Filipino to Lower Sorbian: two people are more specific than an unspecified group
An unmarked Filipino noun can still have an exact count
Fiona De Vos’s Tagalog grammar gives Dalawa ang kotse for there being two cars. In that particular number-predicate construction, the noun does not take mga, despite referring to more than one vehicle. For Filipino into Lower Sorbian, the absence of this plural marker must not erase the count already supplied by dalawa. The sentence is about exactly two cars, not one car and not an unspecified collection.
The same grammar distinguishes two women from two of the women. A translation must retain whether the speaker identifies a group of two or selects two members from an established larger group. A target dual form can express the selected pair’s number without by itself reproducing that partitive relationship. Counting the referents and identifying the larger set are separate parts of the message.
The target has a dual, not just singular and plural
Gerald Stone’s Sorbian grammar describes singular, dual and plural as systematic categories in literary Lower Sorbian. Exactly two referents therefore have a grammatical category distinct from a larger group. This matters for Filipino expressions naming a pair even when their source noun lacks a special two-form. A general plural substitution can flatten information which the source has stated precisely.
Stone’s Lower Sorbian pronoun table gives mej for first-person dual and my for first-person plural. These are Lower Sorbian forms; the corresponding Upper Sorbian dual is different. Before choosing between them for Filipino we, establish the number of people meant rather than relying on a bilingual gloss alone. Stone also documents dialectal variation in dual retention, so the literary distinction should not be described as identical in every spoken variety.
Who belongs to we is another question
Northern Illinois University’s Tagalog material distinguishes tayo, which includes the listener, from kami, which excludes the listener. Either can involve a group whose size must be established from the situation. A Lower Sorbian choice based on two versus more than two consequently does not automatically preserve Filipino’s inclusion distinction. In an invitation, who is being invited and who has already agreed to go can matter as much as the total number.
There is also no safe universal shortcut that every Filipino numeral forbids mga. Michelle Dionisio’s primary research challenges such a broad claim with evidence of a numeral and plural marker occurring together. Her discussion concerns the actual construction, whereas De Vos’s restriction above concerns a particular number-as-predicate sentence. For translation, do not discard an unfamiliar combination before interpreting its structure. Filipino can distribute number information across a numeral, a marker and the discourse; Lower Sorbian then requires a target construction suited to the intended referents. Two selected participants, two including the listener, and a larger group are different messages even when a short gloss calls all of them plural.
Language references