Finnish to Bulgarian: a possessive ending can identify an actor rather than an owned object
The same Finnish ending appears in different kinds of relationship
Kielibuusti’s possession guide contrasts ordinary noun possession with suffixes attached to nonfinite verb forms. Kirjani identifies my book, but a suffix on a construction such as istuessani identifies the person sitting. A Bulgarian translation must first determine whether the source concerns an owner or the actor in an embedded event.
The guide illustrates a longer purpose construction in which the speaker saves money to buy an electric bicycle. The suffix in ostaakseni identifies the intended buyer. It does not mean that the act of buying is a material possession belonging to the speaker. Treating every ending as an instruction to insert a target my word would obscure the intended action.
Bulgarian distinguishes personal possession from a reflexive participant
The Bulgarian grammar documentation lists мой and твой as possessive determiners, while себе си and се are personal reflexive forms. These categories do different work: a phrase can identify something belonging to somebody, or identify a participant who refers back within an event. They are not interchangeable replacements for every Finnish suffix.
A Finnish clause about obtaining something for oneself concerns both the item and the beneficiary. An ordinary possession statement instead identifies whose item it is. The target must retain that distinction before choosing among a possessive phrase, a reflexive expression or a clause that states the actor explicitly.
The Bulgarian documentation also distinguishes long possessive forms from short clitic forms. Consequently, a short target form does not necessarily omit the owner, and a longer form does not automatically add another owner. Interpret the form within the target construction rather than count source endings and target words.
Finnish can distinguish another person’s possession through an explicit pronoun
The Kielibuusti guide contrasts Sanna following her own electricity consumption with Sanna following her mother’s consumption. In its standard-language explanation, an explicit hänen alongside the possessive suffix points to somebody other than the clause’s subject in that contrast. The suffix alone and the added pronoun should not be flattened into identical references.
For Finnish into Bulgarian, this matters in reports containing two people. The subject performing the checking and the person whose consumption is checked can coincide or differ. A target phrase must not connect the consumption automatically to the nearest name if the Finnish pronoun identifies another referent.
The same Finnish guide notes that colloquial speech often uses a pronoun where standard language uses a possessive suffix. A source with fewer suffixes may therefore express the same owner through different material. Register variation is not evidence that the ownership relationship disappeared.
Read each Finnish construction for its actual role: possessor of a noun, actor of a nonfinite clause or participant referring back to another expression. Bulgarian can express those relationships with separate words and constructions. Preserving the referent matters more than reproducing the visible location of a Finnish ending.
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