Greek to Dogri: a feminine event form can agree with the object rather than identify a female actor
Do not read the actor from one target ending
Greek finite verb forms mark person and number without making the ordinary he gave versus she gave distinction through a different finite ending. Dogri can show gender in its verbal forms, but the relevant agreement relationship depends on the construction. A target feminine form should not automatically be interpreted as proof that a woman performed the action.
The Greek overview distinguishes finite person and number features from the gender agreement found in nouns, adjectives, and participial constructions. The original example Το κορίτσι έδωσε ένα λουλούδι describes a girl giving a flower. The finite έδωσε does not change merely because the actor is identified as a girl rather than a boy.
Sawhney’s Dogri description supplies a comparable giving example with a girl, a boy as recipient, and a masculine flower. Its dit̪-ɑ is glossed perfective masculine singular. The target form therefore cannot be read as a label that turns the girl into a male actor. The masculine flower is a separate participant in the transfer.
Actor, transferred object, and recipient have different roles
The same study illustrates Ram eating ruʈi with a feminine perfective form kʰɑ-d̪i, and Ram giving a feminine book with di-t̪i. These examples reinforce the point: a male named actor can occur with a feminine event form. Translating or evaluating the sentence by following the final gender marker as though it always described the actor would assign the wrong participant identity.
Compare an original pair of messages: the girl gave the boy a flower, and the boy gave the girl a flower. They contain the same participants and object, but the transfer runs in opposite directions. A Dogri result preserving the flower’s gender agreement can still be wrong if it reverses actor and recipient. Agreement is not a substitute for interpreting the source case and clause relationships.
The Greek source can place constituents in different orders, with case helping identify their functions. A translation should therefore not choose the Dogri actor solely as the first person mentioned. First establish who performs the giving and who receives the object; then express those relationships through the target construction. The object’s agreement pattern should remain connected with that object rather than being used to repair a mistaken role assignment.
A later pronoun can make the error harder to notice. If the next sentence refers to the girl, a translator must continue with the same person instead of treating the masculine flower-related form as evidence that the preceding actor was male. Conversely, a feminine form in the book example does not make the book’s recipient a woman. The recipient may be identified independently elsewhere in the message.
These observations concern the concrete constructions illustrated in the Dogri study, not a claim that every Dogri verb always agrees with its object. For a Greek transfer report, retain the actor, object, and recipient separately. Then interpret the target gender morphology within that construction, preserving the event’s participants without converting an object-related ending into unsupported information about a person.
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