into Central Kurdish, where past transitive constructions also use agent forms resembling possessive enclitics.
For the purchase statement, the Filipino pronoun identifies the buyers. It does not establish that they retain ownership of the car, and it does not make the car responsible for the transaction. A target construction may place person information next to a noun, yet the intended event roles must remain the same. The translator needs the source’s buying relationship before interpreting where the Central Kurdish agent appears.
Sorani past transitive agents can move onto earlier material
Thackston’s Sorani grammar describes the simple past transitive with agent affixes identical in form to enclitic possessive pronouns. When only the verb is expressed, the agent can attach to the past stem; when suitable preceding material occurs, the agent can attach earlier according to the construction’s placement rules. Its visible host is therefore not sufficient evidence that the person owns that host.
The grammar illustrates the phenomenon with khwârdin, to eat, and a negative example námkhwârd, I did not eat it. Here the first-person agent appears with the negative material rather than as an independent word meaning I. That does not turn negation into property belonging to the speaker. It demonstrates why a Filipino-to-Sorani translation can represent an actor without reproducing the source pronoun as a free-standing item.
For a Filipino report that people bought a car, any target person information must continue to identify the buyers even if its position differs. Reading a target enclitic as an owner simply because it is adjacent to the car expression can introduce a claim absent from the source. Conversely, deleting that material as an unnecessary possessive can remove the only grammatical identification of the actor.
Do not extend the past transitive pattern to every past event
Thackston separately describes intransitive simple past forms such as hâtim, I came. The treatment of an intransitive arriving person is not identical to the agent pattern just described for eating. A Filipino completed-aspect form alone does not determine which Central Kurdish arrangement is required: the selected event must also be interpreted for its participants and transitivity.
This matters in a short account that reports both a purchase and a subsequent arrival. The same people may perform both actions, but their target encoding need not remain in one fixed position. Preserve the identity through each construction rather than copying an agent pattern mechanically from one clause to the next. In this direction, similarities between possessive-looking forms are useful clues to examine the grammar, not proof that either language has changed an actor into an owner.
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