German to Maithili: whose relative it is can affect the verb
An owner can matter beyond the noun phrase
In German, dein Sohn identifies the son through his relationship to the listener. In a sentence about that son sleeping, the son is the subject; the owner expressed by dein does not thereby become the person who sleeps. A translation must preserve these two participants separately: the relative who experiences the event and the person through whom that relative is identified.
Kumari and Chandra’s original Maithili study documents possessor agreement reaching the verb. Its example hun-kər beta means his son, with an honorific owner; the complete sentence also registers that owner in the auxiliary. The study finds this pattern with second-person possessors and honorific third-person possessors, rather than every owner indiscriminately.
For a German message about your child arriving, the practical question therefore extends beyond finding a word for your. The Maithili sentence may need to express a relationship to the addressee through its predicate as well. Keeping a previously translated sentence and exchanging only the ownership expression could leave a mismatch between the new relationship and the old verbal form.
The owner and the relative need separate social interpretation
German possessives distinguish speaker, listener and other owners through stems such as mein, dein and sein. Their endings also respond to the possessed noun’s grammatical features. These are different jobs: the ending in a possessive expression is not a general scale of respect for the owner.
The Maithili paper separates honorific distinctions associated with different participants. Its toh-ər beta example concerns a non-honorific second-person owner, while hun-kər beta concerns an honorific third-person owner. Both are eligible possessor types in the reported agreement pattern. First-person possessors do not behave identically.
Consider a German account contrasting my grandfather with your son. Translating grandfather respectfully does not automatically settle the treatment of my; treating the listener respectfully does not automatically settle the treatment of son. The family relationship names the connection, while reference to each participant determines another part of the grammatical choice. This distinction is especially useful when one paragraph shifts between the writer’s family and the recipient’s family.
A subject’s relative and an object’s relative are not interchangeable patterns
The same study reports a subject–object asymmetry: a possessed noun inside the subject can participate in agreement, whereas the possessed noun inside an object does not control agreement in the same way. Eligible possessors can still matter alongside the subject. This description concerns the constructions examined by the authors.
A German contrast between your son slept and I saw your son keeps the same ownership relationship but changes the son’s role in the event. That makes it a poor place to reuse an entire Maithili predicate merely because both source sentences contain dein Sohn. The second sentence introduces a separate seeing subject, while the son becomes the person seen.
Read these examples as a reason to analyze the complete German clause before choosing the Maithili construction. Identify who acts, whose relative is mentioned, and how the sentence positions that relative. Those answers explain why an apparently small ownership edit can require a larger grammatical revision.
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